HAVING good friends is meant to be a key part of a happy and healthy life, but are they actually worth the effort? Here are some reasons to consider ditching them.
They want you to leave the house
Despite knowing you spend a fortune on various TV streaming subscriptions, your mates are always on at you to go out and ‘have fun’ like you used to. This usually involves going to a pub where you pay six quid for a pint of the exact same beer you’ve got in the fridge at home, and then moan to each other about how much your mortgage payments have increased.
They want to come round to your house
Your home is a tranquil retreat, where you can leave the dirty dishes to pile up and never vacuum. If your mates come over you have to tidy up in an effort to seem like a functional adult, and then they just drink all your booze and take the piss out of the tatty Reservoir Dogs poster you’ve had since 1994. It’s even worse if they turn up unannounced and catch sight of the VR headset you only use for porn.
They are a bad influence
You’re feeling pretty smug about doing regular exercise, losing a bit of weight and cutting down on your drinking. It’s only when you’re out with your mates that you realise your willpower hasn’t improved, you just don’t have the temptation at home. By the time your friends are buying trays of flaming sambucas, getting absolutely shitfaced on a Tuesday night seems like a great idea. But you can guarantee they won’t be there for the three full days it now takes you to recover.
They get in touch and then ghost you
You’ve just about accepted the fact that you’re never going to see an old friend again, when they get in touch out of the blue about meeting up. You make the effort to look at a calendar and suggest some possible dates, then don’t hear back from them for weeks. After angrily writing them off as useless, they tell you their mum had to go into hospital, so then you have to feel bad about feeling pissed off with them as well.
They cost you a fortune
The costs of having friends are never ending. Stag and hen dos, weddings, significant birthdays. And then they start having kids. Once you think you’ve reached a lull in that parade of expense, they start posting their parkrun times on Facebook. There’s only one place that ends up: a JustGiving page for the inevitable marathon where everybody but you seems happy to show their support to the tune of 50 quid.
They are better than you
Just when you’re feeling like you’ve got life sorted, one of your friends will do something really impressive. They’ve bought a bigger house, had another kid, got an impressive job, moved to a civilised European country. All your mates do is make you feel like shit by being more impressive humans than you, so you might as well ditch them, the bastards.