Fake Friends

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My son has been going through a lot. He just told me that two people who he thought were his friends revealed to him that they no longer want to talk or hangout anymore because they never really liked him. They just took pity on him and where trying to be nice. Im heartbroken gor him. How can he avoid this from happening ?

There is really no way to avoid it.

I can well recall the pain and shame of hearing that. The thing that I would recommend is getting used to being alone and pursuing things that he is really passionate about so that he can befriend people who like him for who he really is and what he really cares about.

I had fake friends who were being nice to me because their church told them to recruit people that way and a kid who told me his parents made him be nice to me. You can't avoid that. The people who were friends through a shared interest in astronomy were never fake.

There is a place for "fake friends" if you treat them like acquaintances. I say this b/c the existence of friendlies (even if reluctant) can be useful to a point, if they are benign and do not have an ulterior motive of humiliation up their sleeves. Having people willing to be seen with you and be in your immediate vicinity can help avoid certain types of bullying. The real bad bullies might stay away if they see you are in the vicinity of a group as opposed to being literally alone. That is part of why schools have lunch buddy programs and the like b/c there is safety in numbers and unfortunately being by yourself can be unwise in many circumstances. The problem is that you have to be able to recognize that this is their function and not get emotionally attached to them or have unrequited social expectations of them.

There were people that were kids of my mother's acquaintances that functioned in that way in the sense that we basically had to be cordial to one another. I really could have done without some of the parentally-engineered interactions, but looking back on it, I think since one of them was popular, it probably kept certain bullying within a more manageable framework, b/c I did not have issues with her or her friends, where maybe I might have? Maybe.

I didn't have any interest in being friends with these kids, and so I didn't have the issues your son is having where he thinks they are real, valued friends. I think it is something you can't really avoid, if you want friendships. Like with romances, there is always the chance that your feelings will be unrequited/nonreciprocal, and that is the risk you must take if you want a chance at experiencing the real thing.

I think Adamantium is correct in that you can minimize the emotional risk by concentrating on acquiring friendships with people who have similar interests, but you can never eliminate the possibility of betrayal or friendships falling away for other reasons, like drift or other things.

I am not sure why these kids are telling your son they were fake friends. I am assuming something happened to where they are no longer willing to continue and they want your son to stop pursuing it. Maybe he is aging out of the stage where kids will do this out of parental influence or pity b/c of social self-interest in terms of maintaining their own social standing or wanting to be independent of their parents intentions. If this is the issue, then the bright side is that newly acquired friends might be more sincere b/c they have aged out of those reasons for phony friendships and so will be less likely to have the motive to pursue a fake friendship.

He is still going to have to be somewhat cautious of bullies trying to fake friendship to plot something humiliating, but you have to be careful not to mix in un-necessarily b/c if you put too much emphasis on avoiding fake friends, it will make him feel like you think no one could like him and make him feel worse. It is hard balance to teach caution without affecting self-esteem, and I don't know how to hit that balance.