Relationships that make you suffer

Like love, friendship is a strong feeling. This means that, as in love, our very first desires and emotions are reproduced in it again and again – unconsciously and often violently. The pattern of friendships is often defined by relationships from our childhood, and without realizing it, we may strive for friendship, which obviously dooms us to suffering.

Loss of my “I”

“Natalia has been my best friend for almost twenty years. We met in our first year at university,” recalls 42-year-old Polina. – I admired her: she was beautiful, very smart, all the “stars” of the faculty looked after her. I always remained in her shadow, but I was happy with this, because next to her I felt the fullness of life. Natasha could be very kind, but if something irritated her, she could simply destroy her with a harsh word – I experienced this myself more than once. For her sake, I changed my principles, she dragged me into a scam, and I had to go to a real fraud. I felt that I no longer controlled my own life, that my girlfriend controlled me, but I could not stop. Then the scam broke, my role, fortunately, went unnoticed, and Natasha had to leave the country. She promised to write, call, but disappeared. About two years later, I found out that she had a great job in Italy. I don’t think she remembers me.”

To get rid of resentment, Polina turned to a psychotherapist, and the mystery of her painful friendship gradually cleared up. As a child, she was often pointed out to her weaknesses and shortcomings, so she was, in fact, accustomed to this type of relationship. In addition, Natalya appreciated Polina, not like her parents, and for this Polina was ready to endure any harshness and even sacrifice herself. “This is a typical problem for people with low self-esteem,” says psychotherapist Albina Loktionova. “They are ready to sacrifice themselves, because they are unconsciously convinced that this is the only way to somehow compensate for their shortcomings, often imaginary.”

Manipulative Friends

Another negative scenario is choosing a narcissist as a friend. Eugene can confirm this: at the age of 25 he met Konstantin, a promising musician. “Kostya knew a lot of amazing people, he opened up a world for me that I would never have entered on my own. But he behaved as if he were the master of this world, and I was an uninvited guest. He could exalt me ​​to the skies and immediately trample me into the mud. Once he invited me to the dacha to one of his wonderful friends. And at the last moment he suddenly declared: “You should not go. I think you will be bored there, and you yourself are unlikely to seem interesting to anyone. The worst thing is that at that moment I felt so insignificant that I agreed with him!”

Manipulators like Konstantin alternate between sympathy and cruelty. The reasons for this behavior may vary. “In a house where a domestic tyrant rules or one of the parents left the family (or died early), children are convinced that the person they need is able to leave or humiliate them,” explains Albina Loktionova. The child feels guilty and does not deserve anything good in the future. He grows up with confidence: in life nothing is given for free, from the heart – neither love nor care. And if no one helped such children, they reproduce these relationships: some feel unworthy, others “act out” the situation from a position of strength and control – now they decide whether to give love and what to demand in return. In other cases, spoiled children grow up as manipulators, who cannot stand disappointment, do not want to take into account the feelings and interests of others.

The victim of such a friendship should have fled immediately. But this just requires high self-esteem, getting rid of childhood feelings of guilt and fear of experiencing the pain of a breakup or even greater humiliation. We begin to convince ourselves that the difficulties are temporary, that when our friend gets to know us better, he will truly appreciate us and behave differently … Alas, if a friend looks like Konstantin, most likely this will not happen. Working with a psychotherapist helped Evgeny understand how he fell into a trap. His father, a bright and extraordinary personality, assured that the main thing is the ability to laugh at oneself. In the name of this principle, he did not cease to ridicule his son. And he, admiring his father, resignedly endured ridicule, believing that he was demonstrating a good sense of humor. He reproduced this pattern of behavior with Konstantin.

When feelings are a burden

Unfortunately, sometimes we ourselves provoke betrayal. So, in essence, behave those who literally idolize their friends, showering them with compliments and gifts. “My friendship with Christina was the strangest in my life,” says 34-year-old Olga. – We met on a business trip – common interests, a lot of topics for conversation, good ground for friendship. At first, Christina’s enthusiasm flattered me: after all, I’m five years older, I know more and can do business. But gradually this situation began to tire me. A friend bombarded me with compliments: I have the best dresses, and my husband is the most wonderful, and I drive an amazing car. I tried to explain that Christina’s enthusiasm was inadequate, and I cannot help suspecting falsehood in them, but she was so upset that I felt sorry for her, and we closed the topic. And then I realized that I was waiting with horror for our meetings, Christina’s calls, her gifts with or without reason. I felt like a monument, not even to myself, but to some of her fantasies. And it was impossible to explain it to her. I ended up having to say a lot of unpleasant things to Christina. I’m still ashamed to think about it, but I just had no choice.”

The type of behavior described by Olga is sometimes called romanticization neurosis. Psychoanalysis sees behind him the suffering of someone who is disappointed in his parents and desperately seeks to embody parental images in friends who would recognize and love him unconditionally. However, the object of romanticization “suffocates in the arms” and is often forced to prove its imperfection. Moreover, Christina wants her friend to appreciate and love her, but her own feelings for Olga are doubtful: according to psychologist Karen Horney, “the neurotic need for love and affection is devoid of such an important quality as reciprocity.”*

There is another neurosis in which the “compass” of the unconscious invariably leads some of us onto the path of suffering and loss in relationships and turns into an eternal victim. Sigmund Freud considered this neurosis to be the result of guilt associated with the Oedipus complex**. By punishing oneself for childhood fantasies of incest, one re-enacts the same catastrophic scenarios.

Break the vicious circle

We do not like to give in friendship more than to receive; we worry if a friend does not fully accept us for who we are, disappoints us, or, conversely, pushes us to do things that we are ashamed of. There are friends who cannot be trusted, and those who allow themselves to speak with disdain about people dear to us. All these are reasons to think about whether we need such friendship. And if fate brought us together with someone who needs us to feel bad (because then they feel alive and successful), the only way out is to end the relationship. To get rid of pain, you need to determine your pain points – after all, what remains unknown in the psyche is constantly returning, Freud noted. And then, perhaps, we will finally be freed from the toxic relationships that make up the dark side of friendship …

*TO. Horney “Introspection” (Academic Project, 2009).

** Z. Freud “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” (Folio, 2010).