THE FALSE ALLURE OF FRIENDSHIP
30 AUGUST 2022 (12 MIN READ)
While watching the silly yet metaphorically rich film, The Joneses, I discovered a key truth to human nature: the more we have something to sell about our lives, the easier it is to make friends in this fake world. Without giving away too many spoilers, the movie revolves around a family who just moved to the suburbs, but without the knowledge of their neighbors, they are actually unrelated marketing experts hired by companies to surreptitiously convince their neighbors to buy all the consumer goods they rep in their lives. Unsurprisingly, the more they flex and flaunt the new exclusive goods of the market, the more people become fascinated by them and want to hang out with them, as well as copy their purchases. Although the surface-level metaphor the movie displays of the reality of consumerism is rich enough as is, the deeper layer it unknowingly reveals is that for some reason in today’s sick culture, the more we sell a false, manicured appearance of what our reality is, the more we attract “friends” who not only believe the false dream, but are enamored by it. And I believe this occurs for two main reasons. One, the more we have to cover up our painful lives with a false appearance, the more we need to draw in other people to believe it, so we can start accepting the false reality as well. In other words, we need to effectively sell the false dream to others in order to believe it in ourselves. Secondly, our collective unawareness that most people are presenting a false appearance—that is much more uplifted than the reality—makes us believe that the lives of others’ are so much better than ours, so we become enamored and seduced by their false appearance, resulting in them drawing us into their circle.
Digging deeper, this article will investigate why, as human beings, we feel the need to present this dream to others, how the game of selling it works, why we believe it so easily, and of course, how we escape this reliance on a false dream of our reality, both internally and externally, and access personal freedom, in the form of a real relationship to self and one’s friends.
THE NEED FOR THE DREAM
Why do we lie so much as humans? Because we cannot bear to accept the boring reality of our lives, so we make up stuff to make it feel more exciting and worthy. Or, our reality can be so painful to us that we have to come up with false truths to make it seem more enjoyable. For instance, you can have men making up a seductive story about a beautiful woman they picked up at a bar, when in reality they drunkenly took a woman home who they couldn’t bear to look at when they woke up. We are always dressing up the truth to make ourselves give off the image that our life is much more appealing and exciting than it really is. In terms of how this relates to the concept of presenting a false reality to new people we meet and our friends, while we may not be outright lying, we feel as if our true nature is so unbearable, boring, and painful, that we feel the need to present the opposite of that in our appearance. Consider the housewife who always looks perfect, dressed head to toe in designer clothes with her makeup always done immaculately, frequently talking about how much her kids and husband love her, when in reality her husband often yells at her and her kids show her no respect. We don’t want to accept the painful reality of our lives, so we try our best to give off the impression that not only these parts of ourselves do not exist, but they are the furthest thing from the truth, in terms of the appearance we give off.
As human beings, the persona we present is often in direct opposition to our biggest insecurities and fears. For example, the self-identifying womanizer is terrified of female rejection, so he has to do whatever he can to manipulate them into loving him. Or take the big, strong alpha male who makes it known that if anyone fucks with him, then he will beat their ass. When in reality, he is so afraid of men perceiving him as weak that he will do whatever it takes to present a persona that makes men think the opposite. As you can see, all our persona is trying to do is fool us into believing that our fears and insecurities have no basis in reality. And we unconsciously want to believe this lie so bad that we make it our most important mission to fool people into believing the mask we are showing is what’s real. But more importantly, the more people we get to believe the mask is real, the more we start to fool ourselves that the scared person underneath it is an illusion.
In summary, we are so damn afraid of our deepest fears and insecurities that we develop a persona that gives off the impression that they do not exist, hopefully making people believe the illusion we are selling, and in turn, the more people that believe it, the easier we fool ourselves into thinking the mask is real.
SELLING THE DREAM
Whenever I would go to my friend’s house for a playdate as a kid, it seemed like a surreal utopia. The mother would show my friend love constantly, the house was consistently beautiful and immaculate, there would be incredible food and snacks all over the place, and most importantly, everyone in the house was so kind all the time. Much to my dismay, but a great reality check at a young age, when I slept over for the first time, I heard the parents screaming the most obscene things at each other, unlike anything I had heard up to that point in my life. What was once my conception of heaven quickly turned into hell. In this moment, I shockingly understood the duality of man, where you can wear a kind, loving mask, and then take it off and have a monster underneath. Although I did not yet understand why that was the case, it was still an impressive realization for a kid my age. With the more mature mind I have now, I can understand why this duality is so common: we want to sell to others what we are having such a hard time applying to ourselves. For instance, if one’s marriage and homelife is a shit show, then they will often try to give the appearance that their home is the most beautiful place in the world, in order to overcompensate for what the truth really is. In other words, people feel the need to sell the dream that makes their nightmare seem untrue. If there’s one thing that soapy shows like Desperate Housewives masterfully convey is that the whiter the picket fence, the darker the interior. And that philosophy does not only apply to homes, it also applies to personalities and appearances. Yes, there are definitely some incredibly kind people who really are that way, but for the most part, they are just the ones that are doing the best job at hiding the hellish pain underneath.
BELIEVING THE DREAM
Even though this persona and lifestyle we are showcasing are in direct opposition to what is really going on inside of us, why do we keep doing it? Because we have fooled ourselves into believing it's our reality. One of the key truths in life is that we believe whatever we tell ourselves in the form of conscious thought, even if it is in direct contradiction to how we feel or what’s being objectively presented to us. To add some evidence to this bold statement, consider the efficacy of the placebo effect in curing physical and mental ailments. For example, a new study came out about antidepressants with a fascinating conclusion: “analyses of the published data and the unpublished data that were hidden by drug companies reveals that most (if not all) of the benefits [of antidepressants] are due to the placebo effect.”¹ So, if we can convince ourselves that we are no longer depressed through taking a pill that we think is working for us, when in reality it’s barely doing jack shit, then we can pretty much convince ourselves of anything. And that anything, in this specific argument, extends out to the notion that our identity, in the sense of how we perceive ourselves and how we present ourselves, can go in direct contradiction to what is going on inside our sensory bodies. For instance, as was mentioned previously in this article, consider the man who perceives himself as a tough guy and presents that image to the world, but in reality, he’s just a scared kid who is terrified of people perceiving him as weak. Even though that emotional reality is what’s guiding his behavior, whenever those feelings arise, he just tells himself, “I’m a strong man, these feelings are a lie.” As you can see, the ability to believe our thoughts about our perceived identity, even if they are in direct opposition to the truth, in the form of how you really feel, is what makes us believe this false dream. And the only reason we believe these false thoughts is because we cannot bear to feel the pain that comes with the truth, so we do whatever we can to keep thinking our way out of it, in the form of creating an identity that negates the feelings
ESCAPING THE DREAM
In essence, both breaking away from the dream we are selling and stepping into a new one that aligns with our highest interest is dependent on how much we can process and feel the pain we are avoiding. As explained in the previous sections, we use conscious thought, in the form of creating an identity, to avoid the pain of what’s really occurring inside our bodies. For example, saying, “I’m a strong man” to negate the feelings of sensitivity one is facing, and in the process, creating a false identity for what truly exists in the present moment. Furthermore, we wish to validate this identity––that is created out of fear of what one’s feeling––so badly that we need other people to believe it too. This habit is what creates the human tendency to sell false dreams to the world. We wish for the world to believe the lie we are telling ourselves as much as we do. Until we face the pain underneath this facade, we can genuinely never present our true version of self both to ourselves and the people close to us. Thus, unfortunately, most of the friends we have made in life are a result of us trying to validate our false personas, hence the title of the article, “The False Allure of Friendship.” Have you ever noticed why you lose certain friends? Most of the time, you shift your perception of self, and no longer need that friend to validate the previous identity, so you find a new one that helps you believe your new conception of self. For instance, back in high school, I was so terrified of female rejection that I fooled myself into believing I was a fuckboy to ease the pain. My close friends at the school I went to knew that conception of self could not be further from the truth, so they did not aid me in creating that new, false identity. So, I befriended new people outside of my school, who believed in this new image I created and fed that persona. In a nutshell, until we wake the fuck up, this is how most friendships are created in this strange world: connecting with people who help feed us the self-image we need to avoid our pain.
Since this way of making fake friends is predicated on the need to avoid our core wounds, the only way out is both understanding the wounds and feeling them deeply. To understand them, next time you feel a big trigger and notice your conscious thoughts reinforcing some sort of identity, take your attention away from the thoughts and feel the emotion as much as you possibly can. Allow that emotion to guide you into the moment it was created, which most of the time was a hurt child with parents who did not love them in the way they needed them to. Even if the pain did not stem from that child, it does come from some ancient part of yourself, so you must let that pain from an older version of yourself be felt in the present moment to break you away from its hold over you. And, as you should know by now, this hold is not only emotional, this unprocessed emotional pain is creating the false image you are presenting to the world. Thus, once you let go of the emotions associated with those core wounds, you will start realizing that there is no identity to be had, all there is this present moment and the thought coined by spiritual master Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, “I am.” If you truly are immersed in the present moment and away from all your fears, there really is no conception of self to be had. Yes, you still have a name, an age, a family, etc., but I more so mean the identities of “I am X” in order to defend yourself from the pain you don’t want to feel in the moment.
Once you drop the thought patterns rooted in identity to avoid your fears, you can start making friends based off of a genuine, loving connection, since you will not need anything from them, in the form of them reinforcing your current conception of self, so the connection will be much more pure and genuine. If you were to learn anything from this article, hold these words close to your heart: base your friendships on how much you feel your heart grow, not how much your ego does.
One last important thing that comes with the awareness of understanding the pain behind your various identities, is that you will start detecting people’s false personas at a much faster rate. This is reflective of one of the laws of the universe: you can only understand others to the degree you understand yourself. Thus, the faster you get at catching your thinking patterns covering up your pain, the faster you will see the pain behind other people’s false words. Since you will no longer be manipulated by people’s false personas, you are much more likely to make friends with real, loving people.
¹ Kirsch, Irving. “Antidepressants and the Placebo Effect.” Z Psychol, Volume 222 (2014).
