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What are the Deal-Breakers among Friends?

By Ola Gomaa

One of the greatest blessings in the world is having friends. It doesn’t matter if you're popular or a wall plant, it doesn’t matter if you have one or a zillion friends - always manage to be the bright side in a neighborhood, at a club, at parties, at work, on vacations. Any place where you've got friends is a place of fun. Having friends around helps us take whatever life has to offer in a lighter way. Friends are mirrors to ourselves, they understand us sometimes more than our families. We bond with our friends in a very special way; we share secrets, heartaches and moments of weakness and strength.

When you are young all boundaries melt, we swap stories, clothes, wear the same styles, do our hair the same way, listen to CDs together, watch movies together and make decisions together. At a point we practically live together and wish our parents would adopt our best friend so that we would be inseparable all the time. And when we grow up our needs for friendship mature and the discoveries of the meaning of our friendships alter from superficial to a deeper sense. It doesn’t mean 24 hour contact anymore, it means really being there and really understanding what true friendship means. Meaning when we are young we have tons of friends but as we get older, the number might shrink to one or two real friends.

However, there are limits to friendship, things that couldn’t be surpassed, forgiven or forgotten, because no matter how close we are, there is a certain difference that would appear sooner or later. So what are the DEAL BREAKERS in a friendship?

In the business world, a deal breaker is the one non-negotiable term that, if not agreed to, means the deal is off. It applies to relationships as well, especially friendships: A deal breaker can be a characteristic or trait about a person that we can't accept as part of the "deal" or relationship.

There are the superficial deal breakers when you first meet someone, superficial issues could be repaired once you get to know the person. But there are the bigger deal breakers that you just can't get past when in a friendship, they are the life and death matters that put an end to a friendship, even if it took a lifetime to build.

Superficial or major; here are some of the deal breakers:

1- Betrayal is the number one deal breaker which everyone agrees puts an instant end to any friendship. Betrayal comes in many forms, it’s not just snatching a boyfriend or seducing a spouse, it is telling secrets or letting out private stories or making fun of your feelings behind one's back. Any kind of a double face is betrayal, it breaks the strongest bonds, shakes the steadiest of friendships because it’s related to trust, and once trust is gone, there is no friendship anymore. Betrayal is one of the most heart breaking experiences one could face, a definite and instant deal breaker.

2- Insults are a big NO NO in a friendship. Friendships are based on respect, it’s the baseline in any relationship, and whether this trait was discovered early or was carefully hidden and appeared at a later stage, no one likes to be called names, kicked, made fun of, or stood up. Some think it’s cool or funny, but the truth is, unless both parties are into insulting each other, this could end a friendship.

3- Dependency. The nice thing about having friends is being able to talk freely about anything at any time. It’s one thing to consult a friend about buying a bag, a new haircut or how to deal with the significant other. But it’s a completely different thing when a friend needs 24 hour consultation about every little detail. This is suffocating. One can tolerate it once, twice or for some days but if this goes on forever, no matter how close you are it makes you involuntarily run in the other direction. You stop understanding and lose compassion to whatever problem it was in the first place. Of course, if the friendship was true and honest, you could point out to your friend that you need space or that this is taking so much of your time, but if you're just friends, not best friends, then what you would be doing is run for your life. Being clingy and dependent is not only a turn off in love relationships; it’s also a turn off in a friendship.

4- Hidden Selfishness. Sharing has many forms, one of which is definitely not being treated as invisible. If your friend never has the time for you or if she doesn’t have the ability to listen or stand up for you, while you're always there for her, if she makes up excuses whenever you need her then this friend is selfish but could hide it well.

Friendship doesn’t mean that one's life is important while the other is not, that everything going on in their life is worth talking about or worrying about while the others have insignificant problems. A friend has to know that the other person has a life too, with problems, ups and downs and everything. If a friendship is only about one person than it’s not a friendship anymore.

5- False Pride. So we grow up, we work, get married and have kids and suffer from spare time deficiency syndrome, but we still want our friends to stay close, if pride gets into friendship and each one waits for the other to make a move, then this is a deal breaker. In a true friendship, no one would think it would hurt our pride to make a move or try to call again even if your friend didn’t return the call. Unless you are sure your friend wants to end this friendship, you have to give them the benefit of the doubt, understanding and compassion are important aspects of a friendship, and pride has nothing to do with it.

There are lots of other deal breakers, there is the pushy one who shoves religious or political views your way, the sensitive one whom you have to explain to every word and what you meant, the borrower who never stops taking money or transferring stuff from your closet to hers. There are lots of traits that could be deal breakers; it only depends on how we deal with it or how much it affects us. Everyone is different so everyone would react differently and would view deal breakers differently.

To avoid facing a deal breaker in a friendship, you have to look carefully before opening your heart. Of course youth is all about making mistakes, especially in choosing our friends, or being unable to detect flaws that would jeopardize the friendship bond, but as we grow up we learn to be patient, to look and listen before jumping into a friendship, and more patient in calling it off (unless its betrayal).

We know ourselves more so we know what would annoy us and we know the difference between real deal breakers and minor character differences. So, unless it’s something so obvious that puts us off, it’s the closeness developed by time that let’s us know if the person we just met is the one for fun or for sharing secrets. We have to go through this phase anyway, and it’s worth it when you discover one day, in a certain situation that you have the real deal because life would be so bad, so harsh and so colorless without our best friends.

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Amazing Girlfriends 

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Valuing yourself