Why You Shouldn’t Be Friends with a Bully

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I’d love to say that once I was friends with a bully. But the truth is, I’ve been friends with bullies many times throughout my life, but more so, as I’ve gotten older. I’m not really sure why I’ve befriended people that have bullied others at all, let alone, more so, since I’ve been older. The only thing that I can think could possibly or even remotely be the reason, is because I started believing that people were all honest, like me. Not a hubris statement—an honest one. I believed that people wore their hearts on their sleeves, deserved the benefit of the doubt, and were always true to their words and actions. I guess you could say, I learned the hard way.


When you first meet someone, they usually put on some sort of front, and act like the best version of themselves. The problem with that, is that sometimes, people are being fake from the get-go, instead of being real and the best version of themselves. And because of that, it can be truly hard to decipher whether someone is being honest, from someone who’s being real, authentic, and genuine. This is likely why I promote being your authentic self from early on when dating, and being that I’m a relationship blogger, I tend to write many of those types of articles.


Let me start off by saying that, bullying anyone is bad. And just as well, being friends with a bully is bad too. It’s never good to hurt others, whether through your words or your actions. People bully others in many different ways. Sometimes, they indirectly bully someone by spreading false rumours about them. And believe it or not, bullying usually starts out in childhood, but people bully others just the same when they’re adults. It’s sad, yes, I know.


It’s imperative that we all try to do our part, by spreading the word, not to bully others as much as we can, whether it’s through social media, or whether it’s by teaching our children to be kind and not to bully or hurt other people. In this article, my goal is to try to prevent others from befriending bullies. Now you might think, why would anyone try to prevent someone from befriending a bully. Well, for starters, a bully doesn’t deserve a friend.


Many times, the route of a bully becoming a bully is the lack of friends that they have, feeling alone, and many times, from being bullied themselves. Many times, people are bullied by their own families at home or perhaps, they get bullied by their social peers. Another form of bullying is by someone being too controlling. And once again, this is something that starts off in childhood, and continues on throughout adulthood. A cruel partner in life, a boyfriend, a girlfriend, or even a husband or a wife can be the worst of the worst type of bully.


No one should have to deal with a bully or be afraid to speak their mind or even have a voice. Each and every one of us deserves the right of free speech, and freedom of choice as well. No when should feel controlled or unable to do what they want in life or to feel how they want to feel or say what they want to say, merely because someone is bullying them or are trying to control their actions and words. I’m using the simplest words possible when I say that, bullies are bad.


No one is born a bully. Sure, we’re all born with an evil inclination. However, we’re not born bullies. We’re supposed to teach our children when they’re young and just learning how to behave, what’s right from what’s wrong. And when we catch them bullying someone else or not sharing their toys and what not, we’re supposed to teach them kindness, love, and discipline. When parents fail to make parenting a priority, and they end up being completely permissive and not setting rules, limits, and boundaries to their children. It’s at that very moment when they fail to teach them good from bad and right from wrong, that they grow into bullies, and they end up feeling as if they can basically do whatever they want, say whatever they want, and without it affecting others, but even more so, that the opinions and feelings of others don’t matter.


Bullying is routing from bad or permissive parenting if you’d ask me. We need to make parenting more of a priority. It’s imperative to raise our children in the best way that we know how, and that takes effort, love, and discipline. Having healthy discipline is part of being a good and authoritative parent. Now, despite the fact that I don’t feel that anyone should befriend a bully, I still believe that a believe deserves love. But again, they need to get that love by giving it first. It’s truly hard to love someone that’s hard and that has rough edges.


Bullies become bullies out of insecurities that they have themselves, and it’s usually because they didn’t get a certain type of love or attention from their families, or again, because their parents were being too permissive. When a child gets enough love and attention from their families, and they’re still bullied in school, they don’t grow up to be a bully. Would you believe that? Or do you feel that you need some research done in order to prove my point? Well, I’m not going to give you any research results, because my research is my logic, which you’re entitled to use as well, but you must use your own.


The reason that we shouldn’t befriend a bully is mostly because, it’s basically like showing them positive reinforcement for acting bad, and it shows them that we accept their actions as right and good, even though what they’re doing is wrong and bad. Making friends with a bully isn’t good, and just like I said in the very beginning of this article, as I’ve gotten older, I had become friends with more and more bullies. But the fact is, it’s truly unfortunate that I’ve had those types of experiences with bullies and toxic people. You see, despite what I’ve seen and experienced in my life, and despite having been let down possibly over and over again, I still believe in going into each and every new situation with a blank, clean slate. Therefore, I give chances, I stay optimistic, I tend to give the benefit of the doubt to others, and I go into each new situation giving a person my love, as long as they don’t have a track record, and as long as they haven’t hurt anyone before, at least that I know about.


The problem is, you don’t really know a person until you spend a certain amount of time with them. And sure, you can listen to your instincts which are usually right, but sometimes it’s simply just hard to tell what kind of person someone is, without getting to know them first. “You can’t always judge a book by its cover,” it’s true. You actually need to spend time getting to know someone, and that’s why I’ve had some of my friendships come to an end. Like I said, I don’t believe in having friends that are bullies, and if I find out that someone is a bully, whether they’re bullying or trying to control me or whether they’re bullying someone else that I know or even a stranger, I end the friendship immediately. Having said that, I recommend that you do the same.


A bully shouldn’t have friends that support their actions and words when they’re causing harm to others. A bully shouldn’t be rooted for or given positive reinforcement towards thinking that what they’re doing is right. But instead, they need to do some deep soul-searching and hopefully they’ll be self-aware enough to feel guilty for their actions and make a change for the better, despite what type of upbringing that they had or even still have in their life. A bully can only blame others so much for their own actions. We need to help spread the word. Here’s my part—I won’t stand for friendships where I see that a person is trying to hurt or control me. And I definitely won’t stand for or sit back, while a “friend” is bullying someone else. 

Anne Cohen
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