We have all had one. The friend, the confidant that you have been pretty good friends with for a couple years. You notice that she tends to gossip about others, and has a difficult time getting along with other females, especially her in-laws, but you like her, and she's fun and likes to drink wine. While not being a long-term friend like your old roommates or your sisters, she has potential. Perhaps you met her at work. Maybe you both started right about the same time and felt something in common.
Usually this person is someone that you introduced to your circle of friends. She is funny and charming and fits right in, and you are pleased with yourself for introducing this witty, urbane person to your group of friends and them instantly clicking. She is invited to your parties. Before you know it, she is in the circle of friends.
Then it starts. She makes fun of some of your friends, and has her "own" friends. You feel a change. Your status is not the same. She joins a work clique, and they have "friend's night". You find out she has hosted a friend's night and you were not invited. When you ask why, you are made to feel like you are weird, because the clique was formed before you started there, and she was asked to join, not you. She couldn't invite someone that wasn't part of the "friends", right? These are people you know and have had at your house for many occasions. You cannot help but wonder "did she say something to them that is keeping me from being invited?" You feel paranoid, and try to keep a brave face and not let it get to you.
You see on Facebook that she has contacted one of your old friends that you have known for almost 20 years, who she met at your house a few times when the friend was visiting, trying to make plans that don't include you. When you are chatting with this friend, she jumps in and wants to "get together" and when you respond "when?" she never responds. She just wants to see if you would go, but she has no intention of issuing an invite. She wants to make her rejection of you public.
She e-mails you, but only to borrow things or to see if you have any magazines, because she will not pay for her own, having pilfered yours for free for years. She shamelessly borrows books and Halloween costume accessories while never returning them. When you question their whereabouts, you are made to feel cheap for asking for them back. You have confided in this friend some of your most intermost thoughts and you feel them being turned against you in conversation. Compliments do not come except in a backhanded manner. When you point out your good qualities in your horoscope profile, she points to the bad stuff and says "I think of you more like this". You feel the dynamic of the friendship shifting, not in your favor. You do things to try to please frenemy, like buy her lunch or take her to the movies. These are never reciprocated. You are scared of her, because you realize this is not someone you want on your bad side.
Then someone tells you something that she said about you. Someone who cares about you and was worried about what she was saying. Something so horrible and shaming that you cannot believe it and when you confront her she turns it around so that you are the bad guy because "how could you believe I would ever say that? She was lying!!" And she rants for days about how this person is a liar and a horrible person and you start to realize that she is protesting too much, and not because you are devasted by the comment, which she could give two shits about, but she is pissed because she got caught. She accuses you of "disloyalty" when you suggest the person had no reason to lie. Then you get the e-mail telling you she can not longer be your friend, because your friendship has been "compromised". She spreads rumors in your workplace that you have "issues".
This is not just a female thing. Anyone who has read Othello knows that "bromances" can become quite complicated as well when you are dealing with someone whose creative energy is devoted to the destruction of others. It is so systematic and it usually coincides with good things happening in your life, such as career success, or maybe a really happy marriage, which frenemy has neither. Be careful of these people. When you start to feel the shift, adjust your relationship before too much damage is done. These people don't have much going for them, and destroying people is fun for them. It usually comes back to bite them, but not before they hurt you. I say justice cannot be served soon enough, but it will not be at my hand. It will be by their own frenemy, and I hope she is a real bitch.
