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There is no doubt that you have come across a toxic friend at some point in your life. There is absolutely no shortage of toxic friends out there, with Mental Health America reporting that 84% of females and 75% of males report having had a toxic friend during their lifetime.
The difficult thing is that toxic friendships can sneak up on you. Sometimes long-term friendships can become unhealthy because time has the ability to turn people toxic. Toxicity in long-term friendships can be difficult to spot because the toxicity gets blended with and diluted by the many years of healthy friendship and good memories. Therefore it may take a moment to recognise and accept when a friendship has become toxic and is no longer serving you. As for newer friendships, it may be slightly easier to spot, especially if you are clear and conscious about the types of toxic friends that exist in this world.
Even if you don’t currently have a toxic friend in your life, it is still good to be aware of the types of toxic friends that exist. If you know what types of toxic friends are out there, you can keep an eye out for them in your future friendships. So without further ado, here are the types of toxic friends for you to be aware of.
Types of Toxic Friends:
The Energy Vampire
The energy vampire is the type of toxic friend that just completely sucks your energy from your when you’re around them- I know, very aptly named. They’re essentially the “Negative Nancie’s” and the complainers of the world. When you’re around them, they drain all your positive energy with their pessimism and complaints. While it can be completely normal and healthy to complain and rant from time to time, these individuals are next level. Energy vampires always have something negative to say or have something to moan about, and they rarely offer positivity or support in return.
You can identify this type of toxic friend by reflecting on how you feel after you’ve hung out with them. If you consistently feel drained after spending time with them and your social battery takes a big hit, then your friend may be an energy vampire.
The Manipulator
These friends have you like a puppet on a string, making you do exactly what you want them to do, sometimes without you even realising it. Their sole goal in their manipulation is to control your actions and behaviour or to take advantage of you for their own personal gain. Some of their methods of manipulation might include guilt tripping, emotional blackmail, silent treatment, and gaslighting.
Often manipulators will make you feel like you owe them something or that you are responsible for their happiness. So if you consistently feel this way about a friend, they may be a manipulator.
The Drama Queen/King
I’m sure you are well aware of these kinds of friends and no doubt you have encountered a drama queen or king at least once in your life. These types of toxic friends thrive on creating and growing drama in both their lives and yours and live for the gossip. There is no such thing as a minor issue in these drama-loving individuals lives. Often what will be a small problem in your eyes will be blown out of proportion and catastrophised by this kind of friend. This is especially problematic for you if it concerns something to do with your friendship – you’ll forever be having to apologise for every minor inconvenience you have caused them.
This kind of friendship can become extremely emotionally exhausting for you. It can cause you to feel like you are walking on eggshells around them and may even make you start to second guess your every move.
The Competitor
This is a pretty self-explanatory type of toxic friend, like the name suggests, they like to compete with you. These kinds of friends turn every aspect of your life into a competition, whether it’s your career, relationships, or personal achievements. Literally, anything that is going on in your life is up for grabs when it comes to competitors.
These kinds of friends can’t genuinely celebrate you and be happy for the good things that happen to you. Nor can they properly support you when things aren’t going great for you either. To them, even the more negative situations in life are still worth competing over. Literally, I have had friends have competitions about who’s had the worst life so far (why you would want to compete about that, I’m still not sure). This means that you might encounter competitive friends who try to compete with you when you’re having a difficult time (and these types of competitors are far from empathetic). Instead of recognising what you are going through and supporting you like a good friend would, these types of competitors will dismiss what you’re saying and may try to one-up you with a story about how they have it worse.
Being in a constant state of competition with a friend is super toxic. It can affect the way you feel about the things that happen to you, impact your ability to tell your friend good and bad news, and may even subconsciously turn you into a competitor too.
The User
Do you have a friend that you only hear from when they need something from you? Then once you’ve given them what they wanted, do they stop replying to your messages and start to ignore you when you reach out? Watch out, this is a big red flag that your friend could be a user.
These types of toxic friends are the ones that constantly take from you without giving you anything in return or even really giving your needs a second thought. If you do ask them for anything in return they might ghost you, or if they do reply, it’s generally with some excuse as to why they can’t help you. Users are the kinds of friends who take advantage of your kindness and generosity- using you until you have nothing left to give.
The Fair Weather Friend
A fair-weather friend is there for you on sunny, cloud-free days, but will disappear as soon as a storm rolls in. They are the ones to flock to you when things are going well in your life, but as soon as you start going through a tough time and turn to them for support, they flake. Clearly, they don’t understand the vow “for better or for worse” because they definitely do not give the friendship their full commitment and support which are essential for a healthy friendship. They are generally unreliable and self-centered individuals (not ideal friend material). These kinds of friends create friendships that can really leave you feeling dissatisfied and hurt – especially if you put in significant effort to support this friend. These friends can be good to have around if you are just wanting an acquaintance or a surface-level friend to do fun things with, but be careful if you have one of these friends in your inner circle.
The Gossiper
These gossip-loving friends thrive on spreading rumours and personal information about people in their lives, including you. They absolutely can’t be trusted with your secrets and if you give them the power, they may damage your reputation.
With this type of friend, your business suddenly becomes everyone’s business. Gossipers thrive off of the attention they get from sharing personal information or spreading rumours about others. They may even go so far as to embellish or twist the information you give them to make it more interesting to their listeners. This can be super problematic for you because it means others are being misinformed about you, meaning they can misunderstand the situation or misjudge you completely.
If your friend is always sharing everyone’s dirty little secrets with you, there is a high chance they are doing the same thing with your secrets. They likely cannot be trusted to keep their mouths shut and respect your privacy. So if you notice your friend doing this, then proceed with caution when it comes to sharing sensitive information with them.
The Jealous One
Jealous friends are toxic because their jealousy gets in the way of them being a good friend to you. It can also cause them to act in unpleasant ways that often leads them to form unhealthy friendships. There are lots of ways your friends could be classified as a jealous friend.
It could be that your friend genuinely can’t be happy for your successes and the good things that come your way. They may feel threatened by your successes and achievements. In this case, their jealousy might be shown through them trying to undermine or downplay your achievements or good fortune, or even trying to overshadow you.
Your friend could also be jealous of the way you look or who you are as a person. This kind of jealous friend has a tendency to have low self-esteem. Their jealousy comes from comparing themselves to you and deeming you to be better than them, leaving them feeling inadequate. As a result, they may make snarky or sarcastic comments, act in a passive-aggressive way with you, or even try to copy you.
Alternatively, your friend could be jealous of your other friendships and relationships. This friend struggles to share you with other people in your life and to grasp the idea that you can have other connections outside of this friendship. They may feel threatened when they find out that you hung out with another friend without them. Even comparing how close you are to another friend might make them feel threatened. This jealousy can lead them to become possessive over you. They may try to use tactics like attention-seeking, playing the victim, or guilt-tripping to keep a hold on you and force you to stay close.
The Clinger
The Abuser
Of all the types of toxic friends, this friend is by far the most toxic.
Abusive friends regularly mistreat you. They often treat you cruelly and can even become aggressive or violent towards you. Abusive friends don’t just have to be physically abusive, they can be emotionally abusive, or even a combination of the three. If you have a friend who is abusive towards you, it is absolutely essential that you try to distance yourself from these friends for your well-being and safety, and be sure to seek help from someone you trust.
The Enabler
Having this type of friend can be kind of a niggly situation because they can be either a good friend, a toxic friend or potentially even a bit of both. It all depends on what behaviours they enable.
When you have the good kind of enabler as a friend, they can be the burst of encouragement and motivation that you need to do the thing you need to or secretly want to do. Good enablers are great to have around if you want to step outside of your comfort zone or want support in achieving your goals. They can also help you to form and stick to healthy habits.
Toxic enablers, on the other hand, encourage self-destructive or unhealthy behaviours. They may support your bad habits rather than help you make healthy changes. For example, they’re the ones that go “You don’t need to go to the gym, you’ve had such a big day, surely go home and relax,” when they know full well that you are trying to be more active. They are essentially the little devil that sits on your shoulder encouraging you to give in to all your temptations. This can be toxic, especially if they are encouraging you to make decisions that are going to impact your well-being or cause you harm.
Alternatively, your friend could be an all-around enabler- enabling both your healthy and unhealthy or destructive behaviours. It’s up to you to determine how toxic you feel this kind of friend is. My suggestion is to look at what kinds of behaviours they most often enable and how much of an effect they have on your actions/behaviour.
Okay, So I have A Toxic Friend… Now What?
After reading through these descriptions of types of toxic friends, you’ve decided you have one in your friendship circles. Having a toxic friend in your life is less than ideal for you. So what should you do about it? Here are 6 steps to working through what to do with a toxic friendship:
1. Reflect upon how the friendship impacts you
2. Initiate an honest conversation with your friend to discuss your concerns
3. Put some necessary boundaries in place and take a step back to look after your well-being
4. Turn to people you trust for some support
5. Figure out whether your friend is likely to change
6. Decide whether you want to stay friends with them – don’t be afraid to let them go if they are hurting you.
If you want to learn more about how to deal with a toxic friend, check outthis post.
These are just a few of the many types of toxic friends out there. It can really affect you to have a toxic friend in your life. Therefore, it is important to be aware of what types of toxic friends exist. Keep your eyes peeled, stay mindful, and respect yourself enough to know that you deserve better than to keep a toxic friend.
