Ten ways to Spot a Fake Friend

We must be careful and diligent in choosing our friends. The most important factor is trustworthiness, and when you find your trust was misplaced, the consequences can range from disappointment to disaster and can be heart-breaking.

Awhile back a long-time friend revealed a hidden hostility and envy of my success.

As always, my intuition had warned me several times, but I failed to listen to it.

For today, here are 10 ways you can spot a friend whose integrity is in decline and may be getting ready to bite.

But first, check your pride: if you have truly wronged someone, always be the first to admit it and sincerely apologize.

1. Auditory: Short, curt, distant and agitated tones. You can tell they have something to say but aren't saying it. The reason for this is that their conscience is conflicted, their subconscious knows they are wrong, but their pride is searching for an excuse to oppose you. Until they find the excuse, they lay in waiting like a viper coiled on a limb.

2. Visual: Beady, shifty eyes. For the same reasons listed above, their eyes become beady and almost animal-like. They begin accessing their memory (lower left) where they have 'created' past justifications of disliking/betraying you, and they can also access their imagination (right or upper right) to reach and create.

3. Kinesthetic: Body language and Energy. They begin to appear shifty and uncomfortable around you. You can tell they're preoccupied. You'll start to detect a certain lack of natural comfort.

4. Breathing: their breathing may become noticeable, as may a very slight sheen of sweat on the skin. They may pause, look down and take a breath before speaking to you, as if they're subconsciously trying to 'get ready' to tell you something.

5. Life Circumstance: Incidents of friendship betrayal are often surrounded by economic factors and related stress and duress. If you find yourself happy and doing well, don't be surprised if some friends start to accuse you of being fake or doing wrong.

It's because of their own limiting beliefs and personal choices that they are in a struggle, but rather than recognize that and change their beliefs and make better choices, people tend to cling to previous programming such as 'money is evil' etc.

Rather than being rational and sober in thought, they resent that you have more than they do, so they smugly figure that you must have cheated or been helped to get success, not seeing the years of patience and toil it took you to get there.

They make an excuse for not living up to the comparative image themselves, falsely claiming the moral high ground, they will always try to shoot you down when you achieve something.

Negative thinkers always look for what's wrong, and they always 'find' it, most often by creating it in their own minds and clinging to it with pride.

6. The Law of Concentrated Attention: When you discover they have been unduly concentrating on you in an imbalanced way, you can be certain something is wrong with the relationship.

When a person concentrates on an idea, the idea tends to manifest itself. Remember that thoughts and behaviors become habitual through repetition.

An agitated/antagonistic thinker will repeat to themselves all of the things about you they perceive to be offensive, in order to reinforce to themselves that they are "right."

We can learn this for ourselves so that we don't make the same mistake: if it takes pressure effort or constant reinforcement to convince yourself that you're right... then you're not!

When you're truly right, you're at peace with yourself and with the world, and even with those who you believe have done you wrong.

7. The Law of the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: R.K. Merton, Sociology Professor at Columbia University, stated that when we predict an event, the expectation of the event changes our behavior in such a way to make the event more likely to happen.

According to Merton, the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy is, in the beginning, a false definition or belief about a situation. This false belief causes a new behavior that makes the false belief come true.
So your betraying friend will, in his mind, compile a "crap list" to justify his self-informed prejudice and feel secure. That is the secret pleasure people unknowingly get from sitting in the Judgment Seat.

It's why public lynchings and feeding people to the lions in ancient Rome were so popular. Humans want others to be as they expect them to be - it makes us feel more secure.

Remember also that in the battle between Imagination and Logic, Imagination will almost always win! That's why so many people in the world are troubled - they aren't aware that they themselves hold the power to direct their imagination for a good result by design, so they let it control them by default through desires, emotions, and impulse.

In order to protect yourself from falling into this trap, imagine only what is good, clean, powerful and positive, and know when you are imagining.

8. The Character Test: Self-Responsibility. People who take responsibility for their own lives and circumstances are generally those with good lives and good character. They are the friends you want.

When you have the type of friends who blame others - God, the economy, the government, their childhood, etc., once they run out of things to blame, they'll pick you!

So look closely at how friends talk and think and make sure they tend to have a self-responsible worldview.

9. Smug Self-Righteousness: Notice if they are constantly claiming the moral high ground, quoting scripture, and taking pleasure in pointing the bony finger of contention.

That's a huge red flag of a friend about to flip. Remember, the only one anyone should ever be pointing at, the one you were born to work on, is the one in the mirror.

10. Refusal to be Held Accountable: When you call them on their imagined offenses and provide logical evidence to refute them, they'll clam up. This is pride looking for something to eat, and finding the fridge empty.

Give them a little time and they may come out of it. In the end, if they don't, let them go and bless them and move on. Resentment is a dangerous and highly addictive drug that is almost impossible to detect when you are under its influence. It will impair your judgment and hinder your results.

Whatever demon of delusion is in your former friend wants to get inside you too, and the only way it can do that is if you resent it.

Upon reading this you can easily look back and recognize these traits in former friends or associates who betrayed you or went sour