A Toxic Friendship Is Like Poison Ivy: How to Tell If Your Friend Is a Rash

Nobody wants poison ivy, just like nobody wants a toxic friendship. But you know what? The two share a striking number of similarities.

Unlike poison ivy, it's a little harder to tell if your friendship is toxic. After all, you won't break out in blisters or get an itchy rash if you let a toxic person into your life. Or will you?

In this post, I'm sharing with you the ways to tell if your friendship is toxic – as well as what do if you determine that your friend is a rash.

How to identify a toxic friendship

A toxic friendship is one that has a negative impact on your mental, emotional, spiritual, and/or physical well-being. And while there's no set list of what a toxic friendship "absolutely does or does not" look like, here are some things to look out for. The rashes in your life, if you will.

1. The friendship is too one-sided.

In healthy friendships, there's a sense of give and take. But in toxic friendships, there seems to be one person who's always giving – and one person who's always taking.

Whether it's time, money, emotional capacity, whatever. There's just a total imbalance at play.

This one-sidedness creates an inflammation in the relationship: One person needs to give constant nourishment, while the other person needs to be constantly nourished. Because just like inflammation, the moment you stop taking your anti-inflammatories (or using your topicals), that's when the problems begin.

related post: Beware The Emotional Leech

2. The friendship is based on convenience.

Your friends should be there for you, even when it's not the most convenient thing in their life. Bad day at work? Relationship issues? Your car broke down, and you need a ride home? In a healthy friendship, your friend's got your back – no matter the who, what, where, when, why, or how.

But in a toxic friendship? Hmmm... Not quite the case. 

Toxic friends are the ones who are all about the friendship – when they're "getting something" out of it, that is. Night out on the town? Concert tickets? Beach trip? They're totally down!

But need someone to talk to after a rough day? Oops! They didn't see your text for six hours. So sorry!

In poison ivy terms, this convenience is a swelling. Your friendship swells with importance when things are good and fun and – well – swell. But as soon as things take a turn into "Shitsville – Population: You," the swelling is suddenly gone – so there's no need for them to pay any attention to you right now.

3. The friendship is full of empty promises.

Toxic friendships are marked by flakiness and unreliability. These are the friends who talk a big game – but that's all it is. Talk. Toxic friends will let you down time and time again because they simply cannot fulfill a promise or obligation. In essence, everything they say is meaningless and fake.

The friction created from this constant back-and-forth/will-they-won't-they creates emotional blisters. And what happens to blisters after a while? Blisters burst – and then blisters scar.

So sure. You'll heal from each let down, and these let downs will blister over. But after a while, the blisters will burst and leave a scar. So rather than positive memories to think back on, it'll be these scars you get to keep as reminders.

Lucky you.

4. This friendship causes you to be a lower-functioning version of yourself.

Healthy friendships elevate you by challenging and encouraging you in good ways. They cause you to grow as a person and, over time, help you become a higher-functioning version of yourself. But a toxic friendship has the opposite effect. Instead of becoming a better version of yourself around this person, a toxic friend will make you a lower-functioning version of yourself.

In this lower-functioning form, you're still you – sure. You're just you with unsightly, oozing sores rather than soft and smooth skin.

Yuck.

5. The friendship brings out your "bad side."

Everyone has a "good side" and a "bad side." Good traits and bad traits. And while healthy friendships will bring out all the good, toxic friendships will bring out all your bad.

If you're someone who's typically supportive, empathetic, and loyal toward a friend, you may suddenly find yourself judgmental, confrontational, and gossipy. And you just won't be able to snap yourself out of it.

This bad side of yours will feel like an itch you just can't scratch. Not fully. Not to satisfaction. No matter what.

And while you may scratch that itch at times, you'll never scratch it enough to just move on.

6. The friendship brings you down.

Finally, a healthy friendship makes you feel uplifted and supported. (That's literally the purpose of friends.) But when a friendship turns toxic, it'll only bring you down, leaving you feeling mean, spiteful, anxious, sad. All those fun negative emotions.

And this barrage of negativity will cause you to feel just so fucking irritated. All the damn time.

So if you have a friendship causing you to feel like you've brushed your arm against some poison ivy, chances are it's a toxic one.

So, you have a toxic friendship – here's my advice.

If you had real poison ivy, I'd probably tell you to rub some aloe on it – and then I'd recommend staying the fuck out of the woods. After all, exposing yourself to even more poison ivy when you already have poison ivy would be downright stupid.

The same goes for toxic friendships. If you've been exposed to one – and you're breaking out in emotional rashes and blisters and all those fun things – why the hell would you continue exposing yourself to the irritant?

For that reason, my advice here is simple. If you've been exposed to a toxic friendship, just stay the fuck away from it. At the end of the day, the best remedy for poison ivy is to avoid coming in contact with it in the first place.

Because if you don't touch it, you can't contract it.

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