You’re Not Fooling Anybody
There are a lot of posts out there amounting to some version of, “for my thirty-second birthday, thirty-two things I’ve learned.” I’ve learned too many things in the past thirty-two years to list (and yes, yesterday really was my birthday but I didn’t get to finish this post then because, well, it was my birthday), so instead of cobbling together an incomplete list I’m going to focus on one thing: friendship. Specifically, the importance of not abusing friendship for one’s own gain. Respect friendship is, perhaps, one of the simplest lessons to be learned and yet, sadly, any true understanding of its meaning seems astonishingly rare. A fact of which, incidentally, I was reminded on my birthday. More than once. By people who a) don’t understand why they’re not more major players in my life and b) why they’re not happy with their own lives.
To better elucidate what I mean, I’ve broken down this particular exploitation into three discrete sub-types: the means to an end friend, the How Do You Like Me Now friend, and the ATM friend. There is, of course, some overlap between the categories and some “friends” won’t fit into any of them. In which case, tell me what I’m missing (and why) in the comments! But for right now, we’re going to examine each of the three in turn, along with what those who do fit into them, in whole or in part, are missing.
Shall we?
The means to an end friend is someone who pretends to a friendship she doesn’t feel, in order to achieve some unrelated end. Her communications almost always follow the same track: a sentence or two about how great you are, interspersed with a question or two (oh, blah blah blah, you’re so great, blah blah blah, how are your books selling?), followed by a request: can I [add you to my VIP selling circle, put you down for a thousand dollars’ worth of my daughter’s wrapping paper, etc]? This person is pretending to a friendship she doesn’t feel, in order to–in my experience, almost always–enrich her own coffers.
I got a message like this from someone, yesterday, who hadn’t been on my friends list for over eighteen months. And had never noticed. I de-friended her because my friends list is tiny, and the reason it’s tiny is because I only keep people on it who I’m actually friends with in real life. Random, essentially strangers, don’t need to see pictures of my son. But, more specifically, it had gotten to the point where every conversation I had with her felt like a sales pitch. She only wanted to talk to me when she needed to sell me something–including trying to guilt me into buying things I didn’t need, when I was bedridden during my serious illness–and basically had no interest in me otherwise. Since I do, in fact, have more to offer the world than a credit card, I cut the cord.
Which, clearly, made such an enormous impact on her that she didn’t notice until she started hawking her MLM’s Black Friday “deals.”
What people like her don’t seem to notice is that their two to three sentence intro isn’t fooling anyone. Want to convince me that you’re interested in me as a friend? Ask me about myself just to ask. Have a conversation with me that doesn’t, at any point, include a sales pitch. It’s okay if someone’s selling something. I sell things (books) indirectly. And it’s fine, now and then, to invite someone to Facebook “party” or post a status about your awesome new vitamins, nails, or whatever. But there’s a big difference between that and literally only using your personal contacts as sales tools. Some or all of them.
The really sad thing, here, is that whatever one might gain in terms of material wealth is going to pale in comparison to what will be lost. Friendships aren’t replaceable, and certainly not with commissions. I feel bad for people who see their friends, not as friends, but as a means to an end–with or without the help of corporate-sponsored lectures about the “downline”–because they’re missing out on what is truly one of the best parts of life. My own friendships are everything to me, and have greatly enriched not only my life but also my son’s.
How Do You Like Me Now, by Toby Keith, is one of my favorite songs. At least in part, I suppose, because I relate to the message: that others measure our worth, often, as a function of how they imagine we might serve them. They’re loyal, not to you, but to their need of you. So when they think you’re not serving that need–for example, by not being adequately rich or successful–they move on. Never realizing that the potential they missed out on, do to their own limited mindset, was there all along.
Which is why, when they come back, they’re surprised by the reception they get. They might think of you as a brand new person, but you don’t. You’re still the same person; you just look different now. Different because you lost weight, different because you took your stupid startup public, different because your book hit #1 on Amazon. But Will Smith put it best: “if you’re absent during my struggle, don’t expect to be present during my success.”
They do, though, because they’re thinking only of themselves and what they need. You existed to serve them before, which is why they left; you weren’t serving them adequately. So really, from this perspective, what’s changed? You’re more capable of serving them now; you should naturally want to do so. The idea that she might somehow play a role in the events of her own life is anathema to the narcissist, who sees herself only as a victim and who appreciates people only in terms of what–she believes–they can offer her. Money? Time? If you have it (again, according to her own internal assessment), then you should give it. If you don’t, you’re wrong. And evil, to boot. End of story.
And, finally, the ATM friend sees your success–however meager–as a threat. Or, conversely, as an opportunity to criticize, guilt, or beg. Did you go out to dinner on your birthday? She would have liked to have gone out to dinner on that random Wednesday, but she didn’t have any money. Conversations with this friend also tend to follow a specific pattern: a question about what you’re doing, designed to elicit a certain type of response (because the questions are never about things that don’t involve, in some way, spending money), followed by a pointed comment about how she couldn’t do this. But would really like to. With the follow-up question, if unspoken, clearly implied: what are you going to do about it?
The other hallmark of these conversations is that, as soon as the answer becomes clear (nothing), she loses interest. I can’t tell you how many people have never so much as read a single chapter of a single one of my books, even when I gave them those books for free, who’ve never once asked me, sincerely, how my husband and son are doing, who’ve never taken an interest in any aspect of my life or theirs, who have then expected me to really care about their bottom line because they think I have money.
Friendship–real friendship–is reciprocal. Friends can, and should, help each other. But the key portion of that sentence is each other. The ATM friend, conversely, doesn’t see you as a real friend; they see you as an object of resentment to be exploited, because what do you care. You have everything; they have nothing. You think you’re so special, and awesome, and wonderful because blah blah blah. That you worked hard for everything you have is irrelevant. That you can’t, in fact, support the whole world is also irrelevant. They’re not concerned about your wellbeing, financial or emotional; only what you’re offering them.
I’m going to close this by saying that, while these descriptions have at times matched people in my life, they don’t now. Anyone who makes accepting their poor treatment a condition of having them in your life doesn’t deserve to be in your life in the first place. Friendship should be one of the best things in life, not one of the worst; and you have the right to assert boundaries. If someone doesn’t respect you, and treat you in a way that makes you feel good about yourself, tell them to fuck off. There’s nothing “mean” or “wrong” about recognizing your own worth. To be honest, if there’s one thing I regret, it’s not telling certain people to fuck off a lot sooner. I spent a lot of years buying into a lot of self-serving rhetoric that essentially boiled down to, my only worth was as some sort of servitor.
Once I started asserting myself, yes, I lost some friends. Or people who called themselves such, when it suited them. But I also gained new friends and, more importantly, I gained a sense of self. You should never let other people, and their treatment of you, define your self worth.
