4 Types of Friends You Might Be Better Off Without

When getting older, it can quite often be increasingly difficult to find and maintain healthy friendships with others. And if we aren't careful, sometimes we can invest a lot of time and energy into friendships that do more harm than good in our lives. Not every friendship is going to always produce something good in our life, sometimes it will do the opposite and produce negativity, stress, chaos, and worse.

Negative relationships with others can hold you back in a number of ways, they can negatively impact your attitude, your health, your finances, and your life overall.

Sometimes there are some obvious 'warning signs' that you can look out for that might be an indication as to what type of friendship you might be able to expect to have with someone, depending on how they interact with you and others.

Below are some of the types of friends that you might be better off without: the complainer, the user, the gossiper, and the stagnant one.

The Complainer

Life can often already be difficult enough, without needing to put yourself around people who are going to either verbally bring you down or who are going to inspire negative thoughts in your life. Sometimes it can feel like the more we complain about our problems, that the easier it will be to look around and come up with problems to complain about.

It's easy to complain and to find and focus on the negative in life, for many people it takes more energy to focus on the positive and to try and stay inspired. Why spend time with someone who is going to make it all that much more difficult? Complaining quite literally is a waste of time, doesn't change any bit of the situation, and doesn't inspire gratitude or a healthy perspective.

Positive thinking enables you to do more in life than negative thinking will enable you to do. Negative thinking will hinder, while positive thinking will assist and inspire. So why waste the time fueling negative thinking or spending time around people who only choose to focus on the negative? We can choose not to allow negative complainers to rent space in our minds and in our lives.

I see healthy friendships as being ones that are mutually rewarding and beneficial. It's safe to assume that in a healthy friendship that both individuals are going to provide support to one another, inspiration, help if needed, etc. One-sided friendships with selfish people usually aren't going to have very much longevity.

The User
Sometimes these can be the worst to watch out for. There are a number of ways that someone can use you, not only can we make the mistake of wasting finances, but even worse is when we waste our time and effort. We never get our time back and after we choose to waste it, that is a choice we can never undo. If you want to make the most out of your time and your life, then you want to be careful that you don't waste your efforts on negative endeavors.

It's going to be much more beneficial to spend time doing something productive in life, something that might contribute to advancing you forward. But instead we can often make the mistake of wasting our energy and time on toxic relationships with others.

People can either add to your life (in a number of ways) or they can drain from your life (in a number of ways), so it's important to choose wisely who you invest in and spend your time around.

The Gossiper
This can often be the easiest one to look out for. If you are spending your time around someone who frequently shares intimate details about other people's lives, then you better believe that they are likely sharing information about your life as well with others. Also, if they speak negatively about someone behind their back in any way, then again you can also assume that they will likely speak negatively about you behind your back.

The gossiper is a good one to avoid because this isn't likely going to be a friendship that has any sort of foundation of trust. And without trust then what is the point of the friendship? If of course you don't care when your friends speak negatively about you or share secrets and details about your life, then this won't be a red flag for you to look out for.

But for most of us, being friends with someone who is going to spill our secrets or degrade our character, probably isn't going to be high on our list of attributes to go looking for in someone we want to be friends with. It seems like this would mostly relate to women because they are who we think of when we think of gossiping, but men can just as easily get caught up in the gossiping mess too.

The Stagnant One

Life is short and some people want to spend it doing the exact same thing, day after day, for many decades. Others might go slowly mad just imagining that sort of existence and they would rather go out and try new events, new foods, new music, step out to live life and have new experiences and so on. If you are the latter then you probably aren't going to find a friendship with a stagnant person very appealing.

Staying around people who inspire you can be one of the easiest ways to try and get motivated in your own life to achieve more. And likewise, staying around those who are happy just where they are, never wanting to achieve or try anything new or more than what they have, they can also sometimes hold you back.

Whether it's inspiring you to read new books, think of things in a new way, start your own business etc, it's probably a good idea to cherish and value the people who you have in your life who inspire you to do and achieve more. Try and get more of them in your life.

When it comes to finding good friends....

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https://steemit.com/writing/@doitvoluntarily/4-characteristics-of-healthy-relationships