Who needs frenemies?
Yesterday’s Globe and Mail’s Life section included an article on frenemies, or ambivalent friends. These are the people in your lives that equally anger or frustrate and make you happy. The article gives a couple of examples of comments that frenemies may make:
Did you see Nancy Grace is pregnant at 48? Wow, I guess it’s not too late for you after all!
Having a frenemy might be something that you don’t give much thought to, but according to some in this article, keeping such people in your life is bad for your health, specifically for your heart.
Life is too short to hang on to these sorts of friends. If the net feeling from your friendship is anxiety, low self esteem and a lack of value as a person, it is time to give the friendship serious thought. Sure, your friend can be the very sweetest person alive but when you have to trade a moment of sweetness for a sly dig or insult, is it really worth it? Friends should make you happy more often than they leave you emotionally distressed. They should build you up rather than building you up only to tear you down with back handed compliments that sound ok until you replay them in your head.
I am blessed to not have any frenemies in the sense that this article describes, although I do have a friend or two who drives me nuts just as often as they make me happy. If there aren’t more good times than bad times, these friendship may need some careful examination…for the sake of my physical health!
Who in your life is being the perfect frenemy? Why do you keep him or her around? It might be time to relegate this person to acquaintance status, if not get rid of them altogether (note: I am not advocating murder!). The article includes the link to a site started by somebody who has frenemies but hasn’t yet confronted them, My Frienemies. The site defines what appears to be many different kinds of frenemies. The list of types of frenemies includes:
- Drunks
- Hostile-Aggressives
- Indecisives
- Know-It-All-Experts
- Lazys
- Liars
- Negativists
- One Uppers
- Paranoids
- Pathological Liars
- Users
Check out the site to read the definitions of these types of frenemies, or to see more categories of frenemies, and share your experiences with frenemies you have or have had in the past, if you dare.
friends, enemies, frenemies, frienemies, ambivalent friends
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June 28th, 2007 at 11:38 am
Man, I am so totally a frenemy.
And most of my “friends” are frenemies. 
Where do people find all these perfect non-frenemies? 