3 Signs You Have Toxic Friends That Hate to See You Win

They will bury you.

Let me guess, you’re struggling with achieving your goals in life and you have some dick-head friends that don’t want to see you win.

Either that or they’re jealous of what you can achieve while they wallow in their own failures. Does that sound about right?

I’ve been in that type of circle for more years than I can count.

Heck, my new friends have been in that same dilemma as well. Let’s call a spade a spade and just say this is a development thing that happens with most of us.

We try playing with every Tom, Dick, or Harry in elementary school. We go through some changes in middle school because we’re all lost pre-teens deciding whether we want to be popular, emo, or in between. Then once we find that clique, we hold on to it for dear life all throughout high school.

I’m using education as an example, but that’s just how life goes in general; you can’t find your identity so you cling to a group — that’s where the toxicity comes in.

So if you want to get rid of these toxic people who will destroy your chances of success, here are three signs of these people that you need to avoid.

1.) They use you as an emotional punching bag.

These people don’t give a damn about you at all.

They’ll use you as a crutch to stroke their ego if something doesn’t go your way. They’ll do it as many times as they need until they get back to their normal self, while you suffer emotional labor trying to dig them out of that hole. Once you’re done laboring, they’ll discard you soon as possible.

They’ll never give you that same treatment. They want you to tell them how awesome they are.

One of my friends in high school went through this huge breakup with a girl once. The whole thing was beyond dramatic. The girl was in our clique and he wasn’t sure how to handle the situation since we had to be around each other for after-school activities.

I’d always talk to him at the lunch table and boost him up to make him feel like he doesn’t need that girl.

After he felt better, all he wanted me to do was tell him how good he was at playing the saxophone since we were both in band class.

Save your emotional labor for the people who care about you.

2.) Everything is always a competition between both of you.

This girl in my group was the smartest in the whole school.

However, she’d often use it to act like a smartass to us all the time. When another friend of ours got accepted to Stanford University and she didn’t, she’d make up all kinds of excuses as to why that person didn’t deserve to get in. Next thing you know, you’ll find yourself competing over who can walk the fastest.

My current friends don’t act this way at all.

They encourage me to be the best person I can be. They’re supportive of my writing career. There’s no competition between us because, well, we all want different things in life.

Toxic people will compete with you over every little thing to ruin your self-esteem. Don’t participate in their game. The only competition you have is yourself.

3.) They don’t want you to leave them, so they use your weaknesses against you to force you to stay.

It’s low-key an abusive relationship.

Once you’re glued to the values and morals of that one group, those people will do anything to keep you there. They know your emotional weak spots and will use that against you to manipulate you even more. And if you somehow escape that abusive relationship, they’ll chastise you until the end of time for leaving.

My old church is a prime example of this.

My family and I spent years at this church. I was literally raised there. But things started going south in the early 2010s; they lost members; they were sheisty with peoples’ tithes and offerings, and the old men who ran it were straight-up rude to the congregation.

It wasn’t emotionally healthy to be there anymore.

But they didn’t want us to leave. So much so that the pastor threatened that we’d go to hell if we left.

You just don’t say that to people.

Don’t let these people bring you down with them. Get out of that abusive relationship as soon as possible. I promise you’ll find a few friends who actually care about you.

Final Thoughts

You can’t allow these people to ruin your focus.

They’ll try to use you as an emotional punching bag, treating everything like a competition, and do anything to make you stay in that abusive relationship. They want to keep you at bay so you’ll never achieve your dreams.

F — that.

Drop them like a hot potato and I know you’ll find some friends that genuinely want you to succeed. All it takes is some patience.

They will come to you.