By Anne Mungai (@annemungai_)
Friendship is a healthy component to our lives. It is important to have healthy friendship based on mutual trust, acceptance and understanding. True friendship should always allow someone to be themselves without fear of being judged. Sad as it may, not every friendship is healthy. Here are signs to guide you into knowing whether your friendship is toxic.
Secrets: True friends can be trusted with the secrets told by their friends. Be it about family or about relationships. A true friend does not go behind friends back sharing secrets and weaknesses of their friends. Evaluate a friend if he/she shares secrets more than once.
Never happy for you: Humans like to be appreciated in whatever achievement or milestone made in life. Friends should always be there for the celebrations. When a friend isn’t too happy every time something good happens or for any achievement made, then that’s not a true friend.
Competition: Healthy competition is good but when a friend is always in competition then that’s not a good sign. Friends who always want what their friend wants, should be avoided at all cost.
Availability: Friends should be there for each other in good and bad. Avoid friends that are always busy for a call, chat or meet-up. No person should feel that they are putting more in the friendship than the other. Talk it out and if this habit persists, then cut off that friendship.
Constant disappointment: Avoid friends that are always a disappointment. Friends who never show up as planned and those who borrow money and never pay up are not friends but rather opportunists.
Putting you down: It is not easy being around a friend that’s always putting you down. Such friends always point out what is done wrong, they have self-esteem issues.Always be yourself but if that’s not good enough for them, find friends that accept and celebrate who you are.
People were made to enjoy and not drain themselves in friendships. Enjoy true friends and avoid toxic ones.
photo:blacksportsonline.com