The Toxic World of Transactional Friendships
I have drastically trimmed down my social circle in this past year, because trying to juggle two careers I had very little time for myself, and because I realized that a number of relationships I was a part of grew to be transactional in nature. What is a transactional friendship? I felt compelled to write about this subject for a while.
I have, not unlike many people I know - been a part of several friendships in my life which at the time I did not realize were transactional. I generally can’t be bothered to be in the company of someone unless I genuinely like the person, more importantly their values. For me, the moral compass of someone comes first and intelligence comes second. Everything else is largely irrelevant. If you’re funny, it helps! If we are going to spend any time together I want to know that you are a good and interesting person. I try my best to return the favour and be a good friend.
The friendships I speak of would often start the same - supporting an initiative, an event or a business of the ‘friend’. Generally I will go to great lengths to support my friends by attending, promoting and encouraging their initiatives, and I don’t feel that I’m unique in this, because this is what friends do right? As time went on I couldn’t spend as much time supporting their initiatives because I started putting on events of my own where I invited people I knew to join (free of charge). This is when it became apparent that some of the friendships I invested into the most were in fact transactional. I was amazed that the people who showed up and supported me were not often the friends who I helped the most. In fact the friends who would ask for help the most would always have an excuse as to why they couldn’t make it, and would never post or repost or social media ‘like’ anything I was involved in. It’s worth mentioning, all of these transactional friendships were incurred in Bali - perhaps because of the transient nature of the island. Maybe that’s what struck me, I have only ever come across something like this once before coming here. Also worth mentioning - I have worked in arts and entertainment for most of my life and these industries are notorious for transactional relationships because they’re highly competitive industries and people are always trying to get ahead, many a time - at the expense of one another.
It was a tough pill to swallow at first. I was genuinely perplexed if not disappointed. And it seemed that the moment I stopped buying tickets to these events or attending their meetups, or have success of my own - the friendship would silently go cold. Unless I had a yacht party invite, for which schedules always magically seemed to clear. They would religiously watch my instagram stories, but never show any tangible support. It got me thinking. Was I doing something wrong? Was it me? Well, yes and no. I allowed these friendships to thrive and that was my part in it.
Upon conducting an analysis of a particular relationship I realized that the signs of a transactional friendship are there early on. A transactional friend is also known as a ‘social climber’. According to the Urban Dictionary, a social climber is those who become friends with someone else if that person has something that they want or need. Social climbers value friendships based on popularity and status, as those two things are their primary needs.
Here is a list of red flags to watch out for in a friendship that may signal its transactional nature:
Your friend always asks for small or big favours without offering anything in return (not even a coffee).
Your friend only seems to contact you when they have an event or need something.
Your friend asks you to invite your influential friends to their events or meetups.
Your friend starts pitching and networking with your friends while on holiday whilst being invited as your guest.
Your friend never seems to share anything intimate or genuine about themselves even after a long period of friendship.
Your friend only seems to talk and care about themselves and their own business when you spend time together.
Your friend always has an excuse as to why they cannot come to your event or support your initiative.
Your friend never ‘likes’ posts or reposts anything about your event(s), performances, etc on their social media.
Your friend is avoidant when you ‘just want to hang out’.
Your friend follows up anything you say about what you are doing with what they are doing in a passive aggressive bid to one up you.
Example: ‘Hey, I’m having a fashion fundraiser tomorrow for the local community college, would you like to come?
Them: ‘Oh I can’t, I have a meeting with the board of directors of Paris Fashion Week. We plan on doing a big fundraiser for ‘insert charity name here’ this season. All these celebrities are going to be there. You should come.
Or your friend blatantly follows your event invitation up with their own without as much as acknowledging your proposal.
They will always accept invites to special events but not your house.
I will never forget what my best friend’s mother said one evening when I was 15 years old. She said “You know Deniz, I tried something this year. You know how open and social our family has been for years. How we are always inviting people into our home and organizing things for the community. Well, I also realized that I am also the first one to call most of my friends on any given day. So this year I did an experiment. I stopped reaching out to see how many people would reach out to me first. And I was amazed that only a handful of the people I used to keep in touch with on a regular basis, made an effort to see how the family was doing.”
This stayed with me for years. Stop reaching out and see how many people come knocking on your door to see how you’re doing. Those are the people and the friendships you want to invest in.
It take two to tango though. Being the ‘used’ party in a transactional friendship is also a clear sign of lack of boundaries. ‘Oh but so and so is so nice’, or ‘I’m an empath, I can’t help but want to help people’. Both can be true, however, if you get that tight-in-the-chest feeling that your friend or acquaintance is only there to deplete the resources you have on offer, it’s up to you to cut the chord. Slow down on replying to their emails/messages and if you can, have that honest conversation. There is also no crime in silently drifting away from relationships that are one sided. I tend to cool friendships that feel disrespectful to me. And if anyone asks I do tell them why. But honestly, more often than not, a transactional friend won’t come back to ask you why you’re not itching to spend time with them, they will simply move on and find someone else to use.
Sometimes transactional friendships can be beneficial to both parties (when there’s a give and take), but I call those business relationships. Never confuse the two. A true friendship cannot survive on being a transactional one way highway.
As for me? I am eternally blessed to know my handful of people - the ones that give more than they take. I will happily give them the shirt off my back so to speak, feed their dog while they’re away and bring them chicken soup (or GoJek it) across the island. You want to be surrounded by people like my friend Alexandra, who literally made a fresh batch of strawberry crepes and sent it from Ubud to Canggu (a 45min-1hr drive) on a scooter taxi to bring to my hotel when I couldn’t meet her for breakfast because I had the flu. It literally left me speechless.
If you have even one person like that in your life, you are in good company my friend.
In Partnership with Tropical Nomad Coworking Space