It is believed that throughout our lives friendships are crucial for everyone in order to fulfill our need for enjoyment, love, and connection. Our interactions with others start at a very young age and last an entire lifetime, therefore, we should take advantage and create special memories with significant people. Devoted friendships definitely improve our lives by providing support, comfort, trust, and compassion. On the contrary, friends won’t always come into your life with good intentions. Choosing the right friends can become a difficult task due to the people who don’t execute the qualities of a good friend. Some people you’ll come across will bring negativity for various reasons. There’s an extensive list of names we can offer to the ones who have a constant behavior of hatred towards us. People we shouldn’t consider friends can be labeled according to their actions, such as the “underminer” friend, the “self-righteous” friend, and the “fair weather” friend. These peculiar names have different interpretations but they all share the same idea that they’re fake, shallow, and superficial friendships.
          The underminer, defined as a person who subverts or weakens insidiously or secretly. This person doesn’t have to be someone you surely know doesn’t like you, it could be your own friend that’s secretly trying to bring you down, even the closest one. An underminer is the type of friend who doesn’t want you to succeed in something they haven’t. Paying close attention to comments they make about you or the way they react when you tell them about your goals or successes can help to easily determine if you have an underminer friend. They will appear nice at first by hiding their true opinion, therefore should not be trusted with anything. For instance it has been a very windy day and your hair is messed up, you try to fix it but instead of checking how you look yourself, you take the wrong decision to ask them. They nod their head and smile then proceed to say you look just fine when in reality your hair is still completely messed up. They will continue to treat you the same way and eventually give a clearer message, this can be induced through compliments, like saying “I like your shoes, they are so not ugly”. These people will try to exclude you for them to most likely be the center of attention or make you doubt yourself for your appearance or ideas. If you mention trying out for the soccer team, they’d respond with “why would they pick you out of all the people in this school?, you’re not even a fast runner.” Instead of encouraging you to try or better yourself they bring down confidence, restrict ambition and drive.
              A self-righteous friend believes that everything they do or say is right. If someone says they are wrong, they won’t respond well to it and question others instead of themselves. It is very common for them to be selfish, and egocentric, and harsh, and arrogant. They’ll argue with you about how their interests are the best, like saying they listen to much better music than you or that their clothes are more stylish. If you tell them you got a 90% on a test they would prove they’re better than you by saying they got a better score and most likely continue to brag about it. They never seem to pay attention in a normal conversation especially when you’re talking about yourself because they’re so focused on what they can say that is better than whatever you’re saying. Always want to prove their point is right, for example, you’d say that math is the hardest subject, they’ll disagree with you and persist with the argument until you change your mind or give up the topic. A friendship with a self righteous person will lead to having several arguments about simple things. Everyone wants to have a peaceful and fun time with their friends though having a friendship with a self righteous person will more than likely not reach that purpose.
            Emotional support is a quality every friend should be able to offer. Friendships help us get through different tough situations. Unfortunately, not every friend is good with giving comfort and feeling empathy. The fair weather friend is the clear example of this, a person who stops being a friend in times of difficulty. They aren’t reliable, only being present when it’s beneficial or during enjoyable times. A fair weather friend is not supportive, no longer having a main component of a friendship. Perhaps you failed a test you studied really hard for and you get an uncontrollable feeling of sadness while telling your friend, yet your friend doesn’t give reassurance that maybe it was a difficult test, or that you’ll do better next time, instead they ignore you or change the topic to ask if you want to hang out later. The fair weather friend fails to give advice because they don’t listen to your problems in the first place, sometimes you need that friend that listens to your problems making this friendship annoying and useless. They can even be using you for anything like asking for homework answers and only reach out to you to say how happy they are with their grades. There’s numerous reasons why a fair weather friend could be using you, like for having a car, for your money, to ask for help, ask for a favor, ask to hangout, but never ask if you’re okay and stick with you during difficult times.
           Friendships don’t always come easily or with the greatest virtues, characteristics, and behavior. It is hard to find one single friend that truly appreciates us and provides stability. While searching for these friendships, we will encounter non helpful people that come into our lives to help us grow and learn about others to make the journey of seeking friends easier.