When I contemplate the members of my social network, I am mostly filled with unadulterated feelings of love and warmth: I simply can’t wait to see them again, in the knowledge that we will bask in mutual affection and support.
A handful, however, arouse quite different emotions – a mixture of eagerness and dread. They promise encounters that are the conversational equivalent of Russian roulette. In the right mood, these individuals can deliver a fun-filled evening, but if I catch them at the wrong moment, they can drain me of all my goodwill. There is simply no knowing what is to come.
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If this sounds familiar, then you too have frenemies. Psychologists call them “ambivalent relationships” and they don’t just have the potential to ruin a good party, they also have surprising consequences for your well-being. According to a wealth of research, these love-hate relationships are often more stressful than interactions with people who are consistently nasty. They can damage your mental and physical health. They might also be prematurely ageing you.
Knowing this, the simple solution would seem to be to cut ties with these people. But our relationships with frenemies aren’t simple, and ditching them isn’t always possible or even desirable. However, a deeper insight into your ambivalent relationships will help you deal with them more effectively. It could make you a better friend, too. Because, when you know the signs to look out for, you might discover that the frenemy in some of your relationships is you.
Since the 1970s, examining thousands of people over extended periods have shown that and are less susceptible to a host of different illnesses – from the common cold to Alzheimer’s disease and heart attack. Many of these studies focus on the sheer size of people’s social circles: those with larger networks appear to live longer than those with smaller ones.
Over time, however, it has become clear that the quality of our relationships can matter as much as the quantity. After all, the benefits of social connection come from feeling well understood and supported: if we know that others will have our back when we are threatened and vulnerable, life is less stressful. But not all our acquaintances leave us feeling like this. Not only do some fail to protect us from life’s slings and arrows – they will sometimes slide the knife in themselves.
How to spot a frenemy
To capture these interpersonal dynamics, and her colleagues at Brigham Young University in Utah have designed a simple scale that identifies four broad categories of relationship. You can try it for yourself. Pick a couple of people within your social network and answer the following two questions on a scale of 1 (not at all) to 6 (very much). When you are feeling in need of advice, understanding or a favour, how helpful is your connection? Likewise, how upsetting is your connection?
People who score 1 on both questions are your indifferent relationships – a neighbour, perhaps, who is rather bland company with neither good nor bad qualities. Those who score highly on the first question, while getting the lowest possible rating on the second, are your supportive social ties – the people who are an unalloyed good in your life. Others are the mirror image, with the lowest score on the first question and high marks on the second. These are purely aversive relationships. You will probably do your best to avoid talking to them unless you are forced to interact, such as in a business meeting or at a family gathering. Finally, there is the fourth category: people who are both nice and nasty. Anyone with a score of 2 or more on both scales is considered an ambivalent connection – your frenemies. They may be incredibly generous when you have a problem yet can also lash out with a bitter put-down when they feel envious or threatened.
Ambivalent connections could include a friend, parent, sibling, colleague or even a spouse – anyone with whom you have a love-hate relationship. And their ambivalence can come in many forms: it might be a lack of interest in your life rather than overt disrespect, or a general unreliability that means they are often unavailable when you need their support. It could be a partner who love-bombs you one day, but who is fiercely critical the next, leaving you unsure about their true feelings.
We might hope that in such relationships, the good would outweigh the bad, with a net positive to our overall well-being. At the very least, you would expect them to be better for us than our aversive relationships. Unfortunately, the research suggests things aren’t so simple. Holt-Lunstad’s team, for example, hooked 102 people up to portable blood pressure monitors for three days. During any social interactions, the participants could press a button to trigger the device, and after they had finished the conversation, they recorded who they had met and rated them on the scales above. As you might expect, people’s blood pressure was higher when they met an ambivalent tie compared with when they met someone who was uncomplicatedly supportive. Surprisingly, however, the ambivalent ties also provoked a .
It gets worse. In another study, Holt-Lunstad and her colleague Benjamin Clark, also at Brigham Young University, found that simply knowing that an ambivalent connection was in the next room as participants prepared to give a speech was enough to . It also slowed their recovery after the task. The frenemy didn’t need to say a word to evoke anxious feelings. In fact, even subliminal reminders of a frenemy can shatter our peace of mind.
A team led by at the University of Utah asked people to take a reaction-time test. She found that rapidly flashing the name of an ambivalent connection on the computer screen – so quick that it couldn’t be consciously detected – . Seeing the name of an entirely unpleasant connection failed to create such a large effect.
It seems that our frenemies have us in a kind of stranglehold. We may depend on their support and try our best to please them, but that emotional investment makes their occasional nastiness especially hurtful. Moreover, the uncertainty about which side of them we are going to see – Dr Jekyll or Mr Hyde – only compounds the stress of meeting them, so that we feel anxious before they have even opened their mouths. Contrast this with our aversive social ties, which mean very little to us: if we know someone is a jerk, we can more easily discount their unkind behaviour.
Frenemies can put extra strain on your heart and can raise levels of inflammation
The long-term effects of ambivalent connections may be just . Through the stress they create, regularly interacting with frenemies can and – both of which have been associated with an increased risk of mortality.
The effects have even been seen in measures of cellular ageing. At the end of our chromosomes, we have protective caps called telomeres that prevent DNA from being damaged when cells replicate. As we age, our telomeres slowly wear down and, when they become too short, cells may start to malfunction or die. Shorter telomeres are thought to put us at greater risk of many of the diseases that come with ageing – and our ambivalent connections appear to contribute to their decline. If you live with someone who often makes you feel like you are on a knife edge, or if you regularly see friends who leave you feeling that way, you are , relative to other people of a similar age.
Unpredictable bosses
It isn’t just our physical health that is at stake. Good relationships with our colleagues are one of the and resilience against burnout, so it should be little surprise that . Ambivalent bosses can be especially damaging. A recent survey examining 993 employees from 27 work groups found that bosses who provide unreliable support and sporadic unkindness can take a serious , raising the risk of depression, anxiety and emotional exhaustion.
The paradoxical nature of our ambivalent connections means that there is no simple solution. If you feel someone has become too toxic a presence in your life, you may decide to cut off contact – but that may not be possible if they are your boss or a family member, or if they are so deeply integrated into your social network that you would also risk losing supportive relationships with other people. So, what can be done?
Simply being aware of the ambivalent nature of a relationship might offer some protection. Personally, I have found that knowledge of this research helps me to manage my expectations and mentally prepare myself for the mixed feelings that interacting with frenemies might bring. This allows me to focus more on the good in these people and to , while also attempting to reduce contact when I feel that they may only add to the stresses I am facing in other areas of my life.
Just as importantly, this research has prompted me to consider my own behaviour – are there relationships in which I am the frenemy? The truth isn’t always easy to swallow. Unlike my worst frenemies, I don’t tend to lash out with barbed comments and sarcasm, but I do often fail to show others the appreciation and respect I feel for them – accidental neglect that could be taken as a sign of indifference. I am surely not alone in this. Studies show that as regularly as we could, either through thoughtlessness, shyness or the assumption that the other person will already know how important they are to us.
I am resolved to be a little more mindful of my interactions with all my ties – indifferent, aversive, ambivalent and supportive. What’s more, I now know who to hold at arm’s length and who to keep close.
