March 24b- Lunch with a friendenemy

Do you have friendenemies March?

What do I mean by that? Let’s say, someone who seems to be kind to you, who invites you for lunch for example. Someone who is supposed to be your hierarchical superior, a sort of mentor. He gives you “advice” and seems eager to help you, but only when it doesn’t cost anything to him. And also puts you down in a subtle way.

I had lunch with this sort of ex-mentor. It was to see if he could advise me on my art project that I submit for funding. But through the conversation, it was clear he was only nice at the surface. He was telling me to give up.

The thing is, I learnt from another source he has a candidate he prefers over me.

Why did I go see him if I had this information? Was it necessary? Just to lower my spirits?

On the other hand, since the idea came to my mind, I thought, maybe there is a reason, I might understand something more about the situation.

The friendenemy or false mentor, is like a bad parenting figure. A parent who likes one child better than another, and you are the least loved one. You are always not as good as, there is not much expected of you, and your parent attributes a failure to your incompetence. A possible and more healthy solution is to change environment and choose to be with positive people who believe in us.

How do we recognize friendenemies? I think it is our feelings. When a person seems to be kind to us, even flattering us, but at the end of the interaction we feel bad, we should confide into our gut-feeling.

So I bid farewell to my ex-mentor.

He can do his best for his new “champion”.

And I will look for another mentor 🙂