How to Be a Bad Friend: The Hidden Life of Failed Relationships

by Katherine Sleadd

We all want good friends and to be good friends, but what does that mean when things go wrong or we don’t feel like we can show up well? What happens when we lose the people we thought would be there when we needed them most? And why does a friend breakup often hurt more than a romantic one? The answers to these questions are found in the pages of How to Be a Bad Friend by inviting you to explore your own friendship stories. Under the surface, we're all seeking a way to make sure our connections with others stay (or end) well, even when things are falling apart.

The reality is, losing a friend spells out loss on top of loss, because the person we would have talked with about whatever went down is someone who is no longer speaking to us anymore. How to Be a Bad Friend exists because there is a lack of language and community around the subject of tension or conflict in friendship and what happens after we have been rejected entirely. Friend breakups are so painful, and from an outsider’s perspective often treated as shameful, that we are left with nowhere to turn, no way to heal. The work of creating a world where we can talk about friendship failures and friend breakups without shame is long and slow. But regardless of whether we are the friend who is labeled good, bad, toxic, dramatic, difficult, or unhealthy, friendship is a place where we can be wounded more deeply or live more fully than we ever believed possible. And each new connection—lost or found— is another doorway to some place in our stories asking to be listened to.

Instead of trying to be better, or best friends . . . what if the freedom we’re looking for in friendship is found in the ways we have failed each other and learning, instead, how to be a bad friend?

259 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 12, 2023

Reviews

[Kaisha Bannon · Rating 1 out of 5]

I absolutely hate giving bad reviews. But man I struggled with this book.

First, what it does well is validate difficult friendship experiences. Friendship is hard, they don’t all last forever, and that’s ok and needs to be said.

However. The book never got to the part about redemption and repair. Sometimes friendships can make it through conflict or even betrayal. There just wasn’t a lot of hope for that. The overarching theme felt like “stuff ends and that’s life.” I wished there was more encouragement to push through, stay humble, acknowledge our part, and take the opportunity to learn through friendship, as well as a bit more tenacity to pursue healing in relationships and not just individually. Relationships are the primary way we heal and while not all friendships should be kept, I’d feel pretty safe to say that we should try a harder than what the book encourages.

(Also this is not to say the author should have tried harder or something in each of her personal stories. It’s hard to get the full picture from them and I’m not passing personal judgement on her experiences because I wasn’t there and don’t know whether that was the case or not.)

On top of all of that I felt like the ideas were not as clear as I would have liked them. I felt like I was going around in circles a bit and it made it hard to really piece together the parts I did like. There were also a handful of times when ideas were thrown around (like patriarchy) and not explained well in the context. Which honestly felt a little bit virtue signaly without better explanations.

[Courtney · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can't recall ever coming across a book that assisted with understanding and navigating friendship break-ups. Kudos to Katherine Sleadd for sharing so honestly the pain that comes with friendship loss while offering interesting/meaningful perspectives throughout this memoir. I hope this book can be a gateway into open dialogue on what it means to be a friend—to be a human sliding throughout the friendship spectrum of "bad" and "good"—and to normalize letting friendships go...

[Sarah Hogan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Katherine offers us her own experience as a jumping off point to discuss the pain and normalcy of friendship losses. The conversation goes to new places and is grounded in attachment theory, realism and grace for both sides. This read helped me through a difficult break up, and I’ll reread it again to glean more.

[Heather · Rating 5 out of 5]

Warning: This book is only for those who have felt abandoned by a friend.
It will not help you learn how to communicate better, resolve conflict, or send an apology letter back in time to a friend you once abandoned.
But if a part of you needs healing from a friendship loss, this book will be your medicine.

The author's message is simple: to un-learn how to be a “good friend”, so that you can release shame for having human moments and become a more real, present, and embodied version of myself in friendship.

The author also invites us to remove the labels we used to identify "bad friends" from our past, because those labels only threaten to come for us in the moments where our best isn't good enough. She invites us to come back to who we were in those failed friendships and think about what those stories were trying to reveal about the truth of ourselves. Her guidance isn't always the most clear for this endeavor, and while she repeats her advice in nearly every chapter, I ended the book still unsure of how to go about it. The author's pain in her own experiences is tangible on the pages and at times I felt that she was still too close to her own painful stories to guide the reader across the bridge of grief, however, if someone is reading the book fresh off the heels of a friendship breakup, this book will be relatable af.

Since reading the book, I've found more empathy and healing for both parties involved in past friendships, and I've encouraged myself to look past the pain and anger to remember what parts of that friendship made me come alive, or how it helped me show up in an honest way, or how it reflected or healed past trauma. The author doesn't offer further guidance for what to do after wrangling myself to that bloody peek into the past, but I've found that a moment of gratitude for having had the friendship helps to cauterize the wound.

[Stephanie Thoma · Rating 5 out of 5]

necessary commentary on healthy impermenance in friendship

With such shame swirling around friendships ending, causing communities to choose sides or gossip or fester, being true to yourself can feel isolating and Sleadd leads by example, helping the reader feel less alone in the complex emotional experience of friend breakups.

The relationship with a happily ever lovelife being applied to friendship rang true to me- I realize I have gone into nearly every friendship with a whimsical image of growing old together and sharing memories for many years to come. Life isn’t always about the duration of relationships, but that doesn’t mean the love and memories don’t endure.

I do believe that the parts where the author was upset with herself for not realizing dishonesty had occurred can be dropped - believing what a friend says, and learning it was false through their later reveal, doesn’t deserve to be a burden for the person who was lied to.

Recommended, thought provoking read with plenty of highlighted quotes. Thanks for writing this, Katherine!

A note on the most heartbreaking chapters in my experience:
Clueless friend - it’s not our job to placate dishonesty in friendships, if I could reframe anything in this book it would be that it’s ok to trust and be trusted - if someone communicates something is fine when it’s not, then ends the friendship because if that self-betrayal, the person who accepted what they said as true should be alleviated of guilt. It’s not a mistake to believe people.

[MacKenzie Marshall · Rating 5 out of 5]

“What I’m trying to say is this: maybe what you’re feeling toward your friend, or in your friendships, that breaks your heart, makes you want to leave, write them off, cut them out, or is so painful for you don’t even know how to find the words is coming from a place much deeper within yourself asking you too to listen.” (p.212-213)

This book has jumpstarted my journey of un-learning how to be a “good friend” in hopes to become a more real, present, and embodied version of myself in friendship. Katherine Sleadd helps us reconsider our “failed” friendships by giving us a window into her inner world of friendships and inviting compassion and understanding to the parts of ourselves that were (or still are) in need of healing.

[Kiki Osuna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was really drawn to the premise of the book and approached it with a notepad and pen ready to learn. While I found a lot of the ideas interesting and refreshing, the writing is at times hard to follow. Part of it may be because I couldn’t relate to the personal examples that were often central to each chapter. I found the overall tone of the book to be informative and nuanced which I appreciated, but a times the author’s unhealed feelings (which I empathize with) lead to messy/convoluted conclusions. My favorite chapter is the last because it spoke to the most healed parts of my own experiences and was reassuring. I would recommend parts of the book but not as a whole.

[Angela E. Morris · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book normalized what it’s like to struggle with friendships at different times. I appreciate the deep self-respect that comes from being honest about the times that we have fallen short and the times that it is the right thing to do— walk away.

Thanks, Katie

[Cheyenne Hamel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Love the premise of this book. About grief, acceptance and growth. But harder to follow than I anticipate in its half poetic, half expository style. Having trouble following many sections lost a some stars for me.

[Bethany]

I really wanted to like this book! The descriptions are so vague that I re-read some sections to see if I skipped over important details.

I do appreciate the author's invitation to compassionately reflect on our friendships.

[Jenifer Gager · Rating 5 out of 5]

Buckle up for insight and honesty…and then read it! So many vital shifts are available for close and open readers of this book.