Essay Example about Competition in Friendship

It’s nearing the end of math class, the teacher is handing back the student’s chapter tests, a young girl receives hers, turns to her friend, and says, “I got an 89 on my test!” Her friend smirks and replies, “Not bad, but I got a 98, so I win this time!” This last sentence could single-handedly crush the young girl’s excitement about the grade she worked so hard for, make her feel like she didn’t do good enough, and spark some jealousy towards her friend who came so close to a perfect score. On the other hand, some might think this situation would be motivating to the girl with the lower score. Seeing that one of her friends outperformed her might push her to work harder and strive for a higher grade. All of these emotions the girl might be feeling are rooted in her friendship which contains a competitive aspect that will either eventually drive these two friends apart or strengthen their bond and make them both more successful. Competition within a friendship is not uncommon. Many friendships include some type of competitive nature, however, whether it’s beneficial to the friendship or not is highly debated. There are many negative aspects that competition brings to friendships including low self-esteem, less closeness, jealousy, and behaviors that are the opposite of what a healthy friendship needs. These effects impact the quality of friendship tremendously and can destroy it all together. There can be positives to competing against a friend, but ultimately the cons outweigh the pros. After much research, it has been decided that competition between friends will end up ruining their friendship. 

The first reason competition is detrimental to friendship is because it can cause low self-esteem and self-worth.  When competing there is always a winner and a loser. If someone is constantly losing to one of their friends they are going to start feeling down about themselves, generating low self-esteem. The source titled “Competition in Friendships” by David Hibbard and Gail Walton says that, “One friend will win while the other will lose, which can, in turn, negatively affect the “loser’s” self-evaluation” (216). The loser will start to view themselves as less than, the more they lose. In the article, “Competition and Emotional Closeness in Early Adolescent Friendships: The Role of Domain Importance and Coping” written by McGuire, she mentions that people derive their self-esteem from different things. If someone were to fail in that certain thing then their self-esteem wouldn’t be fulfilled the way they need, so they would then feel incompetent. In a competitive friendship, this situation could look something like this. Friend A bases their self-esteem on their athletic performance, but Friend B scores 3 more goals than Friend A at their soccer game. This would cause Friend A to feel disappointed in themselves since they fuel their self-esteem based on their athletic performance, which was just outdone. They see that their friend did better than them, making them feel like they failed, resulting in lower self-esteem. Soon, if Friend A keeps “losing” to Friend B they will start associating Friend B with feeling bad about themselves causing them to not want to be around Friend B as much. This distancing between them will lead to the dissolution of their friendship over time. 

Another reason why competing is bad for friendships is because there is often less closeness between the friends involved. Intense competition with a friend can lead to emotional distress, and according to McGuire, “emotional distress is related to emotional closeness” (6). This means that there’s a link between distress and closeness, so if one is thrown off the other one will be directly affected. Vigorous competition can be stressful especially when it’s against a friend. When the competition starts to get stressful that’s when it starts to affect the closeness of the friends. Being in a healthy friendship calls for many things, and having a close bond with each other is one of the main necessities. The moment competition starts to interfere with the closeness of a friendship is the moment the friendship starts to sink. 

The next issue with having a friend who doubles as a rival is that friendships are built upon completely different ideas, morals, and feelings than competition supplies. According to the article “Healthy Friendships and Relationships,” a healthy friendship needs good communication, respect, trust, the ability to be comfortable around the friend, support, and much more. Competing against a friend doesn’t offer any of those qualities, but instead brings jealousy, less support, lack of trust, conceitedness, “manipulation, aggressiveness, exploitation, and denigration of others” (Hibbard and Walton 214). The text by Beth Bradford titled, “The Thrill To Compete: A Personal Story of Exercise Dependence,” also states that competing can be “ruthless and selfish” (8) and can “disrupt community and contribute to relationship problems” (8). None of these qualities define what being a good friend consists of, they are actually all great examples of what a friend shouldn’t be. A good friend should be someone you feel comfortable around and who you feel like you can confide in. The presence of competition eliminates those much needed feelings for a healthy frienship. The traits that spawn from competition will end up negatively affecting a friendship. 

One of the main problems that always appears in friendships at the same time competition does is jealousy. Competing has a common goal in sight, oftentimes it’s to win or to just do something better than the opponent. If an opponent wins, the other competitor could become jealous of their talent and success because they wanted to be the one who wins. Jealousy can sometimes evoke behavior that could ruin a friendship. In the article “Competitive Behavior Styles in Adolescent Friendships: The Roles of Context, Gender, Jealousy, and Friendship Bonds” the author, Katelyn Massey, says that “Individuals with high jealousy engage in more aggressive, surveillance, and destructive communication behaviors” (12-13). Jealousy can make people act out of character and is said to be a “leading factor in relationship dissatisfaction and negative friendship patterns” (Massey 12). Jealousy strikes a part inside of people that induces behaviors not many people want their friends to have towards them. It’s because of these crazy things jealousy makes people do that lead to others not wanting to be around them as much. Friends that start behaving hostile or aggressive towards one another because of their competitive friendship are most likely friends that aren’t going to last, for these kinds of behaviors will become very damaging to their friendship. 

Of course, with every controversy, there will always be another side. The other side to competition in friendships is that it can be utilized as a beneficial element to help strengthen the friendship. When someone competes against a friend it can be motivating to them because they both want to win and do their best. A little bit of healthy competition will result in friends pushing each other to try harder, therefore, they will both become more successful in the end. This perspective is a best-case scenario, it’s what would happen if none of the negative effects came along with competition. If it wasn’t a natural human response to feel low self-esteem, jealousy, or distant from a friend who one is in constant competition with, then maybe competition would be a great way to build friendship. Unfortunately, that’s not how it works. Assuming that everyone used competition with their friends in a healthy, constructive way, no friendships would be ruined and competition could, in fact, help build friendships, but reality check, the chances of that happening are close to none. Competition will almost always cause more harm than good. 

Competition between friends makes for a very unhealthy relationship between them and leads to the decline of their friendship. There are many reasons why competition will, in time, destroy friendships. Competition within a friendship leads to lower self-esteem and self-worth because one must always “lose” for it to be considered competition. It affects the closeness of friends making them more distant. Jealousy also comes from competition, and so do many other traits that don’t promote what a healthy friendship consists of. Competition can be viewed as having quite a bit of positive outcomes in terms of friendship, but after weighing both sides the negatives seem to overtake them. All things considered, friendships that involve competition tear friends apart and in some cases cause their entire friendship to be dismantled.