Kate Leaver

“And then there are those friends who aren’t really friends at all. For some reason, we all have them. They don’t belong in our lives, not really, not truly, not if we’re honest with ourselves. But we keep them there out of fear and complacency. At best, they slightly upset the equilibrium of our life every time we make contact with them — at worst, they steal from our sense of self-worth until we have nothing left. We cling to these inappropriate friends — people who are incapable of good friendship, people who have drifted from our lives or people we’ve outgrown — because we believe we have no choice, because we are too frightened of the confrontation required to erase them from our lives, or because we suspect we might deserve them. Everyone, at some stage in her life, has kept an unworthy friend around for the sake of convenience, cowardice or that private, but necessary sense of belonging. Any friend is better than no friends, we think. The more, the better. Any company is better than solitude.”
― Kate Leaver, The Friendship Cure