Toxic People Use These Tricks To Make Friends

I’ve always been fascinated by people who make friends easily, even when they treat others poorly. Despite their lack of empathy, they excel at manipulating others. Their meanness gets rewarded with compliments, invites and social media likes.

“Sometimes these toxic traits and behaviours can stem from intentionally hurtful behaviour or immaturity,” Charlynn Ruan, a licensed clinical psychologist and the founder of Thrive Psychology Group, told HuffPost.

“But whether their behaviours are strategic or not, the pain remains the same.” In fact, you might get pulled into their orbit before you realise the truth about them.

Have these social chameleons cracked the code for making friends? To get to the bottom of this, we asked three relationship experts about the signs of a toxic friend and the tactics they use to draw people in.

Not every socially gifted person is toxic. Toxic traits and behaviours tend to be part of a pattern rather than a one-off misunderstanding, Christie Ferrari, a clinical psychologist, said.

Their charm and confidence help them make instant connections. Beneath the surface lie some unsavoury qualities, such as the following:

Let’s say you’ve been burned by lending money to friends. Not knowing this, a friend might ask to borrow money. This is an example of boundary-crossing.

“It’s when a person unknowingly violates a boundary you have because you didn’t express it,” Tracy Vadakumchery, a licensed mental health counsellor, told HuffPost.

“A boundary violation is when a person still crosses your boundary even after you clearly expressed your limits,” she said.

For example, you might have a rule about not answering phone calls past a certain time. A toxic friend will ignore you and continue calling for things that aren’t an emergency.

By repeatedly violating your boundaries, your friend is telling you that their needs trump yours. Ruan agreed, saying that your friend might be offended when you try to uphold your boundaries.

“They might make you feel guilty or punish you for saying no, such as excluding you, yelling at you, being passive-aggressive, or gossiping about you.”

Toxic people have difficulty understanding and relating to other people’s feelings. They might think that you’re overreacting to a romantic breakup or a layoff until they’ve experienced this kind of loss firsthand.

“In friendships, someone with low empathy may dismiss your feelings, call you sensitive, and act bored when you’re talking,” Ferrari said. They don’t seem interested in getting to know you and might seem annoyed when something good happens to you.

With toxic friends, ordinary encounters can turn into mind games – and no surprise, you tend to be on the losing end. After a disagreement, they might give you the silent treatment or guilt-trip you by questioning your loyalty. They might say, “If you were really my friend, you would do this for me.”

“Manipulation in friendship can look like avoiding direct, honest conversations, instead preferring to communicate indirectly,” Ferrari said. They’re also invested in controlling what you think of other people. For example, they’ll lie or withhold information to get you on their side.

“If your friend is particularly toxic, they may exhibit what we psychologists call the Dark Triad, which includes narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy,” Ruan said. “This means they intentionally and strategically manipulate others to get their way and wield power.” These people are the most toxic and can cause significant harm.

If they discover that you’re spending time with another friend, a toxic person might retaliate by excluding you from their birthday dinner. Just as they punish you for saying or doing things they dislike, toxic friends will reward you for what they see as good behaviour.

“In fact, toxic people can be very kind and even overly giving to the point of martyrdom, and once they have your trust, they get very comfortable,” Vadakumchery said.

Ruan agreed, adding that toxic people tend to assess your value based on what you can do for them at that moment. You might be their first choice when their other friends are out of town. Or you might have something they want to borrow or access to a fun event.

Toxic people often make good first impressions and have many acquaintances, Ruan said. They’re good at drawing people in but struggle to maintain deeper relationships. That’s because they may not be able to handle boundaries, apologise, or take steps to repair the relationship.

Red flags include being surrounded by sycophants, having a history of bad friendship breakups, or badmouthing their former friends. Since they have trouble admitting their flaws and mistakes, they tend to see friendship breakups as being the other person’s fault.

There’s also safety in numbers. “We’re wired to track power in a room, and when someone is mean, we assume not only that they’re confident and secure but that they hold the most power in that room,” Ferrari said. “So, we align ourselves with them, to be safe instead of the one that’s being targeted.”

People with toxic traits often blame everyone but themselves, Ferrari said. If you confront them, they will turn the problem back onto you, minimise what happened, and refuse to apologise.

Ruan added that the difference between immaturity and intentional toxic behaviours is whether the person can grow from feedback and take accountability for their actions. Toxic friends refuse to acknowledge the hurt they’ve caused you and others.

Real closeness takes time to build. “If someone you don’t know very well wants to do something with you that’s typically reserved for ‘best friend’ status, they might be trying to gain your trust too quickly,” Vadakumchery said.

One such tactic for fast-tracking intimacy is showering you with compliments or gifts to create a sense of obligation. “A toxic friend may love-bomb you with positive affirmation and support and escalate the friendship quickly by spending excessive time with you,” Ruan said.

Ferrari agreed, saying you might feel like instant best friends because of the amount of attention they give you. Just being around them makes you feel special.

“It’s like you have been chosen out of many others and this is an honor you need to fight to keep,” Ruan said. Toxic friends also make you feel special by sharing secrets, texting you frequently, or treating you like you’ve known each other for decades.

“Their goal is to make you think, ‘If I feel safe enough to share this with them so early on, I must trust them,’” Ferrari said. She added that future faking is one way that toxic people create a sense of trust quickly. Future faking is when someone makes promises to shift your attention away from the present moment, like agreeing to go on a trip that never happens or offering to help you network without any firm plans.

Another common tactic they use to form close bonds is gossip. “If you both don’t like someone, that can feel like instant closeness,” Ferrari said. It might be the co-worker you both hate, or the barista who gets your order wrong. The problem with gossip is that you can’t trust that they’re not talking about you behind your back.

Most friendships involve some level of give-and-take. Your friend drives you home from work. They vent to you about wedding planning. “But in transactional friendships, when you stop being useful or have nothing to offer them, that’s when the friendship ends,” Ferrari said.

Another sign of a transactional friendship is when one person gains more from the relationship than the other individual.

“A great way to look out for this is if your friend offers to do you a favor that you didn’t ask for,” Vadakumchery said. “They’re automatically assuming that they know what’s best for you and giving you something that you didn’t ask for in the hopes that you’ll give them something you don’t want to give.”

In contrast, true friends will stay around even when you have nothing to offer them, Ferrari said.

“They’ll get to know you gradually and show interest in you even when there’s nothing to gain,” she said.

Ruan agreed, adding that true friends value who you are as a person, not just what you can do for them. “In healthy connections, both people find it fulfilling and beneficial to support one another without expecting an immediate return.”