An Update on Recognizing Behaviors That Define a ‘Garbage Person’

Adapted from an online discussion.

Dear Carolyn:
About the “
garbage friend
” from awhile back: It wasn’t an affair! I’m not sure why someone else said that, but it wasn’t. I’d been pursuing a certain opportunity, which I’d broadcast to friends, family, coworkers, etc.

For months, Friend heard how happy and optimistic I was. I told her what I was doing, asking her for advice, which she gave, and giving her inside information as part of what I thought was building emotional intimacy. Friend ended up getting that opportunity before I found out I’d been rejected. She left a folder in our booth at one of our happy hours that got knocked onto the floor. I cleaned it up.

She never once let me know her intentions, which was hilarious because I was going to find out anyway! I had to “untell” all those people, and it was even more humiliating because they all knew Friend too. (That experience is one of the reasons I tend not to share good news.) An affair would have been less humiliating because not that many people would have known!

She frittered the opportunity away and left town. I have a draft response to her that says, “Our friendship didn’t drift apart. . .I ended it because of your actions, which include dishonesty and lack of integrity.” And, “you’ve probably changed in the last 20 years, but I don’t want to take the risk.” Friend never did own up to how long her lies by omission had been occurring. I hope this update clarifies things.

— Are You [Bleeping] Kidding Me, again

Are You [Bleeping] Kidding Me, again: It does, a lot. Thank you for the update, and, even though it was two decades ago, I’m sorry for your slow-rolling humiliation. Objectively speaking, though, it may have been less of a face-pie than you thought it was. Your pain is 100 percent real, but humiliation is disproportionately huge for the person feeling it. Because you’re the one who cares the very mostest.

Even people who are only one ring out from your center were likely to think it was a bummer for you, but not fundamentally damaging to their image of you. The sense you were diminished in the eyes of others was and is likely unfounded (though your friend almost surely was). That doesn’t make Friend’s duplicity okay. Lesser deceptions end friendships permanently. Again, though, there is objectively another side to this: Some omissions are straight-up treachery, but sometimes they’re just runaway awkwardness or cowardice.

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