You’ve recently been promoted at work, and you’re finally at a place in your career where you’re satisfied and feel like you could stay for a while. However, there’s one minor issue: your best friend has been acting strange. They’ve been all over the place emotionally, especially when you mention your work successes. You don’t know what to make of it. It could be that your friend resents your success—and wants to sabotage you. Here are 15 signs they do.
1. They overwhelm you with false praise.
Have you felt that lately you’ve been inundated with flattery and compliments from your friend over your work promotion? Perhaps every time you see them, it’s the first thing they mention, and they can’t stop going on about it. This could mean that they’re jealous and resent you.
2. They go on about their achievements.
You also find that when you mention your promotion at work, your friend is quick to mention their achievements. In the past, when you’ve been celebrating a success, your friend is right there alongside you, celebrating too. However, with this one, you’ve found that they quickly switch it up, so the focus is on them. Weird.
3. They try to give you bad advice.
If your friend is secretly jealous of your promotion and ultimately want to sabotage you, they might be sneaky about how they infiltrate your happiness. They might give you advice or recommend you do something that, on reflection, seems a bit strange. It’s not something you would normally do, nor is it something they would normally recommend. They might say something like “Don’t try for another promotion too soon, otherwise you might start to turn heads in the office and breed resentment.”
4. They ask you unnecessary questions.
A good friend who is genuinely happy for you when you succeed at something will ask you about it but not overdo it. If they resent you for your happiness, they’ll want to know too much about it. They might even ask you irrelevant questions, like “Who else was in the running to be promoted?”, “Do you think they’ll be hiring anytime soon?” or “What made them decide to give the promotion to you?”
5. They are satisfied when you fail.
When was the last time you failed at something, and instead of being supportive and showing sympathy, your friend was smug and almost happy about it? Perhaps they used the phrase “I told you so,” implying they knew you would fail. Or maybe they said something like, “Well I could have told you that you weren’t going to succeed at that. I’ve been telling you for months not to do it. If you had listened to me, you wouldn’t be in this position now.”
6. They keep making excuses as to why they can’t catch up.
Ever since your success at work, it’s been really hard to catch up with your friend. They always have a reason why they can’t see you. In the past, they would have dropped everything to spend time with you. The last text they sent was, “Sounds like work’s going well. It’s just a busy season for me right now, but I’m sure we’ll be able to catch up at some point! I’ll let you know.” You haven’t heard from them in weeks.
7. They are hypercritical.
If you have a friend who resents your success and ultimately wants to sabotage you, they might take the opportunity to criticize and nitpick. They might say, “Good job on the promotion—but don’t let it go to your head.” Or “Didn’t you tell me a couple of weeks ago that you were having issues with Sarah in the group projects? If you don’t get your head on right you might risk being demoted—and try not to be late to work again like you were yesterday!”
8. They take credit for your success.
You were at a social gathering of all your friends the other day, and your best friend was there, too. When you told everyone else about your promotion, your best friend piped up and mentioned that they encouraged you to go for the role in the first place. They want to take credit for your promotion and steal the spotlight.
9. They might cut you off when you’re talking.
Perhaps at the social gathering, you explained to everyone what the promotion meant after your friend had claimed credit. However, before you were halfway through your explanation, your friend interrupted again, changing the subject and taking the attention away from you. They can’t stand to see you be celebrated for your success.
10. They try to demotivate you.
A good friend who truly wants to see you succeed will do everything they can to motivate you. A jealous friend who’s resentful and who ultimately wants to sabotage your success will find ways to demotivate you. They might go on about how with a promotion comes more responsibility, more work, and ultimately more headaches.
11. They point out your flaws to people.
In addition to taking credit for your promotion, your best friend was quick to point out where you had failed. They claimed that they couldn’t let you get a big head and then proceeded to humiliate you in front of everyone. When you confronted them about it, they said, “You’re being so dramatic! You know I’ve always got your back—everyone needs a friend who’s going to keep them grounded. Don’t forget who vouched for you in the first place!”
12. They talk about you behind your back.
One of your other friends at the social gathering approached you after your speech and told you that your best friend had been saying mean things about you behind your back. They claimed your friend was downplaying your achievements and making fun of you for being so excited about it. They said that you needed to read it in and it’s not that big of a deal, people get promotions all the time. Rude.
13. They say that you’re “just lucky.”
If you have a friend who you believe is resentful of your success, you might find that they like to repeat certain phrases to you. One of these might be that you’re “lucky.” What they mean by this is that you couldn’t have achieved what you did on your own merit—it’s just pure luck that you got promoted.
14. They try to be around you as much as possible.
When you first got promoted, your best friend was absent. Now, though, they want to spend all their time with you. This is because they want to keep an eye on you to try to sabotage your successes as much as possible. For example, every morning you wake up with a “Good morning bestie!” text, and by the afternoon, they’ve texted again, saying, “Want to get coffee in the morning before work? How about after-work drinks? Let me know ASAP!”
15. They give you the cold shoulder.
Since the promotion, the most confusing thing your friend has done is be hot and cold with your friendship. Initially, they were cold, then hot, and now they’re cold again, claiming you offended them, so they need space to “cool off.” However, they refuse to explain what you’ve supposedly done.
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