9/26/2025

True friendships are one of life’s greatest gifts, but they are often tricky and costly. Understanding the hazards, appreciating the benefits, and cultivating the wisdom to navigate potential pitfalls are essential.

Genuine friendships are built on mutual respect, empathy, and shared goodwill. They are easily damaged when boundaries are ignored, selfishness takes hold, neglect persists, or communication breaks down. By practicing a few timeless principles—and by steering clear of toxic habits or practices—we can cultivate lasting friendships that increase strength, joy, and purpose.

Communicate with Care

Words are like arrows: once spoken, they cannot be taken back. Sending long, angry emails or super-critical voice messages rarely improve relationships. A friend who is continuously critical, or who unleashes a tirade of criticism, or leaves a twenty-minute WhatsApp voice message listing all your faults may be intending to help, but the result is often defensiveness, hurt feelings, and a badly damaged relationship. Difficult conversations are best had face-to-face or on the phone, where tone and empathy can soften the message, back-and-forth dialogue is possible, and mutual understanding is much more likely to be achieved.

Dale Carnegie reminds us: “Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain—but it takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving.”¹ Good communication is not about unloading everything on someone else, but about pacing and adapting to what the other person can reasonably receive.

Boundaries Around Finances

Money often poisons friendships. Imagine a friend who constantly compares salaries or lifestyles—it breeds quiet jealousy. Or consider the strain when one friend lends money and the other delays repayment; suddenly, the friendship feels transactional, weighed down with guilt and unspoken resentment. Or consider the scenario where one friend routinely just gives money to the other, even at the cost of great personal sacrifice. It’s very likely that the giver will quickly feel used and abused; maybe even eventually manipulated and betrayed. Many things can, and likely will, go wrong when you become financially involved with friends. And so, wise friends generally do not share the details of their finances, nor do they engage in lending or giving money, except in situations of great need.

Financial entanglements make friendships fragile. Lending money you do not want to lose, or oversharing financial details that provoke envy, often places both parties in situations they quietly resent. Friendships are healthiest when grounded in generosity and goodwill, not monetary transactions.

Respect and Integrity

Trust is the foundation of every friendship, and gossip quickly undermines it. Speaking poorly of a friend or family member behind their back eventually seeps back to them, damaging the bond. And what of the friend who often speaks disparagingly of his/her spouse or other friends? One has to ask, what is he/she saying about me when I’m not around? Particularly, evil speaking of one’s spouse hardly reflects well on anyone, especially the one doing it.

Likewise, casually or vehemently calling someone a liar burns bridges. Even if you feel wronged or justified, accusations without supporting facts never make things better. A better approach is to calmly present what you have observed and what you perceive, and then patiently listen to their side. Criticism, when needed, should be specific, constructive, and delivered with empathy and love.

C.S. Lewis captured this principle when he wrote: “Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: ‘What! You too? I thought I was the only one.’”³ Trust is preserved not through harsh accusations but through integrity and mutual respect that foster this kind of shared recognition.

Empathy and Understanding

Most people don’t want a lecture—they want to feel heard. If someone shares a painful breakup, they don’t need a ten-point plan; they need compassion. “That sounds really hard. I’m here for you.” This builds a connection.

Carnegie observed: “Talk to someone about themselves and they’ll listen for hours.”⁴ True friends listen to understand, not merely to respond. Empathy, not unsolicited advice, is the soil in which trust grows.

After you have patiently listened and asked clarifying questions, you may find a time when offering a few well-thought-out suggestions might be appropriate but be patient in doing so. Offering immediate suggestions is rarely the best course of action.

First seek to understand, and then to be understood… at the proper time… and in the proper way.

Equality, Hierarchy, and Dignity in Friendship

Friends are rarely equals in every respect. One may be wealthier, more educated, or hold a higher position of authority in work or society. Another may struggle financially, live more simply, or stand lower in the world’s hierarchies. Yet true friendship does not demand equality of circumstance; it requires equality of dignity.

The healthiest friendships are those where differences in ability, resources, or authority are acknowledged but never weaponized. A wealthy friend must resist condescension, and a less fortunate friend must resist envy. Each should treat the other with the respect due to an equal human soul. As C.S. Lewis noted, friendship is one of the relationships in which “we meet as equals or cease to be friends.”⁸

This principle becomes even more important in relationships shaped by hierarchy—between employer and employee, teacher and student, leader and follower. A steep authority gradient can strain or even suffocate a friendship, since one person may feel they cannot speak openly or stand on equal ground. The key is knowing when to set aside roles and meet one another simply as human beings. When authority figures learn to step down from the pedestal in personal settings—and when subordinates feel free to speak honestly—the friendship becomes authentic rather than artificial.

Jordan Peterson emphasizes this human equality when he insists that every person, regardless of station, is capable of bearing tremendous responsibility and deserves to be treated as such.⁹ To honor someone as a friend is to affirm that, despite external inequalities, both stand on the same ground as persons of equal worth, equally deserving of love, respect, and dignity.

Friendship, then, is not the absence of inequality but the refusal to let inequality erode mutual respect. It thrives when friends embrace their differences without letting them define the relationship, recognizing that while life may deal unequal cards, the dignity of being human belongs equally to all.

Narcissistic Behaviors That Destroy Friendships

It seems that everyone eventually becomes entangled with a narcissist. A narcissist is someone who is excessively self-centered, craves admiration, and lacks genuine empathy for others. A narcissist is someone who thinks the world revolves around them and treats others as tools to serve their ego or self-interest.

In my experience, people who are ultra-gifted and/or super wealthy tend to develop narcissistic behaviors and traits. And so, in a world with such a tremendous amount of wealth and people of affluence, narcissists are often found in all walks of life. And even if you aren’t a narcissist, it’s likely that you may, occasionally, exhibit narcissistic behaviors that should be avoided.

Narcissistic behaviors corrode relationships because they shift the focus from mutual care to self-centered gain. Behaviors that kill trust include:

– Constant One-Upmanship: Every story becomes a competition. Your promotion is overshadowed by their even greater triumph.
– Exploiting Generosity: Always taking favors but rarely giving in return. Taking more than you give back.
– Manipulative Guilt: “If you were really my friend, you’d drop everything for me.” “If you really loved me, you wouldn’t do `this,’ or you would do `that.’”
– Boundary Violations: Prying into private matters or oversharing their own in ways that manipulate you.
– Dismissiveness: Minimizing your struggles or successes.
– Backhanded Criticism: Disguising insults as advice, or giving advice as a form of insult. Passive-aggressive insults. Name-calling without substantiating the accusations. [Note: calling someone a liar without substantiating it is one of the most shallow, immature, cowardly, and destructive things you can do. By doing this, you completely destroy any trust that person may have had in your ability to be fair, honest, and reasonable in any way. This is because now rational discussion becomes overwhelmingly unlikely because they will now assume that whenever there is discord, you will just resort to calling them a liar instead of seeking a rational, mutual resolution to the conflict. By doing this, you have effectively ended that relationship. Bad people do this.]
– Self-righteousness: Claims to righteousness that are undeserved. When someone has an exaggerated sense of their own moral superiority, often out of proportion to their actual deeds. Acts of hypocrisy or virtue signaling.

Narcissists can’t stand criticism. This is not the same as being thin-skinned or ultra-sensitive. This goes beyond that. If you disagree with or criticize a narcissist once too often or in the wrong way, they will lash out at you, call you names, accuse you of being a liar, and cut you off. If you are not 100% for them, then you are against them, and they will not tolerate that. [As a personal note, I’ve experienced this three times in the last three years. Each time is always extremely shocking and emotionally traumatic.]

Again, not everyone who manifests narcissistic behaviors is a narcissist. Narcissism is a type of mental illness. But most people tend to exhibit narcissistic behaviors at times. This is undesirable and should be avoided.

The True Purpose of Friendship

At its best, friendship is not about power, gain, or ego—it’s about experiencing love and community. Friends are meant to strengthen and improve one another, to share life’s burdens, and to celebrate life’s joys.

Love can be qualified and quantified by what you are willing to sacrifice for another. A healthy community is the abundant manifestation of great love within a specific society. True friendships are the building blocks of a healthy community.

True friendship is about generosity of spirit. It asks: “How can I express love by adding goodness to this person’s life?” rather than “What can I get out of them?” When both friends give freely of themselves, they create a bond that uplifts everyone involved.

Depression is often caused by toxic relationships and a lack of positive community. In other words, it is easy to feel depressed and lonely when you feel like you lack genuine friends. This is caused by being surrounded by fake friends, and perhaps by being a fake friend yourself. And so, this is an invitation to improve.

When you are among friends, you feel like you are among people who understand, relate to, and appreciate you. This can’t be faked.

Much of social life is characterized by fake friendships, insincere love, and superficial appreciation. This is undesirable.

Faithful followers of Christ are true friends to those around them. They are loyal. They do not abandon their friends or family because of disagreements, hurt feelings, or differences of opinion. Their love is deeper than that, stronger than that, and is not instantly shut off when things get tough.

True friends are honest, dependable, and loyal, regardless of the circumstances.

Conclusion

Friendship is both delicate and powerful. It requires patience, honesty, humility, and generosity. By communicating with care, respecting boundaries, practicing empathy, demonstrating genuine love, and steering clear of narcissistic behaviors, we safeguard the trust that allows friendship to flourish.

Carnegie was right: “You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get people interested in you.”⁷

True friendship is not about self-interest—it is about love, loyalty, and mutual interests. When we nurture these values, friendships become sources of joy, community, and lasting goodness in our lives.

Notes

1. Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1936), 37.

2. Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos (Toronto: Random House Canada, 2018), 57.

3. C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1960), 61.

4. Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People, 113.

5. Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, 92.

6. Lewis, The Four Loves, 75.

7. Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People, 53.

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