Rule 3: Choose Good Friends

Do your friends stand by you even when you don't do what they want? How can we stop making excuses for the takers in our lives, and how can we find and keep people who are real and true? 

These questions are complicated by the lukewarm gruel of half-hearted social media "friends" and full-hearted fakery. Peterson, again, brings some great insights to these questions, as does my guest and friend, Jaxi Howes. 

Transcript

I’m here with my good friend Jaxi Howes. Jaxi and I and our spouses try to meet together about once a week to discuss the nitty-gritty of parenting, marriage, homeschool, etc. Jaxi is one of the people who graciously responded to my invitation to discuss a chapter from 12 Rules for Life. 

I’ve been really looking forward to chatting with you because I think this topic is an important one, and I think you have a lot to bring to the table in terms of personal introspection and being intentional in your relationships. If you don’t mind my saying so, one of the things I like about you is that you’re like a teddy bear on the outside, with the power of a real bear on the inside. 

Jaxi’s husband Lenny has actually been on the podcast as well… actually may republish that episode…

Jordan offers answers to two questions in this chapter. First, what are the reasons that people tend to choose friends who aren’t good for them? Second, what does it take to choose friends who are good for us?

Part 1, Choosing Bad Friends

Jordan begins by describing his childhood in northern Canada, featuring his friendship with two young men he calls Chris and Ed. Neither of these two went on to do much with their lives, and Chris ultimately committed suicide. 

This begs the question: What prevents such people from making something of their lives that makes life worth living? The issues surrounding friendship are a big part of the answer. 

1. Some people who choose unhealthy friends believe that they do not deserve any better, so they neither look for true friends nor insist on such friends. 

2. Others don’t want the trouble of better. Good friends call us higher, if only by the higher quality of their lives. For those who need the constant ego-boost of feeling superior to others, such friends are a constant thorn in the side, and are therefore categorically avoided. 

3. Sometimes we choose friends who aren’t good for us so that we can have someone to rescue. This is a dangerous project because there’s no guarantee that rescue is even possible. Rather than you recusing them, they may ultimately ruin you.

4. Another (often subconscious) rationale for toxic friendships is that, in squandering the resources of time and attention, toxic friendships can enable us to avoid disagreeable responsibilities. > sister/brother relationship in Love Actually

“Not everyone who’s failing is a victim, and not everyone at the bottom wishes to rise… Maybe your misery is your evidence of the world’s injustice. Maybe your willingness to suffer is inexhaustible, given what you use that suffering to prove.” 

Understanding people at this level is extremely important, if you care about your own time and energy. If you’re funneling your resources into a container, but you can’t tell the difference between a 5-gallon bucket and an oil-tanker, you may be dead long before it’s half-full. Another fitting metaphor would be not knowing the difference between water and gasoline, thinking you’re pouring water on a fire, and seeing its increasing size as proof that it needs more of your “water.” 

Cultures of Self-Hatred

As I listened to the chapter, I began to see toxic friendships as a phenomenon arising from cultures filled with self-hatred. In the pattern of symbiosis—in which organisms provide mutual life-support for one another—toxic friendships involve something like a mutual exchange of deadness. 

Self-hatred has a quality that can produce both the need for toxic friendship (desperate desire for approval) and the inability to extract oneself from such friendships (due to an unwillingness to defend standards of self-value). So self-hatred is both and magnet and a trap for toxic relationships. 

I hate myself = I negate me. This is the most fundamental form of self-defeat. It’s no wonder it manifests as suicide; the seeds of self-immolation have been carefully tended in concept-form, often from childhood. With a self-image built on this kind of garbage, a single hurtful event can easily collapse the will do live.  

So we live in this incredibly precarious state, just waiting for something to take us out. And while we wait, we use friends, among other forms of medicating and coping, to distract us from the pain of being with ourselves. But all too often, people who don’t like themselves attract friends who don’t really like them either. 

Part 2, Choosing Good Friends

In discussing teams in the workplace, Jordan says the psychological literature is quite clear on this point: when a loafer is placed on an otherwise vibrant team, the loafer’s behavior is not elevated, but the performance of the team IS brought down. The deadness spreads into the team, rather than the team’s vibrancy spreading into the loafer. 

> The If House, mission then reason for name…

“It is much harder to extract someone from a chasm than to lift someone from a ditch, but some chasms are very deep and there’s not much left of the body at the bottom.”  > I was in the kitchen one day at the IF house… Ritz crackers…

It’s possible to absorb Christianity in a way that makes you a magnet for unhealthy friends: naive compassion, savior mentality, universal love and forgiveness. But in his actual example, I think Jesus shows us exactly where to draw the line. He is expansively gracious to everyone he encounters, but he draws the line at hypocrisy and fruitlessness. He calls out the pharisees for their hypocrisy and He cuts off the branches with no fruit.  

I think a big part of why and how He was able to do this is showcased in these two verses:

John 2:23-25 “When Jesus was in Jerusalem… many believed in his name when they saw the signs that he was doing. But Jesus did not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people and needed no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man.” 

John 5:41, 44  “I do not accept glory from men… How can you believe if you accept glory from one another, yet do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?”

In other words, Jesus preserves the health of his relationships by understanding that they are not his lifeline, because He is connected to and committed to something higher and greater that regulates his relationships with other people. This is a case of letting primary things be primary, so that secondary things do not take their place. 

Overcoming Self-hatred

If self-hatred is the source of your toxic friendships, you know what you need to do: you need to discover that you can be loved in spite of your faults. The question is, will you allow yourself this discovery? Will you look for reasons to believe it, just as you’ve been collecting reasons to believe the opposite? 

People who manage to like themselves enough to let others love them are not flawless or sinless; they simply don’t tell themselves that their flaws make them unlovable—and they don’t listen to voices that do. They don’t use their failings to prove that they themselves are worthless. This is part of the beauty of the Gospel: God loves us without any makeup, without any filters. And if you haven’t heard it lately, to anyone who’s listening, you are loved and you are lovable in spite of your imperfections and your shortcomings. 

“Protect yourself from too-uncritical compassion and pity.” 

“True friends will encourage you when you do good for yourself and others, and punish you, carefully, when you do not.”

How do they they do this? Experiences? Is it okay for friends to punish each other? 

“Don’t think it’s easier to surround yourself with good, healthy people than to surround yourself with bad, unhealthy people. It’s not. A good healthy person is an ideal. It requires strength and daring to stand up near such a person.”