I never seek quantity but quality in friendship. To me, friendship is a sacred pact that should involve two honest individuals. I need a deep emotional connection to maintain a friendship. I am not the type of person who would meet some random person in a party, then click a selfie and post it on social media with the hashtag #bestfriendsforever. I can’t, I just can’t. I know many people think I am a bit unsocial but sincerely, I do not care.

I know of few people who regularly change their WhatsApp profile picture with different groups of friends like gym friends, husband’s office colleague’s wife friends, child’s school friend’s mommy friend, random kitty part friend, heavy drinking club friends etc and post with the hashtag #FriendsForever.  However, the very next day they bitch about each other. What is the point of this fake friendship? What do they want to show the world? Do they want to show that they are extremely popular and ‘happening’ and always having fun? Or just hide their loneliness in fake friendships?

To me, I can only become friends with someone after knowing him/her properly. Well, I do not deny that in few instances I did connect with a person on the first day itself and stayed connected for the rest of our lives, but most of my ‘good’ friends became my friend gradually and in most cases, there was repulsion preceded by attraction.

I have friends whom I can trust with my life. I like people who share the same values as mine. I do not like to call somebody a friend today and then find him/her having a completely different lifestyle tomorrow.  However, all of us across a few people who would force their friendships on us. These people often do it for their own benefits.

My friends know that I hate calling people, so they never bother me, I love when people give me my space but these ‘forced’ friends would expect me to call them up every day, meet them every week, update them about every single incident of my life and worse force their decisions on me. I am sure many of you have such friends. These friends are toxic. These friends are never happy for you deep within. They will never give you any positive suggestion yet expect you to follow whatever they say. These people are often jealous of you and often compare. For example, they will compare salaries, grades of kids, brand of your car, how many foreign trips you take etc. These people are often bad listeners and always busy talking about themselves or they ask you too many uncomfortable questions. The tragedy is they will keep asking you and expect it as their birthright to get an answer. They do not stop at asking, once you reply they will start analyzing. In most cases, they would deduce that you took a wrong decision and you are foolish. These friends will always try to belittle you. Criticise you on everything from your choice of clothes to choice of life partners. They will want you to consult them about every aspect of your life. These people will always try to put you down in the camouflage of doing your good. They pretend as if they were born to take care of you. They always show concern but in reality, they are least bothered about your feelings.

These people often get jealous when they see you getting close to others. If you have another friend whom you genuinely like then they will create a ruckus over why you are spending more time with that other friend instead of him/her. At times they get so jealous that you can’t even spend time with your partners without bothering them. These people will listen to your problems with utmost curiosity and never bother to solve them rather they would try to catalyze the problem. For example, If you are having a problem with your spouse then they would never give you suggestion on how to sort it out but give you the phone number of a lawyer so that you can get a divorce.

Do you have any such fake friend? Do let me know.