Women Who Pretend To Be Your Friend But Talk Badly About You To Others Were Often Raised By Parents With 8 Troubling Traits
Jade Ignacio | Pexels Gossip can be healthy in small doses or in the right situations. But there's a line.
Spreading rumors and speaking about someone behind their back breaks trust and destroys relationships. But there's something we all must understand: even the most judgmental people learned it from somewhere. And women who pretend to be your friend, but talk about you to others, were probably raised by parents with troubling traits and behaviors.
Troubling traits the parents of women who pretend to be your friend and talk badly about you behind your back often have
1. They judge others harshly
Srdjan Randjelovic | Shutterstock
When you grow up with parents who judge others and constantly speak about people they're supposed to love behind their backs, it's easy to assume everyone's doing it. It's exactly this upbringing that raises defensive, anxious kids, who center their lives around what other people think.
Women raised in this environment pretend to be your friend, only to speak negatively about you behind your back, because they assume that's how they'll get ahead. They believe everyone is doing the same thing, so they're mirroring the behaviors their parents made normal in their most impressionable years.
2. They break promises and trust
Kids who didn't feel like they could trust their parents often grow into adults who constantly self-protect. They're used to being let down and deceived, so it's difficult not to assume that any friendship will be the same.
As strong as their yearning for real connection may be, they struggle to keep commitments and promises in similar ways. If talking about people behind their back and protecting their own superiority makes them feel safe, it's only because they've been taught that they have to compete to be worthy of attention and validation.
3. They made their kids compete
The "if I can't have it, nobody can" mentality starts in childhood, usually with parents who made their kids compete with others or siblings at home. Their worth wasn't cultivated by hard work or trying their best, but by beating other people and proving their superiority.
These adults feel like there's not enough money or love to go around, and they have to compete with everyone for it. It's a sad and isolating way to live, hence the anger that sometimes comes about in their adult relationships.
4. They're unpredictable
Unpredictable, emotionally inconsistent parents make kids feel uncertain. Their kids often live in a perpetual state of fight-or-flight, where they don't feel in control of their own security or emotions.
In adulthood, many swing to the other direction. They become hyper-independent and try to control the people they have in their life with strategy and manipulation. They don't know how to control their emotions or inner turmoil, so they try to control other people and their environment, despite how harmful that can be.
Women raised in a toxic environment gossip and pretend to be people's friends, but they don't like being vulnerable or opening up. They're trying to get ahead and prepare themselves for the worst, because their parents modeled the kind of unpredictability that's possible in even the closest relationships.
5. They demonize difference
Krakenimages.com | Shutterstock
A seemingly harmless disagreement or people with different views are things toxic parents teach their kids. They demonize difference and instill close-mindedness in their children from a young age.
That's part of why, as adults, women feel so comfortable speaking negatively behind people's backs and slandering their own friends for setting boundaries. They're used to believing that people who think different things are inherently wrong or even personally attacking them.
Unfortunately for these adult children and their parents, appreciation, rather than disgust and judgment, is what predicts life quality and happiness. These adult women are hurting inside and are unhappy because they see the world through a scary, dim lens, and it negatively influences not just their mental health, but their relationships and sense of belonging.
6. The most interesting thing about them is gossip
When your parents make family dinners into gossip sessions and only ever speak about other people around you, you become an adult who's yearning to have the inside scoop on everyone. Your secrets and insider information, even when they come from your closest friends and loved ones, are now what define your social standing and self-worth.
The most interesting thing about a person with low self-esteem or a fragile ego is what they can say about someone else. That's true for these parents, who taught their children to compete for social standing by speaking negatively about others.
Once they grow into adult women, they repeat the cycle at their own expense.
7. They're obsessed with status and prestige
When you're more worried about how your family or children look to everyone else, it's easy to start competing and performing. Women who are fake friends grew up with parents who bragged about them only after accomplishing something or who ushered them to compete with their siblings.
And now, they believe their worth is defined by validation and external praise. They deceive their friends and speak negatively about them behind their backs, but it's the only kind of control they have over their perceived social image that influences how confident they feel.
They're stuck in a cycle of unhappiness that comes at their own expense and the expense of the people they keep close. They're unhappy when they don't get the validation and attention, but they're just as fragile and unhappy when they do.
8. They're transactional
Miljan Zivkovic | Shutterstock
Transactional parents don't love their kids unconditionally, but instead use markers like status or success as currency for the love and respect they should give no matter what. Not only do these children learn that they have to perform for the bare minimum in their adult relationships, but they externalize to feel secure.
Sometimes, that means placing their self-worth in the hands of a partner through anxious attachments. In other cases, it might be seeking control over a situation by gossiping about a friend or spreading lies behind their back.
Either way, the children of transactional parents have their self-worth sabotaged from a very young age with the belief that they're not deserving of love and goodness unless they prove it.
Zayda Slabbekoorn is a senior editorial strategist with a bachelor's degree in social relations & policy and gender studies who focuses on psychology, relationships, self-help, and human interest stories.
