When a friend treats you differently in a groupWhat “ambivalent friendship” means and why it can be so hard to let go
I did something new on the podcast this week. I invited clinical psychologist and well-known friendship researcher Dr. Miriam Kirmayer back on the show so we could answer anonymous friendship questions together. Miriam brought questions from her followers, and I brought some from the Dear Nina inbox. I don’t usually tackle so many topics in one episode, but with Miriam’s background, it was too good an opportunity to pass up. If you’re a longtime Dear Nina listener, you might remember Miriam’s previous episode about “quiet quitting” a friendship. I got to tell her it’s still one of my most popular episodes. But in this new conversation, we covered other ground:
The truth about “ambivalent friendships”Here’s the question Miriam brought to the conversation from one of her followers. I edited it from the exact version in the transcript of the episode to make it easier to follow in print.
Miriam brought up the term “ambivalent friendship” and explained why an ambivalent friend is often worse for us than a “toxic” one. She said: “In the ambivalent friendships you have moments where it does feel good, and that’s actually worse for you. I think that’s so important to talk about explicitly, because people are often very afraid to let go of friendships to begin with, let alone friendships where there is something that does work, and yet that comes at a cost.” We use the times when a friend is thoughtful, patient, and attentive to patch over the times when they’re harsh, dismissive, or distant. I see it play out in the letters readers and listeners have been writing to me since 2014. If the friend wasn’t wonderful to us at least some of the time, there wouldn’t be so much turmoil about whether to let the friendship go. I also suspect that our tolerance for being treated poorly is directly related to whether we have other good friends to depend on and whether we feel worthy of quality friendships. Though please note: You do not have to be fully secure to have good friendships. (If this speaks to you, listen to episode #211 with Dr. Marisa G. Franco, where we discussed her new book, Worth, and this exact concept.) Have you had a friendship like this where you’re treated well one-on-one but poorly in a group? Or the opposite, perhaps, where all goes well in the group, but one-on-one the friend is unkind? We only spent a short time on this in the episode, and I’m curious to hear from more of you about this type of dynamic. FIND EPISODE #213 on Apple, Spotify, Youtube, and anywhere you listen to podcasts!
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