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You’d like to believe that a true friend would want you to succeed, and would be happy for you if she saw you coming up in the world. But it’s interesting how major life changes—from career success to marriage to divorce to even health issues—can reveal the true weaknesses of some of our friendships. Often, we don’t realize just how fragile a friendship really was until something big changes in our lives. Some friendships can only survive so long as everything stays the same. That, of course, isn’t a great friendship because life is full of changes, and one of those—if you’re lucky, and work hard—is career success.
Career success can have a particularly interesting effect on a friend group. I know that I, personally, lost some friends when I found my ambition. In my early working years, when I was struggling and we were all failing and fumbling around, I took great comfort in these friends. They were the first ones to offer me a drink and help me laugh it off when something bad happened at work. What I didn’t realize was that they wanted things to stay that way. Maybe due to their own feelings of insecurity or inadequacy, they believed that we would all, forever, be struggling. And they at least took comfort in the company.
So, the moment things started going well for me, some of those friends with whom I commiserated went mysteriously MIA. I quickly realized that, they weren’t trying to lift me up by being there for me when I was down. They just assumed we’d all stay down—forever. If friends don’t want you to succeed, some may even do little things to undermine your success. They may not even do it consciously, but if they aren’t chasing their own dreams, then watching you chase yours can bring out some strange and subconscious behaviors in them. Here are signs your friend is trying to undermine your success.
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She praises your competitors
She often talks about how well your competition is doing, showing you articles and videos of their work, and sharing with you all the publicity they’re getting. While you do follow the competition and think it’s important to know what they’re up to, it seems a bit strange that your self-proclaimed friend would bring this to your attention as often as she does.
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She only gives constructive criticism
When you ask her for feedback on your work—and even when you don’t ask for feedback—she only gives criticism. She says it’s meant to be constructive, but you’ve noticed she never, ever points out the things you did well. She just jumps right into pointing out your mistakes.
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She “forgets” to make that intro
She knows someone who could help you with your career. Maybe you could help that person in return. It would make a lot of sense for the two of you to meet. But, still, this common “friend” keeps “forgetting” to send you the person’s contact information.
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She needs you at the worst times
It seems like every time your career needs your attention the most, that’s also exactly when this friend needs your attention the most. The night of your big presentation or before your big work trip happens to be the night she has a meltdown and demands you go over to her place to console her. It happens almost every time you’re in a critical moment in your work.
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She publicizes misinformation
She has attempted to give you shout-outs on social media and spread the news about your work. However, she always publishes the wrong information. She’ll make subtle mistakes that don’t make your work look very good. It seems to happen every time she “tries to help you.”
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She gives you the wrong information
On many occasions, she has given you the wrong information about something that could have been helpful. She tells you about a convention you should attend, but provides the wrong day. You arrive, and it happened yesterday. She tells you the name of someone to whom you should introduce yourself at a party, and it turns out she gave you the wrong first name.
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She gives backhanded compliments
She won’t say that what you did was fantastic, impressive, or even good. Instead, she’ll say that it was brave, or different, or a really good effort. She can’t seem to pay you a compliment that is clearly and simply a compliment. But you feel silly pointing that out, because you have before, and she called you too sensitive.
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She supports your competition
On a few occasions she has “accidentally” supported your competition. In an online contest, she “accidentally” voted for your competitor—she says she just clicked the wrong box. Or she went to an event or show directly benefiting your competition, and says she didn’t realize it when she bought tickets.
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She makes you look bad in group settings
She will do this very passive-aggressive and manipulative thing in group settings where she’ll pressure you to brag, pushing and prodding until you feel you have to tell everyone about a great thing that just happened to you. And then, after she makes you do that, she’ll make a comment like, “Oh well, someone isn’t modest at all.”
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She tells “funny” stories about your mistakes
This friend doesn’t tell the most flattering stories about you. She’ll often tell stories about you making a mistake, embarrassing yourself, or failing. She’ll do it all with a smile on her face, elbowing you, as if you find this funny, too. But, if you think about it, she only tells embarrassing stories about you.
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She becomes the competition
This friend, in a way, becomes your competition. She starts a business or starts offering a service that is either exactly what you do, or parallel to what you do. If you mention it, she says it’s selfish of you to not want her to succeed. But she never showed interest in this line of work before.
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She badmouths other successful friends
She talks badly to you about common friends that are successful. She’s always belittling their work, or saying that they got their achievements by cheating or taking shortcuts. Trust me: if she talks about other people she calls “friends” like that, then she talks about you like that, too.
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She says you’ve been a bad friend
If you’ve had long stretches of time when it was difficult for you to socialize because you were very busy with work, she’ll accuse you of being a bad friend who doesn’t have your priorities straight. This will even happen after you warned her, in advance, that you’d have to be MIA for a few weeks.
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She embarrasses you in front of colleagues
If you bring her to a place where there will be many professional contacts you’d like to impress, she embarrasses you. She gets too drunk. She flirts with people she shouldn’t. She says insulting things to people you wanted to work with. She finds a way to mess things up for you.
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She plants doubt
She often talks about how hard it is to do what you’re trying to do, how few people make it, how you must be “very hopeful” to keep going, and how generally unrealistic it is. All of these things are true, but why is someone who calls herself your friend pointing them out?
