Have you ever come across friends who are constantly in competition with you, the ones who are around when they only need you, or the ones who always speak ill of their other friends when they are not with them? Well, those are walking red flags to never ignore. Red flags are commonly talked about in relationships only, between a boyfriend and a girlfriend. But red flags between two friends are rarely talked about. According to different media outlets, friendship is a state of enduring affection, esteem, intimacy, and trust between two people. In all cultures, friendships are important relationships throughout a person's life span. Nicole Umuhoza, a student pursuing clinical psychology at the University of Rwanda, says that friendship is meant to be a safer place for everyone, where no one fears sharing their emotions and where trust is not a must but rather natural. “Most people fail to realise that a friendship can also be wounding at some point, and it can destroy a person as much as a relationship. In a friendship like in a relationship, there are also signs that can reveal a person who they are before you get hurt, no one is ever perfect even friends,” she says. However, Umuhoza says that a friend that tends to have signs that will hurt you at some point is not worth keeping, a friendship is meant to be a place that has love, trust, and peace because red flags can also affect mental health and emotional health, that is why a person should never believe that they can change their friends to better, they should rather pay attention to the red flags when they are present. Eric Maniriho, a resident in Kigali, says that normally red flags are very clear and in front of us we only need to pay enough attention. “There are small signs that always bring out big signs later if ignored, those signs called red flags may confuse us because we tend to associate them with either the person's behavior or how events in their lives may have caused those signs, but honestly that can keep a person from noticing the red flags,” he says. According to Maniriho, here are some common red flags that exist in all friendships: Friends that use your weaknesses, or vulnerability against you: friends that take something that you told them out of intimacy and use it against you is not your friend, your real friend should never have to take something they know that hurts you a lot and start using it against you, says Maniriho. “Imagine you tell your friend that another guy made a sexual move on you, and then the next day your friend uses that information against you to get your man, a real friend should never do it,” he adds. Any occasion they get, they put you down: according to Maniriho, friends that never compliment you or congratulate you whenever you do something good, but always criticize you are red flags, they always want to see you down and defeated and so they use their power to make that happen. Every time you are with them you feel like walking on eggshells: Maniriho says, “They always make a scene out of any mundane situation, and so you always feel that you have to be careful about what you say to them, or what you do so that they won’t escalate things, and it always feels draining at the end of the day”. They never respect your boundaries: “In any form of relationship, there are boundaries and they should be respected, but if a friend can’t seem to understand your boundaries that you once told them about or even respect them, that means that they are not true to the friendship and therefore that is a red flag,” says Maniriho. Alaine Iriza, a communication specialist adds that “other signs that are always obvious and should make you leave without a thought is when they always make your problems seem nothing to theirs like whenever you try to tell them what has been bothering you they make it about themselves, they devalue your problems and make them seem like nothing”. She continues, “And always listen to the people around you, because any time you have to justify your friendship it means that there is a problem. True friendship is not justifiable and the people around you don’t see any problem in it, sometimes people are right, try and listen to them”.
