When your problem with your friend group is them
Extraction from a toxic friend group
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I recently published a piece describing different scenarios of a friendship’s demise that resonated with many readers (yay!). A conversation with
about this piece made me aware of another scenario worth describing - betrayal by friends within a friend group, and its consequences.When your problem with your friend is you
Hacking Narcissism is an audience supported publication about navigating interpersonal narcissism in all areas of life. Your paid subscription supports protected time dedicated to research, analysis and the development of practical content to help us all successfully navigate situations impacting our lives. If you resonate with and value my work, please…
Friend groups come in many forms. Individuals or best friends can become absorbed into an established friend group. Individuals who are excluded from other groups can come together to form their own group. People who have been allocated to a specific place or project can evolve into a friend group. Cliques within a school, community or workplace. The list goes on.
Some friend groups (as in not all friend groups) have a tendency to eventually stratify into a social hierarchy with a leader and a mix of passive and reluctant followers. These groups can look a lot like the member’s own family dynamics as each person defaults into a familiar role or are positioned into a role based on the leader’s relational blueprint and what they draw out of each member to meet their needs.
It’s also highly likely that members of this friend group are unaware of their position in the hierarchy since each person is focused on behaving properly to maintain their membership and acceptance by the leader. Members in this type of friend group setup can also delude themselves into believing that they are in an egalitarian arrangement, especially when any of the individual members believe they are closest to the centre of power.
Family system roles in a friend group
Adults who have never gone to therapy or studied family systems would be unaware that they are re-enacting a familiar storyline occurring concurrently in their own family of origin.
There are number of roles within any family system, even if it doesn’t qualify as dysfunctional because most families are stratified into a hierarchy. In general, parents/ caregivers are the authorities and children are not. Each parent or authority figure has a specific role, whether they are the dominant parent or not. Overall, the dominant parent establishes the expectations, rules and values of the system and the rest of the members are expected/conditioned to get on board, whether this is enforced or not.
There are many combinations and permutations of these roles in a family dynamic so it’s important not to get too stuck in what a role looks like. You can read more about these roles here and let the references take you down a few rabbit holes.
The roles of the children include the Golden Child, the Black Sheep and the Invisible Child. As you can guess, the Golden Child is favoured by the dominant parent, the Black Sheep is the least favoured and the Invisible Child is tolerated, especially if they don’t get in the way. Any one of these roles can become the Scapegoat, a temporary role when something they did or didn’t do destabilises the system and upsets the dominant authority. The Black Sheep is most likely to be blamed for the transgressions of the Golden Child and will therefore spend a lot of the time as the Scapegoat compared to the other family members. Some Invisible Children try to overthrow the Golden Child despite the wrath of the Golden Child and/or one of the authorities in the family.
Anyone who is the Black Sheep of their family will know what it’s like to be the Scapegoat from time to time, or always. Each Black Sheep (and the other roles) has the potential to become the Scapegoat in this friend group too.
When your existence disrupts the friend group and they turn on you
You’ve been friends with the members of this group for years, perhaps since high school or university. Some minor conflicts occurred in the past between some members, even between you and another member, but they always go resolved with some mediation from the most confident person in the group. You always saw this person as a natural leader but never saw them as the boss or leader of the group. You really appreciated being part of a group where no one minded if individual members would hang out without the rest of the group. Those catch ups included some gossip about other members out of concern for whatever was going on for that individual and its impact on the overall group. You felt closer to one or two of the members and you trusted them with some of your deeper thoughts and feelings, just as they did the same with you.
As you pursued areas of interests and relationships outside of the friend group, you started to experience a shift in your thinking. You would share some of your ideas with your closer friends, thinking they weren’t interesting enough to spread within the group. You also became weary about the power plays within the group. It had become clearer to you that there was a ringleader who enjoyed attention and needed to feel in control. You didn’t let it bother you because you had other social outlets.
Your friends began to notice you missing a few gatherings and checked in on you under the guise of concern. They each sounded supportive and understanding when you told them that you had a lot going on but that you were fine. You didn’t think much of it until the ringleader confronted you with the ‘you’ve changed’ conversation, that the friend group was concerned and wondered what was going on. Your reduced engagement seemed to have a larger impact than you anticipated, and you wondered why everyone was making such a big deal about it. It’s not like the group ever showed concern for you like this in the past - why now?
As a Black Sheep or non-Golden Child, you’re expected to prioritise the friend group and continue to be available to its leader(s). If you were the Golden Child to the leader, your position of privilege is at risk of being usurped by a lesser ranked Golden Child or withdrawn from you by the leader through scapegoating. Choosing to prioritise something or someone else that is viewed as a threat to the stability of the friend group/system results in punishment, though that’s not how the group would see it.
Scapegoating is a process that the leader uses to turn the group against you. It first involves the leader gathering intel about you that can be weaponised at a later time. The leader grooms the friends closest to you to betray you by sharing your secrets out of concern for you. The leader casts doubt on your character, erodes trust between you and members of the group, damages your reputation by distorting past events and information they gained from others about you, humiliates you and excludes you from group gatherings (because everyone assumed you’d be busy).
These are also actions that bullies use to attack, humiliate and eliminate their target.
It’s possible that some of the friends feel uncomfortable with how you’ve been treated and the obvious rift, rumours and backstabbing in the group, and tell you their feelings privately. Yet, no one confronts the leader and the Golden Child. One or two of the Invisible Children (who didn’t have dirt to spill about you) support you behind the scenes.
The events that have unfolded quickly have a shocking and traumatising impact on you. You can no longer trust anyone in the group. You feel betrayed by everyone and it keeps you up at night, panicked about what people will say about you next. You’re terrified that this drama will spill out beyond the group and spread into other areas of your life. You feel alone and rejected. You’re also confused about what led to your disgrace because you’ve been gaslit about your deteriorating mental health or negative external influences rather than given the actual reason for retaliation.
The purpose of all this is to bring you to a point of surrender so you can grovel for re-entry to the group and assume your old position, after promises of repentance to the leader and the group.
It takes some time and counsel from friends and supports outside the group to see how dysfunctionally they behaved. When you’re ready, you cut ties with the group via the ring leader with some choice words. Members of the group reach out trying to find out what happened, playing innocent bystander in a vague attempt to improve your image of them, while providing excuses and non-apologies for what happened. You give them each the same unsatisfying response and tell them that you won’t be responding to any more messages.
As you gain distance from the events and emotional distance from the members of the group, you are able to see the familiar chain of events of scapegoating that has happened to you in previous friendships, work relationships and continues to play out in your own family.
While I suspect that this is a common story for many of your dear readers, as someone who was betrayed and/or a betrayer (me included), these situations are often catalysts to begin one’s unlearning/de-conditioning/re-programming process regarding our relationship with authority.
Thank you for reading, sharing, commenting, subscribing and for being a friend to others,
Nathalie
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Interesting. I haven't had to deal with this in decades, since I became an atheist. I've heard that women deal with this stuff all the time, but I only saw it in my dysfunctional family of origin, and the toxic cesspool of fundamentalist religion.
I love your titles - They hold their own without text and somehow tell the entire story!