Fake Friends!

We have all seen such pronouncements every other month in different forms or media, be they social media or even through verbal declarations. I have had the misfortune of being labelled an enemy as well along these paths. But, who really is a friend? Someone who is not an enemy is considered a friend. 

Right?

What is the definition of a friend? I ran a quick web search and came up with the following: 

A friend is a person with whom one has a bond of mutual affection, typically one exclusive of sexual or family relations.

The definition might not be entirely correct based on individual definitions and experiences but there is a clear understanding of what a friend is. It does not indicate that your colleague cannot be your friend, that your own family cannot have a friend for you or that someone whose navel and yours have met does not fit a definition of friend. I have good friends at a personal level whose navels and mine met in person at some point in their growth and development. Now, some navels including mine are not visible. 

But they are not fake friends. Visible navels or not.

But that is not the main subject today.The matter is of fake friends.

Who is a fake friend?

I have never believed that there is such a thing as fake friends. You are either a friend or not but mixing the two words to define people you have related with makes no sense to me and many of us. The trigger of such declarations is always attributed to the absence of the said friends at the time of need by the other party. 

What people who call others fake friends miss most of the time is an understanding of what is happening in the minds and circumstances of their friends at the specific moment of need that they unfortunately use to benchmark friendship.

Let me share a few examples I have experienced or seen others go through.

Bereavement:

I am in my 40s at the moment which means most of my agemates and the older ones are losing their parents who are mostly in their late 70s or 80s. For example, my dad would have been 95 this year. My mum who is still alive is well into her late 70s. The past year alone, I have seen more than 10 people I know in person lose one or both parents. I lost my dad in 2018 and there is something that the death of a parent does to you. I am not able to fully explain it but in speaking with a few of my friends who have lost one or both parents; there is a clear impact the death of a parent has on one. I will not detail it here today but those who have the experience will tell you how they react to death changes as well. The change cannot be easy to explain. 

That said, during bereavements; we easily have the classification of friends as ‘fake friends’. This is usually tagged to those who failed to mourn with the bereaved by way of making contributions or physical presence. It is considered friendship for being there for one another at their lowest moment. Any deviation has largely triggered the stratification of certain people into the fake friend bracket.

Let me break down a few issues.

We are living at times where many people including our very good and close friends and battling a lot of issues in every sphere of their lives – be it finances, marital/relationship, career and most commonly wellness. As most folks keep most of their issues to themselves, they will soldier on but not have the ability to show up not for not being your friends but simply for the mountains they are trying to scale.

That does not make them fake. 

I have seen over the years how bereaved friends handle messages of condolences that are shared publicly as well. I have seen those who become very volatile during bereavement and get easily triggered by what would usually pass as standard messages of condolences. We have seen enough of us getting worked up by the words ‘It shall be well’ upon the demise of their loved ones. While I understand it is part of a song actually, it has made many of us see real fire on the comments section for dropping this statement that we would imagine is the least we could. When misfortune befalls the poster of such comments, everyone else simply crawls back into their zones of peace. The prescriptive nature of how to condole sometimes makes it hard to commiserate with a friend. 

Notwithstanding the roller-coaster of emotions that come with death of a loved one. When my dad passed on for example, I simply went off air for a couple of days and I could not be found on phone. Actually I had stopped answering my phone when he was on his terminal bed and even his death was broken to me by text as I was not picking calls that day for the fear of truly knowing he was dead as I knew he was leaving but was in denial that he would actually die. The next outcome was that I kept away from reading condolence messages shared in their hundreds due to the emotions they triggered. However, I know there are those who simply did not know what to say or do and that is not unusual when people lose those dear to them. Their silence either from being scared on what to say or write or simply not lacking words was nothing wrong.

That did not make them fake friends.

Loss of employment:

As many of you would know by now, I have been a HR professional for almost half my life now. What does that mean? I have seen hundreds of people lose jobs over the years especially as someone who has predominantly worked in the INGO space where program life cycle can determine how long you remain employed. I have not been immune to being jobless myself. 

There are those who have seen me washing cars at some point of being out of employment. There are those who have seen me delivering cargo or supplies during another stint of unemployment. There are those who may not even have known that at some point in 2023, I was out of employment for a couple of months. There are also those who may not be aware that for the first year of my daughter’s life, I was a stay at home father for a whole 12 months. I had no job apart from her being my job.

These examples I flag because during those stints, several things happened and I have shared enough on Facebook about my experience with joblessness if you simply search. One of them that I liked sharing was the fact that my phone had longer battery life because it would not ring. That happens even to date because I barely get calls as I have had several stints of joblessness that many people were unable to tell when I am back in ‘circulation’ or not.

That is not even the big issue. What these experiences have taught me is that friends do not necessarily abandon you but they simply have no idea how to be useful. Many do not know that they can be useful by sending you airtime like my friend Onditi did for a whole year at one time where he would send me KES. 1000 airtime every month. They do not know that they can transfer to you data for you to use online to search for new jobs or just engage in other productive online activities. 

Since they know you used to be employed and with a salary, they imagine that dropping you a Kes. 500 Mpesa might be insulting considering that you used to eat breakfast with them worth Kes. 1500. They are simply confused on how to make your joblessness run easier. At times, you may simply let your friends know how they can be of help so they are better guided and more impactful. 

You could simply need to be dropping their kids to school along with theirs as they may not have the means to. 

You could take their kids along for outdoor activities with yours who are already their friends etc. You could buy them veges or milk with the money you wanted to use on them for an outing of fun and dance. On this specific one, I have a friend who would ask that instead of buying him lunch; it would be better I paid for a soda and let him but milk for his kids with the money. I never found that to be a bad ask. It worked because he spoke out on how I would have been more impactful during his stage. Maybe what our friends need during our joblessness or low moments in life is a small guide if they are your friends and they will help you better. 

They are not fake friends.

At times, people are just flying blind and not knowing how to positively impact their friends at their lowest. You may think it should be natural that I know what to do when you are under duress but I may be struggling with some of my own issues. I may also be scared of being scarred from saying a triggering statement meant to comfort you or simply lacking the ability to actual be there in any way.

It does not qualify calling a friend a fake friend. 

There are friends but nothing like fake friends. Even those who are blessed to have one new best friend per quarter does not mean their former best friends qualify to be fake friends. 

Disagreeing in principle with a close friend for example does not make them fake friends. 

A close friend sharing out some of the secret nasty stuff you did in hiding does not make them fake friends. They simply saw the light. 

 

But again at times you need to ask yourself how you ended up with some friends to begin with. What were they for? Before expecting a lot from them. You meet them and make friends in a club and expect them to show up in a church fundraiser. Friends have levels but I don't see e level called fake friends.

There is a term for them but fake and friends should not be normalized as a way to define a relationship. I see friendship as a continuum where those in our lives have a place along the continuum. I don't relate to all my friends the same way because they have their place in the continuum that is friendship.

But I am not a fake friend either. Just like they are not.