Why Frenemies May Be Hazardous to Your Health

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/28/opinion/frenemies-relationships-health.html

by raybb • 3 years ago

49 32 3 years ago

nytimes.com

linusg789• 3 years ago

http://web.archive.org/web/20230528093253/https://www.nytime...

amelius• 3 years ago

Does it hold for companies too? I consider Google to be a "frenemy".

lisasays• 3 years ago

Yup and it's key to how they operate. Stockholm syndrome all the way down.

flashgordon• 3 years ago

Imo absolutely. Work has always been just that. You give your hours for pay. If coworkers are not aholes that is a reasonable bar. Instead you infuse words like impact and family in your working relationships you suddenly have this dynamic tensing towards Stockholm syndrome and passive aggressiveness where everyone smiles and no one is happy (except the sociopaths may be?). Sadly he seems to have caught into this!

m3kw9• 3 years ago

It’s just one of the complex social things you have to deal with especially at work places

evil_genius• 3 years ago

For a long time I've personally felt that if someone in my life is going back and forth from being friendly to being mean, I mark that relationship as being negative. Not a question in my mind.

Relationships are to be judged by consistent behavior over weeks, months and years. If I have to keep guessing if I'm going to get the stick or the carrot from someone, to me it's a no-brainer that I shouldn't expect kindness from them.

photochemsyn• 3 years ago

Some people are moody, i.e. emotionally unstable, so it's just a coin toss as to what kind of interaction you're going to have with them. Dealing with them successfully involves a tedious routine of 'taking their temperature'. It's really more pleasant to deal with a consistently grouchy person than a bipolar type, as you always know what to expect.

The truly manipulative sociopathic type is rarer but they're the ones who behave that way deliberately in an effort to control others, keep them off balance, influence their behavior and so on. A classic example is the 'secret-gatherer' whose friendly outreaches are designed to gather compromising information which can be leaked at some opportune moment, aka 'the blackmailer'. Thankfully most people aren't like this, but identifying the ones who are and avoiding them like the plague is a valuable life skill.

twelve402• 3 years ago

yup that's what complicates things as to simply "avoid ambiguous friendships". I've had the best times and experiences with pretty volatile people (the first kind you mentioned). It's a lot of work on my side to put up with the mood swings but I feel like it's still a net positive, though it surely would be less stress to hang out with someone calmer.

CommanderData• 3 years ago

I agree with your second paragraph. But are there not moody people i.e. emotionally unstable types in all of us. People, myself included go through troubling periods in life and can cause them to be less emotionally aware of themselves. Sometimes we're closer to this reality than we imagine.

Should we not have a degree of tolerance towards this and even chronic cases because some people's lives a just severely fudged up sometimes i.e. Health reasons outside of their control.

I wish I was 18 again without the worry of the worries I have today, carefree almost 100% of the time but life attaches it's baggage on all of us and it's to be expected that some people will be down, can't expect people to be the reproducible version emotionally every time.

dallasg3• 3 years ago

"Help is the sunny side of control."

hyperthesis• 3 years ago

sBqQu3U0wH5• 3 years ago

"Friendships" can be quite a headache, huh? That's why I don't have any friends and don't consider coworkers as friends either. Zero problems, simple as.

scyzoryk_xyz• 3 years ago

beep beep boop people removed - life optimized for maximum efficiency kzzzzrt ding ding happiness achieved

sBqQu3U0wH5• 3 years ago

This, but unironically.

ttjjtt4• 3 years ago

“Sunshine causes sunburn that’s why I stay inside 24/7. simples.”

No social life is really really bad for your long term health outcomes. It’s net negative for you however you spin it. Please reconsider this way of living. Best wishes.

sBqQu3U0wH5• 3 years ago

“Sunshine causes sunburn that’s why I stay inside 24/7. simples.”

Unlike blabbering about nonsense during coffee breaks, sun exposure causes the production of vitamin D, and therefore has a positive effect on health. It's a comparison of a very different things. Of course, too much of everything can cause negative effects and so does the same sunshine.

No social life is really really bad for your long term health outcomes.

No, it's a fake problem.

shrimp_emoji• 3 years ago

No social life is really really bad for your long term health outcomes.

Fyi, this pop-psych wisdom was never meant to be universal. For hardcore introverts, little to no social life can be the healthy optimum (assuming you're functioning in society and not counting your coworkers as part of your social life, etc).

They just don't say that because it doesn't apply to most people. Hardcore introverts are relatively rare, and it risks misinterpretation by normal people to not fix their social lives wondering if they're one of those.

twelve402• 3 years ago

how does that even work? who do you hang out with/kick crazy ideas with? learn new things from? family maybe? i'm not the most social person either but you got to have some kind of an outlet?

sBqQu3U0wH5• 3 years ago

who do you hang out with/kick crazy ideas with?

I am not sure what you mean. I work on some side projects alone and ideas are my own.

learn new things from?

Internet has all the information I'd ever need.

richk4492• 3 years ago

In one experiment, people gave impromptu speeches on controversial topics in front of a friend who offered feedback. Unbeknown to the participants, the researchers had randomly assigned the friend to give ambivalent or negative comments. Receiving mixed feedback caused higher blood pressure than pure criticism. “I would have gone about the topic differently, but you’re doing fine” proved to be more distressing than “I totally disagree with everything you’ve said.”

I can’t read the actual study, but this description makes it seem like the ambivalent feedback case is the growth opportunity. “That was great” and “that was completely terrible” aren’t really actionable feedback, but “that was decent but I would change this” is helpful. Maybe helpful advice is more stressful because it is a chance to change and grow and those are stressful activities? So maybe if we want to push ourselves, we need more frenemies?

Put another way, should going through life with the minimal possible stress be the goal?

Delk• 3 years ago

I don't think "I would have gone about the topic differently, but you’re doing fine" is a growth opportunity. It just has something of an ambiguously negative vibe without actually saying what it's about, while also kind of saying something superficially positive without making it easy to tell if it's genuine. That kind of ambivalence can be mentally disorienting.

Also, if you're consistently not on the same page with someone, or are even consistently in bad terms with them, you tend to keep some distance at least emotionally.

If you are, on the other hand, (mostly) consistently on good terms with someone and end up being closer, most of the interaction is probably going to be positive -- even if that sometimes includes constructive criticism. (Good constructive criticism is probably not really ambivalent either; there might be clear good and clear bad things, with an overall feeling of both people having the other's best interest in mind.)

Either way, you know what to expect: you can protect yourself from negativity by keeping your distance, or you can expect mostly positive experiences with someone who you let closer.

Inconsistently positive and negative means you don't know whether to keep your guard up or down.

richk4492• 3 years ago

I don't think "I would have gone about the topic differently, but you’re doing fine" is a growth opportunity. It just has something of an ambiguously negative vibe without actually saying what it's about, while also kind of saying something superficially positive without making it easy to tell if it's genuine.

Totally fair point. If that was the entirety of the feedback then it isn’t helpful at all. I was assuming that it was the topic sentence and followed by specifics.

I wish I could see the actual study, rather than a two sentence interpretation of it.

sdwr• 3 years ago

The devil is in the details!

swimorsinka• 3 years ago

For me, it's been more useful to look at these relationships through the lens of reciprocity. Am I in a reciprocal relationship with this friend/coworker or not?

In my friendships, am I doing most of the work to text, call, or hangout or is it relatively equal? At work, if I do something that helps you, do you help me in return, or do you turn around and screw me over?

Getting away from the relationships which are non reciprocal has given me a lot of mental peace over the past few years. Most people are not like this, but something like 1/5 to 1/10 of people are.

drewcoo• 3 years ago

I don't know about the other commenters on HN, but I like to make things. At work and not.

Groupthink and design by committee sucks. Creative tension is incredibly useful.

What would the Pixies have been without Frank and Kim? What would the Beatles have been without Paul and John? Etc.

I think the article is too busy pointing blame fingers and devoid of any useful advice about making sure everyone feels safe to have some conflict and having rules everyone agrees to beforehand for argument and even arbitration if things get messy.

beedeebeedee• 3 years ago

The article seems to argue that the best state of affairs for individuals is for others to be either consistently negative (so they can be ignored by individuals) or consistently positive (so they are listened to and make individuals feel good). That is not only a recipe for groupthink, but also for individuals to stay in denial about ugly truths. I grew up reading the NY Times, the New Yorker, etc, believing it to be sophisticated, and am continually disappointed by articles that just cater to the biases of its readers- in this case, explicitly saying being challenged in their beliefs is bad for their health.

bentt• 3 years ago

This is the social equivalent to the old programmer axiom “my code would be perfect if it wasn’t for your data”

egberts1• 3 years ago

New York Times and I are frenemies: they are detestable but judgmental and mouthy, I am nothing but a soul that cannot be sold and a mind that cannot be dissuaded into their carefully-crafted narratives.

Yet, both of us need each other to know where we stand.

Why Frenemies May Be Hazardous to Your Health

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