bad idea.
When I was in college, I met a girl who I considered my best friend. Later in life, I realized that what we had wasn’t true friendship at all. I’m not sure what to call it.
We had some good times together—lots of fun. But she was manipulative. And she pushed me without me even realizing what was happening. Things she said to me influenced some important life decisions I made. And taking her “advice” or “suggestions” turned out to be the wrong choice.
At the time, though, they didn’t seem like choices at all. She pressured me until I felt like I had no choice. She led me to believe that making certain decisions would be better for me or would make me cooler/more fun/more popular. I never even cared about those things. But she made me care. She made me think they were important. Fun, sure. I want to have fun. But I was already cool, and I didn’t need to be popular. She made me believe I wasn’t cool enough, and I did need to be popular.
It’s on me that I let her influence me so much. I know that. It was a bad idea to listen to her. A severe lack of self-confidence will do that to a person—make you do what someone else “suggests” because you figure they must know better than you do.
I can’t know for sure, of course, but I firmly believe that not letting her pressure me into certain decisions would have led me to a much different and far better life than I have now. In fact, I should have dropped her from my life the moment she started basically telling me what to do.
I often wonder if she was pushing me into poor decisions intentionally so she would always be better than me. Because everything with her turned into a competition (follow link for much more about my relationship with her), and she wanted to “win“.
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I do not believe either of these delicious men would be a bad idea.
p.s. — By the way, one of the the first things I think of whenever I hear “bad idea” is a really old SNL fake ad for Bad Idea Jeans. Even though it’s very outdated, when I saw it on an SNL fake ad compilation, it totally made me laugh. For some weird reason, it stayed with me, and to this day, whenever something is a bad idea, instead of saying that, I say “Bad Idea Jeans” in a commercial voice-over type voice. I know, something is seriously wrong with me.
©2022 what sandra thinks
what sandra thinks 
I’ve had a few friends like that as well. In my teens and 20’s I was very easily swayed by them because I wanted to belong and to have all the friends and to be accepted into groups. But I was left feeling empty and not like myself. I’m glad that as an adult I am able to detach myself from people like that and be ok with myself for the choice not to be around them.
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Oh yes, the wanting to belong also played a role, for sure. But my “friend” always pushed me the wrong way. I think this is all another part of why I hate myself now–because I should have been myself then.
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Aw yeah thats hard! 😥
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I am lucky that I didn’t have any friends like that. Then again, I didn’t really have a big social circle in high school and still don’t.
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I have no social circle at all now. Except here.
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