Friends - Los Angeles,CA

"Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh."
W. H. Auden

I have a friend that lies, cheats, steals, drinks,,,,,you name it. She has always been faithful to me though, would never betray me and takes my friendship seriously.

each situation is different

Great question. A friend is someone with the same quailities you have. Loyalty, honesty, laughter, goals, and morals are some of the things important to establishing a great and balanced friendship.

I had a friend that knew too much about my person financial situation. She was in a position to be a blessing to me in my financial situation but decided against it and to use another person to conduct her business. She new I was new to this business and if it weren't for me she wouldn't have even been making her purchase. I was very hurt. She even accussed me of being in the business for the money but isn't that same thing true of anyone who works? Don't we all work not just for the joy of it but also for the monetary compensation? Our friendship as it was died.

We are still friends and I am still friendly towards her but I now have put her in a different place in my circle. She no longer has privy to my personal situation in any way shape, fashion or form. She has no access to any information about my life other than good news and great things. Even if things were crappy on my end I would never trust her with that informaiton.

Yes people can make choices to do what they want. It is their choice to make but when it comes time for me to make decisions, I am in the blessing business. So if I can bless a friend's business with my purchase I would and I expect my true friends to have the same mindset.

I don't even really talk to or call this friend any longer. I will never be thrown under the bus by her again. Now when I make new friends I am looking for a certain kind of character. I did see signs and symptoms of this in her character but didn't pay attention. This will not happen to me again. I'm grateful I learned this lesson now because my future is going to be far greater than this moment in my life and I don't need people around me who aren't for my best.

I have been hurt by friends who both lied, or talked about me and my life behind my back. It definitely changed the friendship to the point that it was over because if you are my friend you won't lie or talk about me behind my back. If you are not my friend, why would I waste my time?

i think life is too short to be hanging with people who are self destructive, I don't need them to pull me down too.

It sounds bad but i think it is true for everyone, if I'm not getting somethign out of the friendship then i'll look for someone that can, entertain me, listen to me, do the activities i like with me. If someone is boring, or talks constantly abou themselves or don't ever want to do anything with me, then i'll let it fade off. maybe when the situation changes we'll hook back up who knows.

I have only been screwed over by one "friend"...and I don't waste my time with her anymore...I made her over $500K in one year and she still owes me $10K...and tried to black ball me...thank God people knew me and my ethics and didn't listen to her diatribe.

I'm not sure I could be around someone who knowingly committed fraud...people might assume I'm like that and I don't like people assuming anything about me.

Yes, i've been hurt by friends...it happens in life...overall - I forgive...but I also HOPE I learn from my mistakes and not let it get repeated.....lying? well....that all depends upon the lie and why it was going down...I don't condone lying in general...so there had better be a VERY GOOD reason for it...

Qualities:
morals...those are important to me - they go hand-in-hand with values.
loyalty - treat me the way I treat you (yes, direct answers, blunt)
caring - understanding that it's NOT all about me and a relationship requires give and take.
loves to laugh...I love to laugh...but try to know when to be serious.

People are people. They make mistakes. Now I have different "levels" of friends, and friends for different "things" (one to make me laugh, one to go have fun with, one to just do nothing and be comfortable with, one to give advice, etc, etc). In my closest friends, I see weaknesses (and I'm sure they see mine) but we love each other anyway.
My bff, back when we were in school, and I had some weird issues. Not in normal life, but on trips, especially with a lot of alcohol involved, she would try to "win" the guys that I was with the night before. Like if I was with bartender, then the next day she would try to get him away from me. I NEVER played that game with her though. I was always of the mind that if I needed to "fight for a guy" then he wasn't worth it, and I was NOT going to fight with a FRIEND over a random boy. So while it was odd to me, it didn't bother me. I viewed it more like a low self esteem on her part rather than anything against me. If she started to flirt with bartender, I'd just move to Jeep guy without an argument. Or whatever. (We were 18 and idiots). But it did seem like she needed to go after and "win". Kind of sad. When my husband and I were dating, I didn't introduce him to her at first.....not because I was worried about him (she was the opposite of his type) but because I didn't want to have to be mad at her if she tried anything stupid. Funny enough, looking back, she NEVER tried that if it was someone I really liked. And now that we're adults and have kids, that's just not something that's even on the table anymore, so it's a moot point. On the other hand, I'm pretty brash and have said things that could probably come out pretty insulting without meaning to. But I've been with her through her lowest points in life, even if it meant grabbing the first plane out. And she has done the same for me. Once I said I was unhappy and just wanted to go home. ONCE. She called me 30 minutes later with her flight information and the reservation number to the Uhaul she was paying for. Seriously? We've both been "Johnny on the spot" if we needed each other. There's loyalty that goes beyond the fact that we're REALLY different (I want to go out, and she's a homebody, etc....we have the same values and parenting goals, though, we understand each other really well because we were together sooo long---it's been 22 years so far). Another friend of mind, she's darn near perfect. We were friends 23 years ago, lost touch for 10 years when we both moved away at the same time, but found each other again and that's awesome. But dude. She's into this newage fruity stuff. She pays for people to do "readings" or whatever. I think that's really messed up. But she's my buddy and that's certainly not a deal breaker, especially since she didn't dump me back when I was a drunk. I had one friend tell someone who was NOT my friend any longer something that I wouldn't have wanted that person to know. That was a betrayal of trust, but it wasn't an official "secret", just something I didn't feel comfortable with this other person knowing. (She had an uncanny ability to twist basic facts into strange dramas that could only be compared to a Mexican soap opera). I was hurt by that, but when I spoke to my friend about it, she was like "Y'all were really close in high school!" (Yes, we were. But we'd had a falling out that I hadn't told my friend about). So although I wasn't thrilled, I forgave her. She learned that she should let me do my OWN catching up with old friends, lol......and I realized that a friendship wasn't worth tossing away from a case of bad judgement.
But not everything is forgivable. One girl kissed my exbf of.....hmm....I'd dated him for 11 months and we'd been broken up for 2 weeks. She told me in front of all my friends that she made out with him and made a joke about it. I broke her shin (and the shin guard) during practice that day, but I didn't get in a fight with her. We had an "understanding" that day and stayed away from each other. Another friend had an argument with me and then went and called EVERYONE else we were mutual friends with to tell them. But I didn't tell anyone (even though the argument was basically that he had done something off, we argued about it, and I said something mean about what he'd done). I felt like it was between he and I. He wanted to gather people together to be on his "side". I thought that was awfully girly.....and lame. He tried to make up with me, but I told him he didn't need to bother; I had no respect for him and there was really nowhere to go. We haven't spoken since. So, yeah sometimes friendships are over. Sometimes, they last forever. The reasons are pretty hard to explain though.
I think some of what makes a good friendship is simply chemistry. Loyalty (like in my first friend's "boy issues", she never betrayed my loyalty with someone I really cared about....just more the one night stand kind of people....but we're both fiercely loyal!). Trust. I think that you meet people who you can help with one thing, and they can help with another thing (like I can keep one friend a little grounded, while she makes me laugh......but I can make another laugh, and she is a great listener.....etc). I think friendship is pretty hard to define, if you can't tell by all this rambling. :P

Penny,
It ALWAYS depends on the situation. However..... love yourself. If a friend is not a good friend......(lies to you or throws you under the bus) why would you want to be their friend?
P.

Well, is she doing this to YOU... or others and anyone and everyone????

And, you need to decide, what a friend is, to you, personally.

If she is committing CRIMES... well, you are knowing of that.

I had a best friend for over 10 yrs. We did eveything together. If you saw me you saw her and vise versa. We were so close people either thought we were gay or sisters. Our kids grew up together too. We had divorced our husbands about the same time and just became really great friends. You know you have a good friend when after a life changing surgery you have to have some one bathe and clean you and she does this for you. Early in our friendship we had made a pact..my men friends were off limits to her and the same went to me. Well there was on man that I had loved for several years and we decided to call it quits. I still had deep feelings for this man and she knew this, I recently found out that they had been meeting up. This man has another GF and I'm ok with that but to find out that my BF and him had something going on hurt me like hell. Me and him had not been in a relationship for a while ,I told her we were no longer friends and not to even speak to me if she saw me out in about. Its been about 4 months since I have even spoke a word to her. And she hasn't never offered up an apology to me. Am I wrong to feel this way? Also towards the end of our friendship everything she talked about was a lie. It got to where I could not trust nothing she said.

I would not care if the friend lied (if it were not to me or about me), but if she or he threw me under the bus or left me out of social situations, I am done with them. Those are two biggies to me.

I was the site coordinator, not technically a boss, but in charge. I befriended her when she got the temporary job. No one else did. they already had their cliques. When they finally opened up to her 6 months later, she then did all she could to belittle me in meetings. One on one, she was one way but in the meetings she was a thorn. I let the friendship go. Thank goodness that she was only a temp.

over but when i was younger, i was too forgiving