Bad Friendships.

The Shakespearean tragedy that unfolded over texts and group chats.

Hellooooo!👋🏾 How're you doing today? Well, for me, I'm in between fine and annoyed really. Today's newsletter will give a hint as to why I'm annoyed. I'm obviously fine because I'm at home, eating, reading novels, watching movies and many other things that don't involve law abeg.😭🤚🏾

Today, let's talk about BAD FRIENDSHIPS.

Bad friendships are never obvious at the beginning. They don’t walk into your life waving a red flag with “I will betray you in the most ridiculous way possible” stitched across it. They often arrive with warmth, laughter, shared secrets, and the kind of early loyalty that makes you believe you’ve found someone solid. You don’t think to check for cracks in the foundation because the roof feels sturdy and the walls feel safe.

But sometimes, those cracks aren’t cracks at all—they’re fault lines. And when they rupture, you don’t just lose the friendship; you lose the version of reality you thought you were living in.

Recently, I had one of those friendships implode and it wasn't quietly. Not in a “we drifted apart” way. No, this was the full theater production: lies, backstabbing, and a finale so dramatic I’m still caught between shock and dark amusement.

My mood throughout yesterday.😂

It’s one thing to have a disagreement. It’s another to watch someone you trusted take the truth, twist it into something unrecognizable, and parade themselves as the poor, wounded hero in a story you apparently co-starred in without your consent. The sheer commitment to the victim role would have been award-worthy—if it weren’t at my expense.

The most surreal part wasn’t even the betrayal itself; it was the creativity. The elaborate re-framing of events, the selective memory, the way inconvenient facts were quietly edited out. I found myself wondering if they actually believed their own version, or if it was simply more comfortable to play the wronged party than to admit fault.

And here’s the thing: when someone is determined to be the victim, they will find a way to make it happen, no matter how much reality they have to distort. You can show receipts, you can lay out timelines, you can even point out their own words—but none of it will matter. They’ve already built their stage, written their script, and cast themselves in the starring role. You’re just an unwilling supporting character, painted in whatever colors make their story more sympathetic.

I used to think bad friendships were just mismatches in personality, or maybe a slow drifting apart. Now I know they can also be a study in human performance—where the person who once laughed with you is suddenly rehearsing monologues about your cruelty, and their applause comes from people who don’t know the full script.

And yet… once the dust settled, I noticed something strange. Beneath the hurt and disbelief, there was a tiny, reluctant smile. Not because betrayal feels good (it doesn’t), but because there was something absurd about the lengths this person went to paint themselves as the sainted sufferer. It was Shakespearean, really—if Shakespeare wrote petty, modern-day tragedies that take place over group chats and social media posts.

The lesson? Bad friendships don’t just hurt; they reveal. They show you the masks people can wear, the roles they can slip into without hesitation, and the way loyalty can evaporate the moment the narrative stops serving them.

I used to mourn those losses for months, replaying everything in my head, looking for the moment I should have seen it coming. But now, I’m starting to see them as filters—uncomfortable, unpleasant, but clarifying. If someone is willing to betray you, lie about you, and turn you into the villain of their personal melodrama, they were never a safe place to begin with.

And maybe that’s the unexpected gift of the bad friendship: it removes someone from your life who was only ever pretending to be a friend.

Final thought.

Sometimes the most ridiculous betrayals end up being the most freeing, because they show you exactly who someone is without any more guesswork. And once you see them clearly, you can finally stop squinting to make them fit into your life.

Questions for you:

1. Have you ever watched a friend rewrite history to make themselves the victim? How did you handle it?

2. Do you believe people who play the victim actually convince themselves of their own story—or is it all just manipulation?

3. What’s the most unexpected thing you learned after ending a friendship?

With love,

Azeemah.💜