[Rivière]

I completely agree with Mallika. Experience plays a huge part in knowing what kind of friendship is going to be good or bad. I've had my fair share of terrible friendships, and only a handful of good ones.

First and foremost, I've learnt to accept that friendships come and go all the time. It's rare to have a friendship that lasts years, even decades. I have just one friend whom I've known for 12 years and even then it's because we're online friends. In-person friends, I find, are much more short-term. It's difficult to find a friend that's truly going to be 100% amazing and works well with our personality. Our exposure to potentially good friends is limited to our every day life, whereas online, it's not.

I don't think there is any way to avoid toxic situations in general. We're always going to find ourselves in a situation where there will be somebody who is more selfish, self-centred, and uncaring about others. Every single person we meet is going to be completely different. However, once you get to learn how people behave in general, you start to notice patterns in such behaviour, and learn to determine what kind of engagements are good, and bad. Again, this comes with experience gained over the course of time.