Even though all friends should be equal, sometimes some friends should be identified as having certain traits in order to not let such friends use the idea of friendship to take advantage of you. Realizing how and what kind of narrow-mindedness or selfishness your friend may have can help you figure out whether someone is doing it on consciously or unconsciously, even though the damage itself does not care about such things. That is why sometimes simply letting things go in a friendship can be good, and sometimes not letting things go in a friendship can be good. You have to realize answers to different things for each and every situation and friend.
Since I have divided a single concept of being narrow-minded and selfish into specific points, I think there are a few things to keep in mind while reading this list. First, I am assuming we know what friendship means and what a friend is, and that we also know how to identify friends and how to identify people who are not friends but who love the idea of calling everyone a friend. Second, identifying such traits as below does not mean that your friend are definitely narrow-minded or selfish. Also, many times friends may simply be acting in certain manners because no one has told or showed them otherwise, and thus you telling them about it somehow can help. You may also be misinterpreting things due to some complex nature of your friendship. Your friend may simply be acting selfish or narrow-minded in one or only a few instances related to something because of some reason, and you may mistakenly assume that your friend is completely narrow-minded or selfish. Therefore, we are talking about friends who keep exhibiting the traits below over and over again, and not just once and never again.
Also, by selfish, I mean the real evil selfishness where a selfish friend may indirectly harm another innocent friend simply to gain something for their own selfish interest, no matter how big or small such harm may be. Other than that, I am the type of human being who considers everyone to have a lot of selfish things, as I have been pointing out for years on my site. For example, I wrote this article with the selfish purpose of expressing myself and for wanting to get heard by at least one [any] individual out there. Sure, such a thing cannot be considered selfish by many people, and many people may say I am too caring of others. I agree, and while such a trait can be extremely bad and dangerous to my own self, I have a principle of wanting to applying both random and non-random principles to things, as it allows me to realize when an act is bad and when it is not, among many other things. Similarly, I focus a lot on real selfish things in other people, selfish things that tend to hurt others on purpose.
All of the following signs are some of the signs from my countless experiences with different kind of friends.
5 signs of narrow-minded, selfish friends
- Friends who come close only when they are depressed
This type of friend comes close only when they are depressed. This also means that they do not interact with you even if you want to ask for some guidance or help. For such friends, your good qualities that they can use in order to become happy or happier or distracted, tend to be the only friendly aspect they wish to see in you.
Whether or not such friends realize their behavior, you can get used because of their narrow-mindedness. There is nothing wrong with being down and needing help, whether emotionally, mentally or physically. However, there is something seriously wrong with making sure that friends are only needed when you are depressed, and not appreciated on purpose when you are not depressed.
- Friends who come close only when you agree with them
This type of friends wants everyone to agree with them. There cannot be disagreements or ignoring any topic, and if you disagree, you will be treated differently.
Handling such friends can be tricky, since handling friends overall is tricky enough by itself. How do you convince someone to still respect you and still act 100% when you disagree about something with them? Whether it is something related to business or a personal opinion about a personal issue, these friends wants everyone to agree with them. They will not show such a behavior easily, and anytime they accept disagreements or different options, they will brag about such a behavior. However, when they cannot control themselves anymore, they will hate you and not respect your friendship simply because you disagree about anything that they support, or vice versa.
- Friends who go away when you try to pinpoint issues
This type of friends cannot hear any form of issues or problems with anything, even if such issues and problems may be affecting the friendship. Many of such friends love pointing issues themselves, but if you point them, they act weird.
Many times, two friends can be completely different. That is why if one is acting in a manner that is affect the other one negatively, it is better to bring up the issue somehow in order to address it. However, your friend might simply act distant or unresponsive if you bring up the issue even in the most respectful and light manner. If you try to bring an issue, they will become defensive or try to act rude by not focusing on the friendship aspect of things.
- Friends who act stubborn and righteous all the time
These types of friend want to be right all the time. They are also opposed to realizing that some problem may be because of their own actions or thoughts. Many of such friends also love to point issues with others all the time, similar to the #4 type of friends above, while not accepting the fact that maybe they themselves may not be right about something.
Such supposed friends act immature many times by not actually acting like monkeys, but through their changed behavior regarding many things. This can be mainly because of being spoiled in many ways, and they do not realize it. They had rather tell others all the time what is wrong with others instead of realizing any problem in their own self.
- Friends who hate some things about you unethically and let that hate affect their interaction with you
This can be one of the most complicated types of friends. You may have a friend who hates something about you unethically, like your race, background, your way of doing things, and because of that hate, such people will let the friendship be affected all the time, or whenever such friends feel moody.
How do we know when a friend discriminates? How do we know when a friend has racist bias against you? How do we know when a friend hates you for something like your background, your name, your gender, your sex, your job, or something else? Such questions can bother your mind when it comes to realizing why a friend is acting in a certain manner. Such questions plague me regularly when it comes to some friends I know.
There you have it. The above are 5 signs of selfish or narrow-minded friends that can affect you negatively directly and indirectly through the friendship.
What is one of the main reasons for all of this? Not being considerate.
Majority of such issues as above happen because of one thing: not being considerate of others. Many friends can have their own logic, but they will not be considerate of others. Such people may not realize that, or they may hide such a trait under different unrelated ideas in order to not look bad, like “being strong“, or “not caring about opposition“, or “not being affected by things easily” or something similar. All such things do exist, but not in the world of inconsiderate people; inconsiderate people simply use such words to hide their inconsiderate and selfish nature.
Many people are simply inconsiderate of others. The more you are considerate of others, the more you realize how someone else may be taking advantage of you since you can easily realize the situations when being considerate of others can happen only when someone else is unfairly wanting everything and not being considerate of you on purpose.
I say “on purpose” above since many times a friend might be inconsiderate of you unconsciously, in which case you can bring up such a situation somehow in order to make sure your friendship is not affected by your friend’s behavior.
A live example of being considerate in your own life?
An example in point for everything? In the entire article above, I talked about other selfish and arrow-minded friends. I did not classify you as being one of them, and I did not classify myself as one of them either. It is one of the many writing styles to talk about others as examples. However, did you ever think “I wonder about the times when Bes may be wrong or inconsiderate of others.” Did you notice me pointing the finger only at others without pointing it at you or myself? Realizing such things can help a lot in finding out different things about ourselves, before we start finding those same things in others. My reason for not pointing fingers at you as an example or myself is to talk about things that I have experience with and people I really know. Also, hopefully the above points are something that are not present in me, as I can easily identify them in many people.
Most of the offline people I know say that I am the most considerate person they have ever met. Am I considerate of everything and everyone? No. However, as I live life everyday, I learn more about more things as time passes, and about more people as I interact with more and more people to make sure I am considerate about as many things as possible. That is one of my qualities: I can be considerate of others even if I have to make myself uncomfortable. That is simply my character, and of course in many cases it is not a limitless trait that never stops for any reason.
The topic of consideration warrants so much coverage or importance in my view, that I hope I can write at least one book on the subject, or something related, within the next three years. I think this article should be enough to serve as a brief summary of the introduction of what the concept of being considerate can do to friendships on a general, broad level.
How do you ignore such problems and focus on friendship?
You cannot. You can never ignore such problems if they keep coming back and if you want a good friend, or else your friendship will be more like a stereotypical business deal where two parties are so desperate for money [or something physical or mental in the friendship] that everything else like happiness or real respect and real appreciation will be forgotten. The friendships, where problems are ignored, turn into friendships that have nothing friendly about them.
As for me, I have the “nasty habit“, as some people say, of valuing friendships a lot and on working a lot on solving issues. There is a cut off point, though, where a friendship is more dangerous than anything, and where the permanent danger cannot be avoided unless one forgoes the friendship. That can be an article for another day.
Thank you for reading, and thank you for hopefully being considerate of my bragging of both of my good and bad points related to my concept and value of relationships and friendships, which I did on purpose to help clarify further the things I am trying to show about friendships.
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