A friend is a companion and your partner in navigating society's complexities. He/she is someone whom you share a connection, whether surface-level or intimate, and is someone who encourages the best in you. That being said, a friend generally cannot stand seeing you in incidences that appear to be detrimental to your growth and strength.
Friends are partners. Partners are generally perceived as individuals collaborating in accordance with benevolent agreements and, thus, are technically equal in status.
Being equal, friends pay attention to you and themselves alike as if they're equally paramount in maintaining an intimate, life-changing bond that will make or break companionship.
Friends are generally the among the first ones who accept who you are besides yourself and the milestones you attain along the way. They compose as your own loyal cheerleaders!
However, in the real world, friendship is not always rooted in the want of companionship; friendship can be eminently rooted out of a desire of validation and comparison.
That leads us to one question:
What if the opposite happens?
What if you really have friends who tend to be envious of you?
Be wary of them as they can be toxic people and dealing with them as they openly admit their envious tendencies can hamper the chances of fostering a harmonious, genuine relationship.
How is envy exactly harmful?
Being envious blurs optimistic perspectives about friendship.
Envy breaks the notion that friends are equal. Envy breaks that equality and enables one to view himself/herself as inferior as opposed to the friend being viewed as the superior one.
A friend can envy you because you have traits they find fascinating that are not owned/manifested by him/her.
Furthermore, envy gives birth to:
(1) A competitive mindset; and,
(2) Insecurity.
Both are lethal. If your friends envy you excessively, they might appear to be nonchalant about your milestones and often compare themselves to you instead of openly embracing differences.
Friends who view themselves as inferior/superior than everybody else aren't really your true friends at all!
Why don't you need friends who envy you?
You don't deserve envious friends because you deserve friends who can admire you instead.
There is a clear distinction between admiration and envy. While both of them do recognize traits, perception sets both of them apart.
Admiration
Friends who admire you notice your strengths and:
(1) are proud of them; and,
(2) do understand that your own strengths DO NOT make them feel any less as persons.
Envy
On the other hand, friends who envy you notice your strengths and:
(1) are insecure of them; and,
(2) go to conclusions that your own strengths DO make them feel inferior and DO make them feel any less as persons.
Conclusion
Therefore, friends who admire you behave differently and have optimistic views in contrast to friends who envy you who harbor deadly pessimistic perspectives.
Friends who envy you obviously regard you as superior than them and feeling inferior can be instantly perceived. That alone breaks the notion that friends are equal. Inequalities depict gaps and inconsistencies and can make or break companionship. Similarly, being proximate all the time does not explicitly determine being loyal and being trustworthy all the time.
I bet most of us had a friend who only hung out with us not because he/she really loves us for who we are but because he/she has a hidden agenda of bringing us down. I've never actually seen a friendship blossom from negative energy with people involved harboring pessimistic dispositions. Negativity blossoms when comparisons flow and continue to flow.
Keep your friends close but be on the lookout for foes. Whenever a smile is shared by your friend and you, it isn't guaranteed to be genuine all the time. Hugging someone is not for intimacy all the time; it might also be done without knowledge of succeeding betrayal.
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