5 Subtle Signs Your Friend Doesn’t Value You

Are you in a dilemma that your friend doesn’t value you?

Friendship is a beautiful bond of affection between two individuals who share common interests, and support and uplift each other through thick and thin.

But there may be times in your life when you can sense that something is wrong with this once-great relationship. You may quite yourself thinking that you’re stressing too much but something inside you keeps ticking it.

Put your worries aside. It’s now time to solve this mystery and within the next few minutes, you’ll know the truth about what’s the matter with your friend.

So without further ado, let’s get started.

Signs Your Friend Doesn’t Value You

Friendship doesn’t always go as smoothly as you’ll probably wish. There are many things that can strain the relationship like jealousy and insecurity. Sometimes, thing get messy and your once best friend would begin to plot against you.

That maybe an extreme stage but it all starts from somewhere. Not being valued by your friend is a good place to start and we will focus on that in this article.

If you can relate to most of the signs below, it’s certain that your friend doesn’t value you at least not that much.

Also, these signs are interconnected and have been covered from the psychological perspective to have you under the idea to its core.

1. Always Giving and Never Receiving

Friendship like any other relationship is a two street that needs mutual effort to keep the engine running. A dynamic of give and take is what keeps both parties satisfied. That’s what Bruno Mars said in his song ‘Grenade’.

But if you feel that you are the one always initiating the plans for a meet-up and your friend never makes any effort about it, chances are your friend doesn’t value you.

It’s like a free service to him where he takes everything for granted and never feels obliged to reciprocate.

But what runs inside your friend’s mind and why would he do it?

Unfortunately, your friend is an exploiter who may even exhibit signs of Machiavellianism. Such people usually have a cynical view of human nature and believe everyone only makes an effort when they find the situation benefiting them somehow.

If you give such a person a gift, they’ll immediately assume that you’ve ulterior motives and will ask for a bigger favor in return sometime later on.

So whatever good you do to them, they’ll just rationalize it as an ulterior motive and put it in the dustbin.

So they are never going to feel the need to reciprocate, since whatever you’ve been doing wasn’t for them (in their eyes). Instead, they may consider themselves virtuous for not exposing you and keeping up the bond, though not very healthy with you.

2. Feeling Like a Plan B In His Life

When your friend wants to hang out, does he try his best to run through a list of potential people to have fun with before asking you? When he rings everyone and all of them excuse him, he’ll ask you but of course, you were the last one

If it sounds like you, it’s a clear sign your friend doesn’t value you. You are merely a backup buddy to him whom he’ll use when he can’t find any.

Now let’s see why it is the case.

Some of us are good planners who love to plan everything. But then there are exploiters and selfish people who don’t draw the line and bring this planning thing into relationships as well.

Such people are usually very good liars and will rationalize the situation in such a manner that will leave you believing in them.

They also want to keep the maximum number of options open hence lie. Such people assign priorities to people and will exploit them in an orderly manner. If they can’t go with the first priority, then comes the second priority, and so on.

He may see you as a plan C and will only get to you if other options are not available or busy. Interactions and hanging out with such a friend feel very out of place too since you can notice a push-pull tactic.

He’ll be too busy to talk when he has other options available but will behave very warmly with you when he wants to exploit you.

3. Self-Serving Interests

This point goes hand in hand with the last one and if you notice both of them accompanied, get going already as it’s certain that your friend doesn’t value you.

It basically means that even though your friend isn’t going to take any initiative to meet you in the first place and if he ends up doing it anyway miraculously, it will be solely inspired by his self-interest.

If you look closely, you’ll be able to see their interests dangling behind their friendly façade.

Let’s understand the reason behind it.

Selfishness means being concerned about one’s interests and is an interesting trait. Most people tend to oversimplify it but the truth is everyone has the potential to be selfish, some lie high on the spectrum while others are low.

Let’s understand it with an example. If a kind-hearted person is in a building with fire and has other people around him as well, he won’t be even concerned about how many people are there in the room. The only thing dear to him will be his life.

Now that is technically selfishness but that doesn’t make him a bad person since you are more responsible for your life than others.

Basically, you can’t help others here without compromising on your situation. It’s a save-yourself-or-die thing.

But some people will throw the balance out of the window and only be concerned for themselves and ignore others completely even when they can help others without compromising on themselves. Such people lie high on the selfishness spectrum.

If your friend happens to be such a person, then all he’s doing is to use you as a stepping stone to serve his purpose. You then won’t be of any use to him and be abandoned until he needs you again.

4. Chasing Shadows: The Effort to Keep Up

The last party with friends, who arranged it? You? The last hangout? You?

If it’s a norm for you where you’ll be arranging all the hangouts and arrangements then inviting your friend to the point of begging, it’s a good sign your friend doesn’t value you.

It may even feel as if they owe you for taking time out of their busy schedule and accepting your invitation.

It has a good chance to be a power move on your friend’s part where they delayed the response on purpose and got you to chase them for it. They are actually setting you up nicely to use you later on.

And here is the reason behind it.

This is a power move that high-status people pull off in trying to assert dominance and authority over others. Like they will arrive a bit late and get everyone to wait for them. This is subtle but powerful.

When your friend sets you up to chase him to accept your invitation, it’s like he is asserting his dominance and making you inferior to him like a subordinate. The real psychological trick behind this is he has succeeded in having you make an effort for him.

The human mind is designed in a way that it likes to be consistent because if it’s not consistent, it will contradict itself, and humans are hard-wired to avoid it.

When you get manipulated to make an effort for your friend, you’ll have to make an effort for him again for you to be consistent with your previous behavior. It’s proven by the famous Franklin Benjamin Effect.

Now you’ll keep doing your friend favors subconsciously and falling in the loophole while your friends keep pulling the strings behind the scenes. SNEAKY!

5. The Puzzle of His Contradictory Actions

If your friend exhibits contradictory actions where sometimes he’ll be acting as if he doesn’t even know you only to become very warm and compassionate the other times, it’s a good sign your friend is up to something.

You’ll find this confusing as it will feel as if there exist two people with different personalities, one who likes you and one who doesn’t.

This is even more prominent in group settings where your friend might even treat you with contempt or disdain. If it happens though, you can be certain that your friend doesn’t value you.

Let’s understand it from the psychological perspective.

If the behavior of someone doesn’t align with each other, you can already suspect him for good. Such behavior mostly manifests itself in the form of push-pull tactics.

It’s actually a power move where one playing the push-pull move wants to confuse the victim. He’ll appear very warm initially to develop a rapport, then once he has set his foot in, will pull himself back.

He’ll appear cold and the victim will wonder what wrong did he to get this. He may even blame himself and then seek the validation of the oppressor to make things like before.

This will put him in the inferior state where the oppressor now has the upper hand.

Conclusion

Congratulations! You’ve made it to the end of the article.

You now have a good understanding of the signs your friend doesn’t value you. You’ve also understood the psychology behind every move which will help you understand why is your friend behaving this way and what he wants.

These points are interconnected and you might have noticed the close link between all but all of them can appear independently.

If you notice one of the signs, it doesn’t necessarily mean your friend isn’t clean. If you however notice that these signs are appearing in clusters then it’s a clear sign your friend doesn’t value and you should be very careful dealing with him and may even need to subtract yourself from the equation.

They are clues, the higher the number is present, the graver the situation is.

What sign do you relate to the most? Let us know in the comments below!