The best thing you can do for your life is surround yourself with good people

When I was in college, I had this terrible "friend" who I'll call M. I put "friend" in quotation marks, because she wasn't really a friend to me. She was one of those people who can only feel good about herself by making others feel bad. She was always guilt-tripping, making snide comments, and generally engaging in behavior designed to sabotage others' self-esteem. She was a master of manipulation, but what's most disgusting is that she wasn't even using the manipulation to achieve some end for herself. She was just manipulating people into feeling miserable out of pure malevolence.

I was less tolerant of her crap than most of my friend-group, and over the four years of college I went through several stretches of avoiding/not speaking to her, but I would always stupidly reconcile. When graduation was approaching, I finally had enough. She had been engaging in an epic struggle to convince me I was a horrible person for dating a girl that another friend of mine had previously been on one date with, even though that other friend was totally cool with it.

After countless arguments in person, over the phone, and by e-mail, I finally asked myself why I was friends with her in the first place. So I wrote her a letter saying in essence, "You need to choose what's more important: Your friendship with me, or trying to prove you're right. I'm not willing to be friends with someone who makes me miserable. I'm through trying to justify myself to you. You can continue thinking I'm doing something bad, but if you don't start treating me like a friend we won't be friends. All you have to do is be nice to me. Take as much time as you like, but if you respond to this with more arguments instead of being nice, I won't reply and that will be the end of our friendship."

A half-hour later she fired back with a diatribe about how I was not only horrible for dating someone she disapproved of, but also for insisting she treat me like a friend. I stuck to my word and refrained from replying, and never spoke, wrote, or communicated with her in any way ever again.

Shortly after this, I realized something: My life was a lot better without this poison person in it. I had freed myself from a burden of misery. And this led me to a more general realization.

There are certain people in the world that add value to my life. And there are certain people in the world that remove value from my life. If I befriend the former and avoid the latter, I'll be a lot happier.*

This philosophy has guided my social interactions for the last eight and half years, with excellent results. I have a group of wonderful friends who consistently make me happy, the wonderfullest of whom I married. My life is awesome, and I owe a lot of it to the lesson that M taught me. Sometimes I think I should track her down and thank her for being so horrible, because it gave me the push I needed to actively start avoiding people who were like her, even to a lesser degree. (Obviously I wouldn't really do this, as initiating communication with her would defeat the purpose.)

But because I've worked so hard to surround myself with wonderful people, sometimes I forget that not everyone has the same understanding of friendship, and relatedly of love. Which means that articles like this seem like they're coming from an alien world. I literally can't understand why these women are married to men they obviously hate. And I can't understand why these men are married to women who treat them so horribly. Either he should dump her for being such a heinous shrew, or she should dump him for being an incompetent half-wit. (Or both.)

It's sad that this attitude and behavior are so commonplace. But at least you can insulate yourself from it by properly choosing whom to associate with. If you choose friends and/or lovers who are constantly spewing drama, pain, negativity, and sadness, then your life will be filled with drama, pain, negativity, and sadness. But if you avoid those people and instead choose friends/lovers who generate joy, fun, and affection, your life will be filled with joy, fun, and affection. That's way better.

It's also a good idea to think about which category *you* fall into. If you're constantly spewing drama, pain, negativity, and sadness, not only will you be compounding the drama, pain, negativity, and sadness in your life yourself, but you'll also miss out on some wonderful friendships because the best people won't be willing to hang out with someone like you.

And now I'll go smooch my wife, who both adores and respects me, and makes quite sure that I know it.

* This is similar to the rationale behind my decision to quit arguing about politics on the Internet. I realized that doing so was removing happiness from my life. I admit I've fallen off the arguing on the internet wagon a few times since I made that decision, but I've generally regretted doing so.