All right look, I want to talk about something today that a few people have been getting on my ass about, which is that I have blocked some people that I used to know.
I considered them to be my friends and now I don’t consider them to be my friends.
And I blocked a bunch of other people who I was never really friends with in the first place. We were just acquaintances or something.
And so, I’ve had a couple of really close people that are friends of mine (friends that are like family members) who are like:
Why are you doing this? Why are you blocking people?
And I want to show you something that I learned in therapy about how to distinguish your real friends from other friends.
There are exactly six categories that I want to teach you about, and this is what my therapist taught me.
So once upon a time I was in therapy, and my therapist at the time, Joel (the greatest therapist ever), I was complaining to him about how some friend of mine was not being responsive to me or something.
And he goes:
“Doug, you have a very valuable lesson I’m going to teach you right now, and you’re going to take this lesson with you for the rest of your life.”
And he was right.
He was a kind of teaching therapist. It was like he was a therapist who was a professor of the brain and emotions and intellect, he was a genius, and he was really great.
And he fixed me in a lot of different ways.
So he gets up from his chair and he walks over to a whiteboard, and then he drew these six columns:
Friends
Acquaintances
Work friends
Frienemies
Enemies
Extended people
And he goes:
“See this friends column? You want to put everybody you know in the friends column.”
And I was like:
“Yeah, that’s true. I love people. I want everybody to be my friend, unless I’m sleeping with them and then they’re my lover.”
He was like:
“You can’t do that. Doug, this is the problem that you’re having, is that you think everybody’s your friend. So when they don’t act in a friendly manner to you, you’re emotionally hurt. You get injured inside. And so we’re going to teach you now the different categories that you need to start putting people in. Not all of them go in your friends group.”
So you have your friends.
You have acquaintances.
You have work friends, who are not necessarily your friends, but sometimes they are your friends or they are acquaintances.
Then you have frenemies. These are people who pretend to be your friend, but they suck, and they do crap behind your back, such as flirt with your lover all the time in front of you, behind your back, or on social media. Or they try to get you in trouble at work. They’re your friend to your face, or you go out and have drinks with them, but then all of a sudden, they’re trying to get you fired for something you tweeted. Or any number of things like this makes someone a frienemy.
There’s a guy in town, every time I see him, he’s like, “Hey!” He’s so nice to me … and everybody tells me what the guy has said and done behind my back. But we’re in Las Vegas. In Las Vegas, it’s a go along to get along town. You know, everybody’s always pretending that we’re all in this friends category — which I like! I still want everybody to be my friend!
If you’re seeing this and you’re like, “Doug, I want to be in your friends column, congrats, you’re in my friends column. All you gotta do is just contact me every now and then say, “Let’s go have a drink or food or chips and dip.”
Anyway. So there is another category here: enemies. Now enemies is different than frenemies because a frenemy pretends to be your friend but they’re an enemy.
An enemy, you see them and they’re like: “Hey I hate you.” They’re just very upfront about it, or you see them and they just walk away or whatever. They’re not pretending. They are your enemy.
I don’t know if I have any enemies in town. I probably have enemies somewhere, but I don’t know. All the enemies I have are frienemies.
And then you have extended people, like friends of friends, or you go out to a bar scene and then you get to know people, because they’re in a scene. So they’re not quite acquaintances, or something like that.
I don’t have lovers on here, because this is about friends. This isn’t about people you sleep with. I mean, I guess there could be a friends-plus category. You can make this categories list any way you want.
If you can still see my Facebook, or you can still see my Instagram, or if you still can text me and I text you back, then you’re not blocked.
The people who are blocked, I don’t like them or respect them or love them, and I tried to make them my friend. They’re probably, like, “I thought we were friends.” Okay. Well, then, they are just not good at being friends.
If you have a friend, or they claim to be a friend, and they’re not treating you properly, then I strongly recommend you make this list.
I give people 8 million chances. I give people who I’m dating a million chances. I give people a lot of chances. So if I pull them out of the friend category and then I put them somewhere else? Hey man, I had a good reason for that.
Do your categories, figure out where people are, then you will know whether you could ask them to do stuff, or whether they’re going to never contact you, or whether they’re not going to be responsive to your texts, or your phone calls, or whatever it is.
Make your list.
Figure out where people land in your life.
I love you.
I hope you’re having a great day.
dougable 