The friends you keep

You know what I’ve realised over time. If you want to understand who you’re actually dating, have a look at their environment. When dating someone, they can present a persona of themselves to you that you’d find attractive, but their environment doesn't need to adjust for you.

You can meet someone and think they seem calm, focused, loyal, intelligent and even lowkey. Then you meet their close friends and suddenly everything is so much more different.

You see the friend that’s always in some sort of drama. The one that drinks a bit too much. The one that’s always doing some sort of drugs. The one that’s outside nearly every day. The one that cheats regularly. The one without a job but somehow always has cash. The one that is constantly with a different partner. The one that doesn’t know how to handle themselves in a somewhat presentable manner. The one that never takes accountability for anything. And you start thinking. If these are the people closest to you, what do you consider normal. 

People don’t often chill around people they cannot relate to on some sort of level. They just don’t. Something in that dynamic has to make sense for it to still exist. You can tell me you don’t act like your friends, but if you’re surrounded by a certain type of environment long enough, you absorb some of it.

And it works in a positive sense too. Sometimes you meet someone and when you finally step into their world, you see their friends and the whole thing just makes sense. They’re supportive. They’re ambitious. They hold each other accountable. They don’t encourage nonsense.

What I find interesting is how people downplay the influence of a friendship. We pay so much attention to how someone treats us, but we forget that a person behaves differently when they’re in an environment that they’re most comfortable with. I’m sure plenty of you have seen people switch their personality based on the person or environment they’re in.

You’re dealing with the habits they picked up. The jokes they find normal. The behaviour they don’t challenge. The things they excuse. The people and acts they tolerate. The things they support and the vibe that is considered normal to them. All of that feeds into how they will treat you.

Their friends give you a free preview of who you’re going to be signing up to long term. They’re not trying to impress you. They’re just being themselves. And in the process, they often reveal the type of environment your person has been growing in. Sometimes that little preview tells you everything you need to know without the person ever saying a word.

It’s not that I’m judging. It’s about understanding the ecosystem someone has chosen to be part of. You can learn more about someone by watching who they laugh with, who they listen to, who they defend, and who they trust, than by listening to what they have to say about themselves. People slip up when they’re around the people they’re most comfortable with. And those slip ups are usually the closest thing to the truth.