How to Deal With Friends That Stab You in the Back

Establishing and maintaining friendships is one of the most rewarding things a person can do. However, there are times when you have to deal with friends that stab you in the back. While these friends are thankfully the exception, a person must take the good with the bad. To deal with these friends does take some effort and discipline but no matter what the situation anyone can do it. Here is how.

Difficulty:

Moderately Challenging

Instructions

1. Try to understand why this friend would stab you in the back. No actions are perpetrated in a vacuum and in most cases there is a reason this friend did what he did. If you can understand the reasoning maybe you can prevent it from happening again or at least see it coming.

2. Analyze your own actions and considered whether they contributed to the situation. Maybe you inadvertently hurt your friend's feeling or wronged him without even realizing it. While you may not be able to repair the friendship in question, it can help deal with friends in the future.

3. Talk to friends you have in common to get their perspective on the situation. Sometimes the distanced perspective of others can help you understand and/or deal with friends that stab you in the back. In addition, they can help you understand how others perceived your actions, which could have contributed to the situation.

4. Speak with the friend that stabbed you in the back. Face to face communication is the only way to resolve and get passed a particularly tough time in your life. If this person refuses or become unreasonable, then there is nothing you can do about it but at least you tried.

5. Ignore the person that stabbed you in the back. If all else fails then you just need to move on with your life. You put forth the effort to try to understand why it happened. In the end that is all you can do. Now you just have to realize that it was not about you and chalk it up to a flaw in the person's personality.