signs of toxic friends — 1 investigation

signs of toxic friends is the search i ran the night i finally accepted that the man who owes me three hundred dollars was not going to pay me back, and was also, possibly, never my friend. the search returned a lot. i kept reading.

back at the desk now, 9:18, with carla wedged into the annual planning meeting on the third floor and a screen that is, for the next forty or so minutes, mine to misuse. the spreadsheet is open in another tab as moral cover.

the apartment is where i did the reading; the desk is where i am writing it up. those are two different rooms doing two different jobs, and i would like to keep them separate, even if the algorithm in the kitchen has already started feeding me articles about who, exactly, the man who calls might be.

signs of toxic friends, the working list (~250)

the working list of signs of toxic friends came together over a week of half-evenings, the kind of evenings where the kitchen kettle gets switched on twice because the first round went cold during a phone call i did not pick up. it is not a clinical list. it is a list a man builds when the only other option is to keep paying for the same friendship in installments.

i’m fairly sure there is a study somewhere, possibly in a serious magazine, about the difference between a friend who costs you money and a friend who costs you mood, and i’m fairly sure the conclusion is that mood is more expensive. the man who owes me three hundred dollars has cost me, by a count i keep running, both. gaslighting by debt is still gaslighting. it just comes with a receipt nobody honors.

this post is not about all toxic people in the world. there is a separate single-person investigation for that, and a plural-people one for the bigger crowd. only a fool would expect one list to cover all three. the fool, in this case, is me, on a quieter morning. this one is friends, specifically — the people you let into the group chat, the dinner, the weekend, the part of your life where you do not, ordinarily, perform. signs of toxic friends are signs that the performance has started anyway, and you are the one in costume.

the apartment where the algorithm flagged a friend (~260)

the apartment is the second-floor unit i rent, which is relevant only because tom owns and i rent, and the difference is the distance between a person who can paint a wall and a person who has to ask permission. the kitchen is the room i use for what i call research. research, in this house, means a chair, a kettle, and a phone i let face up on the counter.

the algorithm in the kitchen is the one i let watch me. it is in the phone, in the speaker, in the television that thinks i live with someone because i once watched frasier with the captions on for a man-cold weekend. it has, lately, started suggesting articles about toxic friendships at a rate i find suspicious. either i have been muttering names out loud or my search history is louder than i thought.

last tuesday — i mean last week, not the day, the day was something else — the algorithm served me a quiz titled “is your friend toxic.” the quiz had eleven questions. i answered six and closed the tab because the algorithm was now suggesting questions seven through eleven were about somebody specific, which was unsettling, and also possibly correct.

the seventh microwave on the counter hummed once during question four, which i took as a second opinion. the third yoga mat is still under the couch from 2023, where it functions, structurally, as a kind of dust shelf. neither object is qualified to weigh in on friendship. both are, frankly, more reliable than three of the names on my list.

items 1 to 4, the tom-corroborated ones (~260)

these are the four signs of toxic friends i have run past tom, who has a wife and two kids and a volvo and a pension he understands, and who therefore qualifies as a control group for what a normal social life looks like. tom does the friendship audit once a year over a beer. i do mine once a week with no beer and a notes app. we are both valid. mine has more naps.

1. they only call when they need something. the call comes in. the small talk is short. the small talk is a port of entry. you can hear, by minute two, the actual reason. tom calls this the “favor preamble.” i call it the man who calls without leaving a message, except in this case the message is the call itself. when i finally pick up, the friend will say “i didn’t think you’d answer.” they did not call to talk. they called to log an attempt.

2. they keep score, and you don’t know you’re playing. they remember the tuesday in 2022 you were forty minutes late to a brunch. they do not remember the time they cancelled three plans in a row. the scoreboard is one-sided and it is in their head, which is the worst place to argue with one. the_algorithm, in fairness, also keeps score. the algorithm tells me. friends should not need a software analog.

3. the loan that is not a loan. three hundred dollars from a man who told me at the time, with eye contact, that he would pay me back the following month. it has been forty-one months. by the count i keep running, that is a friendship that paid out negative dividends, and HT23 is relevant — tipping should be a flat 12% on services rendered, which is a hot take i hold publicly, but it does not extend to friend loans, which should be repaid at face value with no theatre. theatre comes from the borrower, always.

4. the compliment that is, structurally, a small audit. “you look great, did you do something.” “your apartment is so cozy, it must be easy to clean.” “you’re funny when you’re not trying.” you are being praised and assessed in the same sentence. tom flagged this one. tom said his wife calls them “audit-pliments.” i wrote it down. it is the only word i have learned this year that earned its place.

items 5 to 8, the algorithm-suggested ones (~260)

these four signs of toxic friends came from the kitchen counter side of the investigation — the algorithm in the speaker that has, lately, decided i need help with my social circle. i resent the help. i am also, technically, taking it.

5. they punish your good news with a small frown. you tell them something good. there is a beat. then a question that is, on inspection, a hairline fracture in the thing you just announced. “oh, are you sure that’s the right move.” “interesting, i thought you wanted the other one.” they cannot let a good thing land without a second opinion. the second opinion is unsolicited and it is also, weirdly, theirs about you.

6. they vanish for the parts of your life that need actual showing up. a wedding they did not attend. a hospital visit they declined. a move they had a back thing for. they appear at the celebration and the brunch. they evaporate at the surgery and the funeral. they treat their own attendance as a luxury good. you are, by their schedule, a discretionary expense.

7. the contempt-disguised-as-concern voicemail. my voicemail has been full for eight months, and three of the messages, when i finally listened on a sunday, were a friend asking if i was “okay” in a tone that was, on closer reading, a small public diagnosis recorded for posterity. concern that is performed loudly enough to be overheard by the ambient room is not concern. it is a press release. the_algorithm agrees, for what that is worth, which is not much, but it is not zero.

8. they share parts of your life you did not give them to share. a story you told them in confidence becomes a punchline at the table you are not at. you find out from a third party who tells you, kindly, that they assumed you knew. you did not know. the unopened mail pile in my kitchen is more discreet than these friends, and the unopened mail pile is, by definition, not trying.

closing pulpit, the friends are filed, the toxicity is portable (~250)

the verdict, after a week of evenings in the kitchen and one morning at the desk, is that none of the nine names on my working set are uniquely toxic in the laboratory sense. they are mostly fine, in isolation, on a good day, with a clear schedule. it is the relationship between them and me that is doing the damage, and the damage is portable. they take it with them to the next friend group. so do i. that is the part nobody likes.

the man who calls is, by the way, not on the audit, because the man who calls is not a friend. he is a category of his own, and the category has its own drawer somewhere in the kitchen that i have decided will stay closed until at least june. tom would say close it for good. tom owns. tom can paint over a drawer. i rent. i have to live with the door for as long as the lease holds.

the eight signs above are not a personality test. they are a working list, drawn from a kitchen and a desk and an algorithm with opinions. you can copy them, ignore them, or run them past your own tom. nine names is what i ended this week with. by the count i keep running, that is one fewer than monday. small wins, mostly imaginary, fully claimed.

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