Why Do You Keep Attracting Toxic Friends Into Your Life?

Sometimes our toxic patterns repeat in the people closest to us.

“I’m thinking about coming over to see you next year. Think there’s any way I could borrow your friend’s flat again?”

No, “Hello!” No, “How are you?” It was a weird question to get from someone I hadn’t spoken to in at least a year. I stared at the screen for an awkward moment and contemplated what to say next.

The message had come from an old college friend, “Yvonne”. Close in our days of pep band and fall football games, we had behaved more like sisters. We did everything together. We lived together, studied together, travelled together, did karaoke together. I had considered her one of my closest friends. She had even come to visit me in the U.K. (Where my partner hooked her up with *free* accommodation in his friend’s central city flat.)

That trip had been disastrous, though, and we had slowly drifted apart over the years. Covid had been the final blow, taking advantage of time, distance, and misery to sever whatever ties the two of us still had remaining.

That’s what made it so weird when I saw her name flash across my screen that June afternoon. I knew the smiling face in the profile picture well, but it was also that of a stranger to me. Why was a stranger asking me to borrow a flat for free? It was a strange request.

Seeing the relationship patterns.

Intimate relationships aren’t the only patterns we have to analyze. Sometimes, that’s not the big problem in your life. It’s not the missing puzzle piece you think it is. As humans, we value our friendships just as much (and sometimes more) than the romantic relationships we spend so much time chasing.

Our friendships can be warm, fulfilling, and beautiful. However, they can also be challenging reflections of all the healing we still have left to do. The patterns of our friendships often tell a great deal about our state of awareness, our understanding of self, and our idea of love in others.

Getting stuck in a loop of toxic friendships is devastating. You lean on your friends for support, and you show up to support them too. Toxic friends, though, turn our lives into wastelands. They break our hearts and turn our happiness inside out. Want better friendships? It starts by realizing the circles you’re running in now.

Why do you keep attracting toxic friendships?

It didn’t take me long to realize that my “friend’s” awkward request wasn’t just a random, isolated event. It was a part of a larger pattern that could be seen throughout the rest of my friendships (especially with women).

As a child of a narcissistic family, I had a tendency to chase female friends that re-created those narcissistic mother-daughter dynamics.

Yvonne’s request was awkward to me because I no longer considered her a close friend. She was using me. Or, rather, she was using the memory of our friendship to score a free ride. The pattern was one I had seen throughout my childhood and adult life. Friends using me for emotional labor or what I would offer in desperation for their friendship.

It was a revelation. And it can be a revelation for you, too. If you keep attracting toxic friends — people who use you, when they should love you — then you have to look beneath the surface at the qualities in your life that make it hospitable for toxic people to thrive and feed.

Lack of awareness

Awareness is an important component of getting what you want in life. Improvement and positive change happen from a place of awareness. You wake up to what’s going on around you, then take charge of your own reactions and behaviors. All of that comes from becoming more aware of who you are, what you want, and how you want to feel.

The quality of our friendships is directly affected by this awareness of self, too. If you keep attracting toxic friends, users and abusers, it could come down to a lack of an awareness. (Or, an unwillingness to see things as they are).

Failing to plug into reality, you can wind up letting your subconscious autopilot you into bad friendships. That’s especially true if you’re someone with a distorted baseline. If you grew up in a toxic environment, you may come to associate those unstable relationships as your “normal”. When you’re not aware of this habit, you’ll keep gravitating toward toxic characters.

Missing options

Our environment also plays a direct role in the friendships we’re able to build. Think about it. You’re only as good as the options you have. That applies to your friends. If you’re living in an environment where you’re only surrounded by toxic, emotionally immature people — those are the kinds of friends you are going to attract and pick. You may even emulate those friendship behaviors yourself.

When you’re stuck around low quality people, it takes away your options. If you don’t have the option of better friendships, settling becomes necessary to get the social connection you crave. Maybe you’re not stuck in some childhood-trauma rooted pattern. It’s possible that you just lack the social environment to make better friendships.

Personal obstacles

Friendships take a lot of energy at every stage of the relationship. You’ve got to have motivation, courage, and clarity when forming new friendships. Then, manage that relationship through consistent and compassionate connection and action.

This is a hard process for someone with a lot of personal obstacles to navigate. When you’re dealing with things like social anxiety, chronic illness, abuse, or some sort of isolation, it can feel impossible to make friends.

If you fall into a hopelessness loop, you become desperate. This leaves you incredibly vulnerable to manipulative and disingenuous people. They take advantage of your need for connection and use it against you. It’s important to be tread carefully and always balance our need for self-safety and social bonds.

Societal conditioning

Let’s face it, societal standards aren’t always the best or the healthiest. As a whole, society can expect too much, too little, and things that are outdated entirely. That’s certainly true with friendships. Society has created a fantastic idea of friends, which has left many people disappointed in their connections.

We don’t even see our friends as compassionate, chosen people who add value to our lives. For many, friends become surrogate partners and parents. They become emotionally obligated family that shoulder the weight of our heartbreaks with us.

There’s a lot of superficiality in modern friendships, as well. People racing to meet the standards of a social media and image-obsessed world create superficial friendships that make them “look good” more than anything else.

When you follow low societal standards of friendship, you get yourself into messes of superficial (and codependent) friendships. Instead of creating mutually fulfilling connections, you can attract friends that drain you, use you for what you can offer, and discard you when you no longer offer them validation or endless emotional labor.

Toxic attachments

It’s not always nice looking at the reasoning behind our toxic friendships. We can easily blame the world. It’s easy to blame our social anxieties and physical hardships, too. There’s one more reason we have to look at, however, and it’s one that many are not brave enough to acknowledge. Because it’s not always nice admitting that we’re the problem.

It cannot be ignored. Sometimes our own toxic behavior brings so many toxic people into our lives. When you are a negative, manipulative, or otherwise self-centered person, you’re going to attract people of a similar energetic state.

That’s saying that you will find yourself surrounded by friends who mirror your own insecurities and struggles. If you’re in pain, angry at the world for no reason, and struggling to love yourself…guess what? You’re going to find comfort in friends who see the world the same way. And they will invite even more of that negativity into your life.

Making (high quality) friends for life.

You don’t have to throw in the towel if all you’ve ever known is toxic friendships. It’s possible to learn better behaviors. You can literally teach yourself to choose better people by being better to yourself and taking a more compassionate and self-honoring approach.

If you want to have higher quality friendships, then there are 3 fundamental things you have to do:

• Raise your view of self
• Elevate your social circles
• Value solitude over chaos

Improve your self-esteem and see yourself in a better and more deserving life. You can’t make high-quality friends if you don’t see yourself as a high-quality person who is worthy of love and respect. See what you bring to the table and value those things. Then, you can elevate your social circles and start surrounding yourself with healthier people who hold space for you the way you need it.

It’s important, though, that you never settle for less than you deserve. Value your solitude over a chaotic friendship that makes you feel bad about yourself or your life. After all, it’s better to be alone than miserable or abused.

None of us is perfect, and we don’t have to be. We shouldn’t expect perfect friendships, either. What we should expect is respect. We should expect people who are there for us without begging. It shouldn’t always be transactional, or with the expectation of reward. Our friendships don’t need to be without blemish, they need to be without abuse.

Build friendships that are a home. Be a home and a safe space for others to rest their trust in. Your friends can be your chosen family. They can fill your life up in ways you cannot imagine. Be that friend to attract that friend into your life.

E.B. Johnson is a top writer, coach, and podcaster who specializes in narcissistic family abuse and recovery. With over two-decades of abuse recovery experience, she’s made it her mission to help others free themselves from the shadows of narcissistic abuse.

© E.B. Johnson 2022