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Frenemies Are More Stressful Than Straight-Up Jerks, Research Shows. Adam Grant Explains How to Deal With Them
The internet is full of articles warning that toxic people will harm your mental and physical health, tank your team’s productivity, and suck the joy from your life. Most people, having experienced selfish jerks in their lives, will have no problem believing these stories. The idea that toxic people make you miserable is just intuitive.
But are we all spending so much time worrying about what our worst relationships are doing to us that we’re missing an even greater threat to our well-being? That’s what a fascinating new New York Times opinion piece by Wharton professor and best-selling author Adam Grant suggests.
Frenemies are the worst.
In the piece, Grant rounds up surprising research showing that dealing with ambivalent relationships — aka “frenemy” relationships — is actually more stressful than dealing with straight-up toxic people.
“One study found that adults had higher blood pressure after interacting with people who evoked mixed feelings than after similar interactions with those who evoked negative feelings,” Grant writes, listing further evidence for the harm frenemies can do later in the article:
