There are a lot of reasons not to hurt your friend. Loyalty, trust, karma, and a variety of other things are encouraging you to be nice to your friends. I think that there is this general opinion that friends are the people you are supposed to trust your secrets with and as a result an aura of kindness surrounds your relationship. You encourage each other to pursue your dreams and passions; you sit late at night listening when the other has had a bad day, and you spend your time putting effort into something that you believe to be permanent.
There are a lot of really great and valid reasons not to hurt your friend. I want to take a minute to talk about the one reason no one ever discusses. The aftermath of a friendship gone awry in the perspective of the hurt friend; in this area I am a complete and utter expert. I don’t say this to bring myself pity or sympathy or even empathy. It’s a fact; I am an expert at being hurt by the people I considered to be my friends. I am the living, breathing, moving explanation as to why you shouldn’t hurt your friends.
The reason, of which I am proof, is quite simple: you destroy that person for the rest of their existence.
I know that sounds dramatic and it seems like I’m exaggerating, but I’m not at all. After having been on the end of bad friendships for most of my life I can tell you that I am a disaster. I now regularly have panic attacks about friendships, I’m always predicting that the worst will happen, and I spend a good amount of time pushing people away from me so I don’t get hurt again. As a result I spend a lot of time crying because being alone is so completely devastating.
Here’s why you destroy that person when you hurt them: you’re teaching them subconsciously that the people they trust the most are not to be trusted. The entire concept of trust becomes completely meaningless when you’ve been hurt by your friend. This person that you’ve entrusted your soul with has either rejected or betrayed you and in some situations they have done both.
The hurt friend ends up questioning every aspect of your friendship wondering where they went wrong and what they could have done differently in order to have a better outcome. This isn’t a healthy thought process. It causes a lot of anxiety and pain.
They waste days, months, years; I have wasted days, months, years pondering these very things.
Blame is a key component. The hurt friend begins to blame themselves for the failure in the friendship. If this has happened multiple times then they begin to see themselves as the cause of all the problems. I am the reason that no one wants to continue being friends with me. There is something wrong with me. They begin to see themselves as unwanted, undesirable, and unworthy. The thought process becomes so negative and distorted that it spirals out of control and soon the hurt friend is swimming in a sea of despair.
At some point in this whole process you find yourself completely cut off from people. Sure you might talk to some people during classes or online, but how many of them actually know you? How many of them do you let into your world? Your thought processes? Your dreams? The concept of friendship has become so completely terrifying that you can’t see yourself trying anymore; and you drift off into a safe place where no one can hurt you but you’re totally alone.
This is what happens when you hurt your friends. It’s never used in the argument as to why you should be nice to people because why cause people to feel guilty for the pain they’ve inflicted on those who trusted them? It seems like it’s a taboo concept to talk about: those who have been hurt and will feel the effects of that from this point on. However I think this is something people should take into consideration before they hurt their friends.
Maybe you don’t want to be friends with them any longer; maybe you’ve grown apart; maybe you just have different interests. That’s fine; friendships end, I get it. You can still be sensitive in the way that you go about it, have a discussion about it, share responsibility for the failed friendship, give them closure. Don’t spread rumors about them, talk behind their back, or completely cut them off without reason.
Be sensitive to how this is going to affect the other person. Take a minute to put yourself in their shoes. You may see it as something meaningless that they’ll forget about next week or next month or next year but I can guarantee you that being hurt by a friend is something you never forget about. You forget; they don’t. It leaves a scar on their heart that will never heal and will impact all of the friendships they will have in the future.
Don’t hurt your friends, because I never want anyone else to experience the way I feel every day.
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