Friendship psychology

In my previous articles about friendship psychology i explained some of the drives that motivate people to have friends.

Any sane human would want to have a friend who shares common interests with him, who makes him feel good and who prevents him from feeling lonely but in some cases certain psychological disorders force some people to change the way they choose their friends.

Under the force of certain insecurities the choice of a new friend serves the purpose of easing the bad feelings resulting from those insecurities instead instead of serving the purpose of letting the person choose a good friend.

Because women tend to be more emotional than men these strategies are usually used more by women than men but this doesn't mean that some men don't use these strategies as well.

5 weird reasons people have friends

Here are some of these reasons:

1) To stand out: Insecure people or the ones who fear to get unnoticed if they accompanied attractive, successful or smart people start to choose ordinary people to become friends with and tend to avoid anyone who might steal some of the attention they want to get. Some people go even further and choose friends who appear to be inferior to them in order to stand out among them. A classy but unattractive woman might only become friends with attractive but less classy women in order to stand out among them
2) To feel superior to them: Brave people try to feel superior by learning new skills, becoming better at what they do or improving their lives but cowards try to feel superior using completely different strategies. Gossiping about people and being sarcastic to them are among the common methods cowards use to feel good about themselves. In addition to these strategies some people choose incompetent friends just to feel superior to them because they didn't find any better way to feel superior in life
3) Threat avoidance: For an insecure person anyone who is good at anything is considered a threat because he believes that this person might steal some of the attention he desperately wants. This is another reason why some of the less attractive women who have low self esteem refuse to become friends with the more attractive ones.
4)To hurt them: Those who are extremely insecure might actually try to become friends with someone in order to hurt him. Those people try to get close to the ones they are jealous of in order to collect more information about them and understand their weaknesses so that they can use them against them (see also How to become a mastermind when dealing with people)
5) To prove to them that they are worthless: Some people are insecure to a psychotic extent. They become friends with others just to keep criticizing them all the time and to prove to them that they are worthless. Again jealousy and the desire to feel superior to those people is what fuels these actions

How to deal with such friends?

Your first line of defense is to learn how to understand people. After all if you didn't learn how to recognize the true friend from the dangerous enemy who is disguised as a friend then you will get back stabbed.

I personally prefer not to treat a friend badly even if i knew that he had other intentions except for those who really have devilish plans.

When you encounter one of those bad people start pushing him away without being rude. If he tried getting closer you can actually face him with the truth. This action will push him away forever and that's why you should never do it before you are 100% sure of his intentions.

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