Frenemies are people you can’t afford to be enemies with so you fake friendship or friendly terms with them. They may also be people you can’t stand personally, but you both benefit from each other.
However you look at it, they’re better than straight enemies because you can leverage them to get yourself ahead.
First let’s go over what qualifies as a frenemy:
- Someone you don’t necessarily like but have some respect for
- Someone you’d never hang out with unless you had to
- Someone with a skewed or opposing world view than yours
- Someone who likely cares less about the things you hold dear to your heart
- Someone whose personality, habits, lifestyle, manner of dress and quirks irritate the shit out of you
Take the CEO of your company (if you’re a company guy or gal)—they’ve obviously done something right to get where they are, but maybe they’re a fuckface. Instead of defaulting to player hater—which is easy to do but just leaves you miserable and downtrodden—you ought befrenemy them.
Temper your emotions with the potential of personal payoff: what can I do to get this person to help me?
The reason why I’m adamant about frenemies is because at some point you’ve got to get skin in the game. You’re not going to like everyone who comes your way, but it doesn’t mean you can’t work with them. Dealing with challenging people head on is the only way you’ll get ahead in life. Period.
For example, at my last job I was fired very abruptly on my birthday. It was a total below the belt Nazi move and it hurt not just me but my entire family. Instead of unleashing what incidental fury I had, I took the high road and made all the executives at that company lifelong frenemies.
Now I just think of them of people who may or may not help me one day, and they think of me as someone who is a good person and likely won’t spill the beans on the kind of people they really are (not the people they pretend to be hahaha).