21 Signs Someone Is Bad For You

1. Every time you know you are going to see them, you dress and style yourself very differently than you normally would, and are particularly concerned about how “put-together” you are going to look.

2. No matter how much time you spent on making yourself look good, you always inevitably feel uncool and unattractive when you are around them.

3. Your admiration for them extends far beyond just “I appreciate these qualities, I would maybe like to be more like that myself some day in certain ways.” It is more like “They are a much better person than me in every way and I will never be as good as them.”

4. When they don’t call you back, it tortures you.

5. You are often tortured, because “calling you back in anything resembling a timely fashion” has never been their strong point.

6. Whenever you send them a message, or call them, you always feel like you are bothering them and want to apologize for taking up any of their time.

7. Part of this is because it’s always you who is making first contact and suggesting things to do or to talk about, and you know that if they really wanted to be talking to you, they would do it themselves.

8. You’re never exactly sure what to call them in terms of their relationship to you, because you suspect that their response would be something like “Umm, no, I didn’t think we were on that level.”

9. The worst part about hanging out with them is the feeling that you are always doing a bad job at pleasing, entertaining, or impressing them.

10. The best part about hanging out with them is the feeling you get when they show you affection and approval, because you’ve done something up to their standards.

11. Every time you walk away from them, you feel markedly worse about yourself than you did before you saw them. They always take something out of you.

12. Your “real friends” always end up taking a backseat when the bad person is free, because they will always be around and the bad person only has a very limited schedule.

13. On some level, you know that hanging out with them is turning you desperate and very try-hard, but you can’t stop yourself.

14. You sometimes catch yourself laughing at jokes of theirs that aren’t funny.

15. You also agree with them over things that you totally, fundamentally, disagree with.

16. If you were to try and make a list of all the things that you get out of your relationship with them, the most you could say would likely be, “They make me feel like a better person when they care about me because I think that they are better than me.”

17. Hanging out with them often makes you forget the happiness that you get from the rest of your friends.

18. When your interests don’t align, you automatically switch over to their set of interests because you would rather please them than get what you wanted.

19. Your real friends don’t like them, and don’t think that they’re good for you.

20. On some level, you know that you will never really be good enough for them, even if you change everything to be the person that they want and get rid of everything that makes you yourself.

21. You know this because even if you did change, you would have been doing it for them. And they will never respect that.