How to spot your frenemy.
Turns out not all friends are treated equal.
According to the Oxford dictionary (via Google), a frenemy is a person with whom one is friendly despite a fundamental dislike or rivalry.
I know that I have had 2 real frenemies in my life both from high school. The first one Danielle, I had considered a close friend. My after school buddy where we’d go shopping for beauty products, walking in to high-end department stores acting like we were old enough to be there. She always had a full bottle of Clinique Happy perfume inside her school bag and I thought that was cool. We were both the worst players on the soccer team, which we actually didn’t mind since our hours sitting on the bench consumed of what nail polish we should buy and how we were going to afford the next pair of jeans for the school dance. I made Danielle laugh all the time, especially when it was over something frivolous I did that she’d comment was so “hilarious”, but in truth I sometimes did things because I didn’t know any better. We both came from tough households, which we never spoke about even if one of us knew an inkling or caught on to a vibe that wasn’t quite right. We had good times, until we didn’t. It wasn’t until our final week of high school that I noticed the first of many ugly behaviors on her part. Immediately after graduation she had moved in with this older friend who was in her 3rd year of college. She always had a mystery set of girl friends that were older than all of us, yet another thing that I thought was cool. Danielle was the first of friends to move into a real apartment, making her place party central. Her roommate was able to purchase the alcohol for the night. It was a girls night, so imagine a group of 17yr olds doing vodka shots and attempting to concoct Cosmopolitans. Danielle wasn’t a heavy drinker, but she couldn’t hold it very well either. A few hours in she was dancing on a table, pretending that a room of teenage girls were her male audience. It was turning into that kind of raucous scene. As for myself, I was in a perfect buzz with 2 vodka shots and a Corona with no intentions of becoming wasted since the next day I was flying out to Los Angeles for a family trip. Danielle began doing some stripper like movements on the coffee table that she was one step near falling. Frantically, I yelled out her name as I watched it about to happen and good thing I did since it snapped Danielle into serious mode. She gathered her stance, I sighed a relief and then she ripped into me. At the top of her lungs she screamed my name over and over as if traumatized, followed by exclaiming how annoying I was and that I was a spoiled little bitch. I thought to myself, oh Danielle, if only you really knew how much of the opposite of spoiled I was. The room fell quiet, so quiet and I felt eyes on me, waiting for my reaction. But I froze. My friend Mel placed her hand on my elbow to console me and promised that Danielle didn’t mean what she said. That she’s too drunk and doesn’t know what she’s saying. But doesn’t she though, I thought. The rest of that night was a blur, not because of alcohol. All I could still gather to this day was Danielle screaming at me and then me leaving the party. I can’t remember if I even said goodbye to anyone. I was good at blocking moments out, it was a treasured skill by that point in my life. (My therapist would correct this and say not skill, trauma coping). I walked home that night, praying that no one was awake to talk or yell at me. And I just cried myself to sleep wondering how I was annoying or if I ever acted like a bitch to her. I knew the answers all along, as did everyone else. But, I never brought up that night to Danielle, nor did she ever apologize.
We remained close friends for the next few young adulting years. We helped each other move apartments around the city, went out on double first dates with guys we thought could’ve been the one. We went to each other’s family funerals to pay respect. During those years, there would be more outbursts from Danielle towards me, still to this day unexplainable nor with apologies. She never treated our mutual friends in any way that she had treated me. I did notice something back then though, when things were going great for Danielle, she was extra kinder to me. And if she needed me to accompany her on a Friday night to accidentally bump into the guy she had a crush on, she treated me like I was her angel. On days or nights like that she treated me out, bought little gifts for me saying they were things she didn’t want anymore.
I once stayed with her for two weeks while I was waiting to move into a new apartment. Her studio was average size in a doorman building, I always wanted to make my presence unseen as much as possible. One day I cleaned her apartment, because she had worked overtime and thought it was a nice thing to do. As soon as she walked in and the stench of multipurpose cleaner hit her nose, she screamed how wrong it was for me to clean her apartment, that I had no right to do that. At the time, I thought that maybe she was right. Maybe I didn’t know any better. (Don’t worry, adult me now, understands clearly that it is toxic to chastise someone for cleaning your apartment. Even if you wish they didn’t, you don’t scream, you say thank you and that’s it.) Then the few times she would invite me out with her older friend group, she was good at keeping us separate, there were public digs at me. I had just finished working my first fashion week so I was on this personal growth high, where I didn’t even expect anything bad to come my way. She made a few snide comments about me working in fashion, how people in that industry are so fake as she stared at me. The other girls had very corporate jobs, so there was no common ground there. Somewhere along the way, the more I worked, the more she worked, the more gay besties I made, I realized that Danielle wasn’t someone I enjoyed being friends with. I had a reality check moment years later, it dawned on me that she never cared about me. She used me for many things, but loved me, hated me, loved me again, hated me some more. We haven’t spoken to each other for a very long time.
My other high school frenemy was more of a nuisance, but a frenemy no less. She wasn’t a friend by choice, because our mothers knew each other so we had to be friends. Her name was Beatrice, I didn’t like anything about her. Personality, droll. Fashion sense, we shared nothing in common. Sense of humor, couldn’t tell you. But, then Beatrice made friends with my friend and that’s how she became my frenemy. Beatrice wasn’t emotionally violent in the way Danielle was, but she managed to always be around and I couldn’t say anything or it would’ve gotten back to my mom. If I did well on a test, maybe slightly better than she did, which isn’t saying much, Beatrice would always retort with a stupid comment about what a good cheater I was. No, I didn’t cheat. Her behavior was rooted more with dumb insinuations that I couldn’t possibly have done something well, like how is that possible. The dangerous thing about Beatrice was that she wasn’t a girl’s girl in the most real sense. At some party, it was me, our mutual friend Viv and Beatrice. And like all good teenage house parties, a fight broke out between some guys. It just so happened that the fight started right where Viv and I were standing. Nothing happened to us, but something could have if this big dude hadn’t brushed me and Viv back to make sure we didn’t get trampled. Police were called, they came, broke up the party and I could not find Viv or Beatrice anywhere. I didn’t know whose house party it was, and I had no way of getting home. I barely knew where I was, except that it was at least 30 minutes away from my house. Luckily, there was this older college girl who saw my distraught state, who took it upon herself to arrange a cab to take me home. I didn’t have enough money for a full fare, so this complete, caring stranger gave me $10, which helped cover my ride. The next day Viv told me that Beatrice convinced her that I wanted to stay and that I already had a ride home. Lies. I couldn’t wait to graduate simply to be away from Beatrice and thankfully our mothers grew out of touch. You do not leave your friends behind anywhere and then lie about it.
The thing with having a frenemy is that you’re likely to blame or question yourself first. What did I do that was so wrong or upsetting to them? I had talked about this to my therapist years ago after I had learned that Danielle got married. She did not invite me or even tell me anything, even though we had briefly talked casually a year before her wedding. The crazy part is that I introduced her to her now husband at my birthday party. He was a friend of a then boyfriend. Never knew they were even dating. Even though Danielle and I had grown apart through the years, I don’t know, maybe a thank you for changing my life would’ve been nice? Sure, that sounds petty, but I don’t dwell on it anymore, because whatever it is about me that Danielle hates so much is no longer my business.
The only reason I brought it up during a therapy session was because I felt hurt. There is something more devastating and intimate when a friend hurts you. All the years of hurt had compiled into a big, final hurt by Danielle not telling me that she got married to a nice guy, that if it wasn’t for me having a party that night, her life would be so different. The therapist then told me that because I hold in so much, that it actually attracts frenemies. I’ll spare you the whole new age energy attracts energy yada-isms, but it’s true if you think about it. She also told me the warning signs of a frenemy. Someone who wants to be your friend fast. Simple as that. You meet someone, they seem so nice, and bombard you with “let’s do dinner,” when you barely know each other. It’s similar to the ways of love bombing, it exists in all relationships. They compliment you too much, all of a sudden they want to be with you all the time. According to my therapist, that comes from envy.
Other signs someone is a frenemy is direct competitiveness. They undermine your success. When you post something great that happened to you on Instagram, like an engagement or a baby, and you see that this person’s seen the Story, but doesn’t tap like. Apparently that is frenemy behavior. A frenemy talks bad about you, because there is jealous there. Also, a frenemy will want to be around you the most when they’re having a bad time. Yet they’re rarely there for you when something good is happening for you. Then most of all, a frenemy drains you. How true that is, after every time I spent with Danielle and Beatrice, it just drained the energy and emotions out of me. I always felt like I was running on empty. You leave your real friends feeling good, supported and stable. Real friendships feel natural, it grows slowly, it helps you.
2 sentence sadness
She looked around for someone decent, but the fast shuffle of passengers paid her no mind. It was within the next 2 to 3 seconds that her life would feel like it’s over.
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