Everybody has that friend who takes them downwards.
Everybody has experienced, at some point, a friendship — possibly one of many years — that drained their strength, was full of envy and grudging, and left them one day under the weight of the question: what am I actually doing in this relationship?
The internet is full of advice about romantic relationships. About friendships that have soured and turned poisonous? Not a word.
Sometimes two friends start from an equal position, and then, as life unfolds, a gap opens between them.
We do not talk about it. We behave as though we cannot see it.
And if you have the misfortune to be the more successful of the pair, you will pay for it.
Three patterns worth being able to name.
One. The traffic only goes one way.
I am not talking about genuinely necessary help or reasonable consideration for a difficult period. I am talking about an established routine in which the help and the support and the containing flow consistently from one side to the other.
And the stronger of the two is perfumed by a sense of strength and altruism, feeling entirely on top of things — until the inevitable explosion.
Two. “If I am down, you should be down too.” Envy.
If you have felt a covert and powerful urge to apologise for the fact that things consistently go better for you, you know what I am talking about.
I am not talking about the discomfort of a visible gap in life outcomes. That is understandable and even legitimate.
I am talking about a covert demand from the other side that you damage yourself or reduce your own functioning in order to level things up, so that she can feel more comfortable with herself. Be careful.
Three. “You owe me.”
As we grow, our obligations to others increase and our loyalties shift. We have partners, children, employers.
And when you try to loosen slightly the automatic leap to your friend's side, the response is a demandingness that would not shame a two-year-old whose toy has been taken.
Which is, in the end, the diagnostic feature of all three. A friendship can survive a gap in fortune, a period of one-sided need, and even a stretch of envy. What it cannot survive is the conversion of any of those into a debt — because a debt has no natural end, and a person who believes you owe them will never once experience your generosity as generosity.