8 Types Of Frenemies You Can Have
By Sari Moon
Digital Frenemy. Nobody considers this person your friend except for Facebook. You don’t talk; you just keep tabs on them because they’re like a bottomless spring of schadenfreude from which you like to drink whenever you’re feeling bad about yourself, or you’re bored, or you’re trying to entertain your friends with duckface photos and AIM-circa-1999 status updates (dOn’t HaTe Me ‘CuZ U AiN’T mE~~~). It’s not healthy, but neither is watching television or living in metropolitan areas, so.
‘Best Friend Of The Person You’re Dating Who’s The Same Sex As You’ Frenemy. Oh, the complexities of dating a dude whose best friend is some hot, power-tripping BEST-FRIEND-4-LIFE Mila Kunis lookin’ chick. Sometimes the girlfriend/best friend relationship goes off without a hitch, but in the case that it doesn’t? Get ready to kiss some ass, compliment her shoes, and desperately attempt to set her up with every upstanding guy in the Tri-State area. Best of luck with that sh-t.
The Live-In Frenemy. You were initially friends before you moved in together and even during the first few months of cohabitation, but it turns out that she is morally bankrupt and you don’t like to clean up after yourself and y’all just don’t like each other, after all, but you’re both too nice/ afraid to say anything about it for fear of disturbing the pH balance of your home (which is rent controlled and a two-block walk from the subway, I mean…). Instead, you perpetuate this fantasy in which your home runs on rainbows and stardust when in actuality you’ve both been artfully avoiding each other for months and your relationship is starting to mirror your parents’, pre-divorce, #dark.
Competitive Frenemy. You would like this person, if every hang out didn’t devolve into some pissing match that channels your inner Tonya Harding. “Congratulations on the new gig! Wall Street Journal, right? What’s so weird is they basically begged me to fill that position. Small world. I turned it down because it didn’t pay enough…” “That is really weird, they said they chose me because of my experience at Fast Company and The Economist and all that… I thought you were just a blogger? Hm, strange.”
Professional Frenemy. The Professional Frenemy works in your office and is either: a. an overachieving sycophant who comes in early, stays late, and can make you look incompetent from his Honeymoon on a remote island or, b. a lazy and sort of useless floater who needs assistance doing menial tasks such as operating a stapler and logging into his email. You normally wouldn’t pretend to like this person, except everyone you work with seems to think he’s great and you’ve kind of got a permanent bitchy scowl on your face and can’t really afford to tip the scales. So every time your boss is all, “I LOVE THIS GUY. ISN’T DAVID THE BEST?!” you’re like, “Yes, he’s the best! …at making me want to hole-punch my eyeballs out… hey, Dave! What are you up to after work? Let’s get drinks!”
Fallen Angel Frenemy. This person was once your friend, but then some catastrophic falling out occurred ages ago and now — too mature to spit on one another, publicly call each other “dead-eyed whore bag,” or plain old fist fight — you acknowledge each other simply, ask what’s new, pretend to make future plans to really catch up because you’re both so! over! the past; then whisper “die, dead-eyed whore bag,” as you glide away from the scene of the crime.
Reluctant Frenemy. You don’t even realize this person is your frenemy until you innocently criticize them to a mutual friend over some wine one night and all of a sudden it’s four hours later and you’re smashed and having an out-of-body experience in which you see and hear yourself repeating, for the third time, “I MEAN, SHE NEVER LEAVES THE CORRECT AMOUNT OF MONEY FOR THE BILL LIKE WHAT THE HELL IS HER DAMAGE, I CAN’T EVEN…” that you realize, holy crow, I hate this b-tch.