With friends like these...

I have had several conversations of late, that have made me worry.

No change there then, because i'm the kind of person who worries about everything. But in particular, this comes down to the idea of the "frenemy".

Wikipedia describes "Frenemy" as: "a portmanteau of "friend" and "enemy" that can refer to either an enemy disguised as a friend or to a partner who is simultaneously a competitor and rival."

Now, this isn't perhaps the best word, but it'll do.

So, I had a conversation recently with a friend, about how other friends continually take the piss out of my clothing choices. It was he who suggested they were pretty shit friends for doing so, and if they didn't have something nice to say then they should say nothing at all. (Not his exact words, but that was the gist of it). I made a joke about them saying things like "interesting" to be polite, and he got briefly very angry on my behalf over it.

Which got me thinking.

Now, I can count on one hand the number of people who I would say genuinely appreciate my sense of style. I'm ok with that, I'm aware I dress like "an accident in a dressing up box" and that the combination of vintage purple floral dress, leopard print cardi and red doc martens (a current favourite) isn't to everyones tastes. I'm ok with that. I have my own, slightly questionable style, and I don't mind if other people aren't fond if they keep it to themselves.

That's what friends do right? They either say "you look daft but you're happy with it so i'll shut up" or they say nothing. Although i'm used to my friends saying "you look like a twat, why are you wearing that?" So maybe i've got a skewed view on these things.

Another thing, which i've mentioned before, was a conversation with a friend who effectively said "yes you're nuts, but that's why we love you" which is still one of the nicest things said to me to date. Again, I think this is what friends do? They accept you for who you are, or indeed who you're not.

This is the thing i've got to wondering; because I've got lots of good friends who accept me with my oddities and stupid dress sense and ignore the things I get up to. And others indeed, that don't.

And which ones are really the friends? Because you think of friends as being people who share your tastes and like you the way you are, but then maybe that's a modern invention. Remember at school when you were friends with people just because they were there? It didn't matter if you thought they dressed silly or they preferred power rangers when you liked TMNT's better, you just got on with it.

As an adult you get to be more selective yes, and with the internet more selective still. But you then fall into that trap of thinking that everyone agrees with you. Things like twitter are especially bad for this, I am highly aware my twitter feed is filtered through a sort of arty, liberal, comedy centric field of people. That's no bad thing either, but it leads me to doubt other relationships, which maybe isn't as good.

So who are the real frenemy's here? The people who tell me I look like a twat and like crap music but make time for me anyway? Or the people whom I can swap playlists and cardis with, and fangirl into the wee small hours about obscure music/comedy/comics.

Or maybe neither, maybe it's just a new facet of modern life?