How to avoid losing friends

——Excerpted from Teacher Wu Jun’s "Pattern"

We always hope to have as many friends as possible, because people are social animals and need friends. But in real life, we lose friends for various reasons.

There are generally three categories of lost friends. The first type is those who cannot maintain the relationship due to changes in their life experiences, such as friends who gradually become estranged after graduation. After all, the limit of daily communication for a person is no more than a hundred or so people, and it is impossible to become long-term friends with everyone he meets. It can be said that parting ways with these friends is an arrangement of fate and will not be too regrettable. The second category is fake friends made accidentally because of friendships, and it is not a pity to lose them. Our lives would be better if we had fewer friends like this in the first place. The third type is lost because each other did not deal with the relationship of good friends. Looking back after the incident, it often makes people feel sad. What everyone can do is to try to avoid becoming deeply involved with the second type of people and handle the relationship with the third type of friends.

There are many types of friendship relationships, and the common ones can be classified into three categories: cooperative, dependent and ambiguous. The third category is not what this article will discuss, I will focus on the first two categories. Expectations for different types of friends should actually be different. Setting wrong expectations is one of the reasons for losing friends.

Cooperative friend relationship

Most friends have more or less cooperative relationships, such as teammates, comrades, classmates, colleagues, etc. Since ancient times, without cooperation, humans would not have been able to win in competition with nature, competition with other human species, and competition among tribes. To cooperate, you need to give up some selfishness, sacrifice your own partial interests, and seek the greatest common interests. Therefore, dedication and cooperation are the basis of this type of friendship. Without them, cooperative friends cannot be made.

The most typical example of the breakdown of a cooperative friendship is the separation of business partners who have been through thick and thin. I have been doing venture capital since 2007, and almost every year I see incidents of *** falling out with founders. In fact, mediating conflicts between founders and between founders and investors has become an important part of investors' work. It can be seen that the relationship between friends in times of trouble is very easy to break down.

Once I was doing a sharing trip out of town, and I had dinner with another sharing guest, a successful entrepreneur ***. After three drinks, he talked about the sad story of starting a business. According to him, his previous company had three founders, including himself. The three of them have been friends for 10 years and have known each other for 20 years. When the company was founded, conditions were very difficult. We all ate and lived together in the basement for four years. This experience was said to be as close as a life-long friendship. However, when the company was about to go public, the three people were in a mess. Finally, one of the partners kicked him and the other partner out in return of the loan. He started his business for nearly 10 years and received nothing but some interest, while his deceiving friend received hundreds of millions of yuan in cash income from going public. Finally, he sighed: "In the eyes of many people, it is not worth doing something to ruin a friendship for 1 million yuan, but it is worth doing for 100 million yuan. At worst, we will never see each other again for the rest of our lives."

I comforted He, many star companies in China, if you look closely at the situation when they were first founded and the situation after they developed, it is not difficult to find traces of "tearing". There are very few private companies in China that have successfully gone public without "tearing" between founders and between founders and investors. This is not only the case for young and inexperienced entrepreneurs, but there are also many "old fritters" in the world who have been "torn apart" by others when their businesses are very large. Even some people who live in the same city and are considered prominent in the local area still cut off friendships for the sake of profit. In the United States, the situation is not much better. Facebook is a typical company that relies on "tearing" to obtain controlling shares. The details can be understood through the movie "The Social Network".

Many people think that harming friendships for the sake of profit only happens in the business world. Ordinary people do not have so many interests, so friendships will be simpler.

In fact, any cooperative friendship will be harmed by interests. It’s just that business friendships involve greater interests, so friendships tend to go bad faster and are more obvious to outsiders. It is a weakness of human nature to be indifferent in the face of major interests and to benefit oneself at the expense of others. Some people are constrained by their own morals and values, and if they do better, the friendship will last longer; some people are unscrupulous, and the friendship will soon collapse.

Ways to avoid the breakdown of cooperative friendships

There are two effective ways to avoid the breakdown of cooperative friendships.

First, say ugly things first, try to avoid things that damage friendship, or reduce losses when they happen. Based on more than 10 years of investment experience, I have found that many companies that suffer from "internal divisions" have hidden dangers when they were first established. Many people who run a partnership company are too embarrassed to talk about equity or money (this situation exists not only between founders, but also between founders and angel investors). They feel that talking about interests hurts feelings, or they promise equity at will. , I feel that lack of generosity cannot be exchanged for sincerity. This kind of team may not cause problems when it encounters difficulties, but it will break up when it encounters huge benefits. Many people only regret not discussing their interests first after being kicked out. Talking about interests is not a shameful thing, but it is shameful to hurt partners on the grounds that talking about interests hurts feelings.

The most classic case is the dispute between several founders and early executives of Facebook-the shares of several Zuckerberg collaborators were severely diluted. But their problem lies first with themselves: when a person has huge wealth in a company, he needs to keep an eye on his wallet and not be calculated by his colleagues around him. Of course, Zuckerberg was not the winner in the end, because he implanted toxic genes into the company, and subsequent investors continued to find reasons to challenge him and forced him to quit the company many times.

It is originally a good thing for friends to do things together, but the end result is that the things are not done and neither can the friends. This is not because someone is immoral or has a problem with his or her character. It is human nature that "adversity is easy, wealth and honor are difficult." If you don't want to lose friends, it's best to make the distribution of benefits clear before doing things together. For most people who do not necessarily need to do things together, you must adhere to principles when making friends, just like clearly distinguishing interests before doing things in partnership. Colleagues need to give each other clear expectations about what they can and cannot do, otherwise they will lose friends sooner or later.

Second, don’t help or ask for help across dimensions. The cooperative relationship between friends has dimensions, not all-round. Many people don't understand this. Team teammates first play well together and then take care of each other in life. After all, teammates are often together, and this is a relationship that needs to be maintained carefully. But this kind of relationship is not suitable for doing business together, because that is another dimension. If we must do business together, we may not even be able to do it well as teammates in the end.

I never do business with relatives and friends, and I never manage money for friends, because my relationship with them is beyond business. If I have to do things I shouldn't do across dimensions and make money for others, they may not be grateful to me; and if I lose other people's money, I may not even be friends. Therefore, I said to my friends who asked me to manage their money: "I'm sorry, I can't help you because I don't want to lose you as a friend."

Another kind of loss due to cross-dimensional help The situation with friends is that they easily promise things they cannot do. When some people ask for help from their friends, they know that they can't do it and are too embarrassed to refuse, so they agree first. In the end, they can't get the job done, so they have to shamelessly say that the thing can't be done. Such a result will not only embarrass yourself, but may also deceive the other party because it gives the other party hope that does not exist. If you do this a few times, you will lose your friend. Therefore, it is better to say the ugly things first.

In the past, many friends asked me to help their friends find jobs at Google. I am not familiar with the people applying for jobs, so I make recommendations objectively based on their resumes. And, I’ll put the ugly words up front: “I can help your friends submit resumes, but Google receives a lot of resumes every day.

And at Google, no one has a say in hiring, so I may not be able to help. "For some people who are not competitive, I will even say: "Looking from the resume, the possibility of him being admitted is extremely low. I can only help you submit your resume, but it may not work in the end, so don’t blame me. "Because I vaccinated my friends in advance, they would be grateful to me if things turned out well, and even if things didn't work out, they would not complain to me.

The relationship of dependent friends

Cooperative friends The relationship can be maintained for a long time mostly because both parties take the initiative to contribute and have a basis for cooperation in certain dimensions. If the positioning of this relationship exceeds the dimension of cooperation, the friendship will gradually fade away.

Of course, some people feel that their friendship with someone is particularly pure and there is no cooperative relationship. I have said to such people: "The friendship you are talking about that is particularly pure, sympathetic, and non-utilitarian is itself a kind of utilitarian. Otherwise you wouldn't have told me about him. "In fact, I have such friends. The relationship between me and them is to a certain extent one of mutual dependence, that is, the second type of friends mentioned above. Nietzsche said that except for gods, beasts and philosophers, people can't stand anything. Loneliness. To get rid of loneliness, there will be a need to rely on friends.

There is a kind of relationship called "best friends". In real life, most of the best friends are fake. Not so pure. Some female celebrities posted photos of themselves with their besties on their birthdays, and when they were in trouble, their "good besties" ran faster than rabbits. But there are indeed real besties, and Zhang San's love for Li Si is unconditional. , two people are too fat to wear a pair of pants together. This kind of relationship usually has no utilitarian factors and is completely dependent.

However, this seemingly simple relationship is sometimes difficult. The long-term maintenance is not because of selfishness, but because of the unequal status of each other.

More than 10 years ago, there were not many Chinese people in the United States. Some girls were lonely after arriving in the United States, and there were some well-meaning senior girls. Take the initiative to take care of them. Some people keep distance from each other and remain friends; some people are too close. When they are good, they are like one person, but inequality will soon appear - boys have different attitudes towards them. , there is a big gap between the boyfriends, the two people’s family backgrounds are very different, the future employment prospects may be very different, etc. In such differences, the party with the advantage may really want to maintain the relationship as best friends, and may even be willing to give away their own things. Evenly divided, but the disadvantaged party usually refuses. This inequality often leads to their alienation.

The famous Italian director Paolo Taviani once made a movie called "Good Morning Babylon". The movie tells the story of two brothers, Android and Nicola, who helped film master David Griffith make a movie. Before they left Italy, the two brothers' father told them that they must be equal when they arrived in the United States. With a successful career in Hollywood and a happy marriage, the two were completely equal. However, after Nikolai's wife died in childbirth, they were no longer equal, and the tragedy began.

Ways to avoid the breakup of dependent friends.

The relationship between best friends is usually not as good as that of real brothers, but if the conditions between brothers are not equal, there will inevitably be dissatisfaction. Regardless of status, friends need to treat each other equally. Otherwise, even if one party expresses it. Well, it is difficult to maintain a long-lasting relationship. A friend who lives in Canada told me that she has a best friend who is very kind to her. Every time she goes back to Beijing, her best friend will put down her work and fly from the south to Beijing. Not only that. Treat her to the best food and have sex with her for a while. A few years later, when I met these two people again, they had rarely interacted with each other because the unequal economic conditions between them made it difficult for them to say no to each other. It's awkward. If it's a dependent relationship, both parties need to be equal. Maybe if the girl with good conditions lowers her living standard to that of my friend who relies on salary, their friendship can be maintained. Longer. Therefore, it is actually very difficult to get married. People who get married not only have to accept people from another class, but also have to give up all their past lives in order to achieve equality and maintain a long-term relationship.

Nowadays, most private primary and secondary schools require students to wear school uniforms, not only to look neat and tidy, but also to make children from different family backgrounds feel equal.