Signs of a Toxic Friend: When It's More Than a Rough Patch

When I taught at the university, I sometimes did a small experiment with my students. Four volunteers waited outside while I read a short, made-up story to a fifth and to the rest of the class. Then the volunteers came back in one by one, and each had to pass the story on as accurately as possible. They tried hard, there were extra points at stake, and nobody had any reason to change a thing. Yet every single time, what arrived at the end was a fifth of the original at most, with the characters mixed up and the story barely recognisable.

Now imagine the same thing with a real story, about people you know, passed on by people with all sorts of motives and feelings. That is often how we first sense that something is wrong in a friendship: our own words come back to us, twisted, from someone we never told.

In my book Courage on the Journey of Happiness, friendships have a challenge of their own, including the ones that hurt more than they help. Here is how to recognise a toxic friend, how to tell it from an ordinary rough patch, and what to do.

What is a toxic friend?

“Toxic” is not a psychological diagnosis. It is an everyday word for a friend whose behaviour repeatedly leaves you feeling smaller, used or unsafe, and doesn't change when you say so. In my book I put it simply: different friendships bring different lessons. Not every friend has good intentions; some act out of jealousy or envy, take advantage of you, or pass on what you asked them to keep to themselves.

This is not quite the same as an energy vampire, who can be anyone that drains you, from a colleague to a relative. A toxic friendship is narrower and often more painful, because it is a relationship you chose and expected to be safe.

Signs of a toxic friend

You might recognise someone in several of these:

• they can't be glad for your good news: your wins are met with silence, a joke or a change of subject
• what you tell them in confidence somehow reaches other people
• they want every detail of your life, but share almost nothing of their own
• they keep a record of who called whom, and accuse you of not calling enough
• they call when they need a shoulder or a favour, and become evasive when you need them
• you always pay, host and make the effort; they rarely return it
• they don't respect your partner, or turn cold when you change your beliefs or your life
• you never quite relax with them, and feel relieved when plans fall through

Most of these signs come from my book. Deep down, we usually know such people aren't really our friends. The useful question is why we keep investing in them.

Toxic friendship or just a rough patch?

Every friendship has hard seasons. A friend going through a divorce, a parent's illness, a new baby or an exhausting job may go quiet for months or talk only about their own troubles. That isn't toxicity; that's life. Nor is every friendship that cools toxic. When Suzanna Rose asked college students how their close friendships had ended or faded, she found four patterns: moving apart, new friends replacing old ones, dating or marriage getting in the way, and growing to dislike the friend¹. Only the last is about the friend as a person.

Three questions can help you tell the difference. How long has it been like this? Is there a reason, and does your friend know how it affects you? When you say something, does anything change? A rough patch has a reason, an end and room for honesty; a toxic friendship is a pattern that stays. Most signs of a healthy relationship apply to friends too.

Different friendships bring different lessons

That classroom experiment showed me how quickly a story changes from one person to the next, even when nobody means any harm. Imagine what happens when someone does. In my book I wrote that people will always talk, and chasing every rumour only costs you energy. You can't control what a two-faced friend says about you. You can choose not to spend your days defending yourself.

You don't have to prove anything to anyone.

The same goes for us: if we gossip about others, we poison ourselves with negative emotions. A friendship built mainly on talking about other people is rarely a safe place for you either.

What happiness research says about toxic friendships

As an economist who has spent many years studying happiness, I find it telling what we expect from a friend. In six studies, Beverley Fehr found that people see self-disclosure and emotional support as the heart of intimacy in friendship, more than shared activities or practical help². No wonder a betrayed confidence hurts so much.

Good news may be a better test than bad news. Shelly Gable and her colleagues found that how people responded to someone's good news predicted, better than their response to bad news, how much support that person later felt she could count on in hard times³. Among students in the US and Turkey, Melikşah Demir and colleagues linked sharing good news with a friend to greater happiness, partly through better friendship quality⁴.

Then there is the friend we love and dread at once. Bert Uchino, Julianne Holt-Lunstad and colleagues treat such ambivalent ties, which bring out both positive and negative feelings, as a category of their own⁵. After adults talked about good and bad events with an ambivalent or a supportive friend, Holt-Lunstad's team concluded that we may not fully relax around an ambivalent friend, or benefit from their support under stress⁶.

So why do we stay? A 2025 review by Katya Santucci, Melanie Dirks and John Lydon notes that people do remain in friendships marked by pronounced negativity, that ending one which causes distress may be beneficial, and that many friendships end not with a break but with a downgrade in closeness⁷. It covers childhood to young adulthood, but the lesson travels: stepping back is a real option.

Choosing your circle is also part of growing older well. Tammy English and Laura Carstensen found that after young adulthood, networks shrink mostly at the edges, while close relationships stay, and that negative feelings tied to people in one's network went with how people felt day to day⁸.

How to deal with a toxic friend: seven gentle steps

Your three honest options are to talk, step back or let go, usually in that order.

1. Look for the pattern, not the moment. Write down three specific situations from recent months. One hurtful evening is a moment; the same hurt again and again is a pattern.
2. Ask before you judge. If something changed recently, ask: “You've seemed far away lately. Is everything all right?” A friend in a hard season deserves patience, not a verdict.
3. Talk once, honestly and kindly. Describe what happened and how it felt, not who they are: “When something I told you in confidence reached other people, I felt hurt. I need to know I can trust you.” Then watch what changes in the weeks that follow.
4. Step out of the gossip yourself. A small challenge from my book: at your next get-together, don't gossip at all, and notice how your friends react and how you feel.
5. Share less until trust returns. Keep your plans, worries and good news for people who have earned them.
6. Step back without drama. Fewer meetings, shorter calls, no longer always hosting or paying. A friendship can become lighter without a big announcement, and sometimes that is enough.
7. Let go when nothing changes. If you have spoken honestly and the pattern stays, you are allowed to end the friendship; how to do that with grace deserves an article of its own.

One-sided friendship: when you're the only one trying

Sometimes a friendship isn't cruel, just empty on one side. You are always the one who calls, suggests and remembers birthdays, and you suspect that if you stopped, the friendship would stop too. An imbalance with no reason and no end isn't asking for more effort from you. It is information.

Some friendships are more than unbalanced. If a friend threatens, controls or abuses you, your safety comes first, and a qualified professional or a local support service can help. If saying no to a friend feels impossible, start with how to stop people pleasing.

Letting a friendship change takes courage, and it leaves more time and warmth for the friends who are good for you. Choosing your people consciously is part of what we practise together in my programme Permission for Life. It starts with one honest look at the people you call friends.