Overly positive friend

[Brosources]

I have a friend who is overly positive and it’s starting to affect our relationship. I realise this possibly says more about me than her but I’m starting to find it grating. For example, things can’t just be as they are, they have to be really special, or just gorgeous, or totalling humbling. Everything is amazing and lovely. She’s a good friend in other ways but I’m avoiding getting in touch with her because I find it so irritating. Has anyone else ever come across this and have any insight into why people feel the need to behave this way?

My MIL is so full on like this.

Sometimes I'm just honest and say how I really feel to bring her back down to reality a bit 😂😂

People are different 🤷‍♀️

I had a friend like this. Every holiday she had 'was out of this world', any restaurant 'was truly mind blowing' and her and DH were passionately in love, couldn't keep their hands off each other and 'needed nothing more than each other'.
Things came crashing down around her (a car accident involving her getting injured but not in a serious or long term way) and I realised all the perfection she constantly emphasised in her life was to protect her own delicate mental health. She had to convince herself that everything was as it should be in her world. It took her needing to ask others for help with pick-ups, not cook everything from scratch and not look like she had just stepped out from the pages of Vogue etc. to finally show her real self to her friends. I liked the more genuine and vulnerable woman much more than the one with a perfectly positive facade, and she was much happier.
It transpired that from an early age her parents had enforced always appearing as the perfect family to the community.
My friend emigrated to New Zealand with her new found honesty and is loving life apparently.

My mum is like this. She cannot let you feel what you feel for two minutes. Even if you hear you didn't get the promotion, you're not allowed to sit with it for 24 hours. So infuriating. I get back to positive quicker if Im Allowed to me upset for ten minutes first

She might be very positive. But it might also be something underneath all that positivity. Maybe she is not as happy as she seems?

I would think it's likely that this over positive Pollyanna attitude is there to boost her confidence and to overcome possible low self esteem. It may be her way of coping with life. If you value her friendship l would just smile and nod, and change the subject.

This is good advice.

I think this could well be true. I’ll try and keep it in mind when speaking to her in future. It comes across as fake and I think that’s what I don’t like about it. She’s a good friend in many other ways.

My sister is like this. She has had a really traumatic upbringing so I think she uses it as a coping mechanism. She is a really lovely, good person, she really wants the world to be the way she sees it.

I know a couple of people like this and I find them insincere. One is a distant relative who gushes all the time e.g. she goes on and on about how much she loves my children although she barely knows them and only sees them a couple of times a year.

She puts appx twenty kisses at the end of messages, and uses what I’d call buzzwords to describe people all the time. She insinuates that she’s best friends with everyone she talks about.

I don’t know she’s like that but other relatives have made the same observation without being prompted by me. They find her over the top too.

Another is more a friend of a friend. If you said anything remotely negative like ‘I broke a nail today’ she makes out like she’s majorly concerned ie ‘omg, are you okay? I’m sending love and cuddles that your broken nail grows back soon.’ Again, it’s over the top reactions like she’s desperate for everyone to think she’s nice.

I know someone like this and it grinds my gears.
Everyone is her super special precious friend who she adores. Nothing is just good it’s amazing.

Fair enough if it’s the odd thing but she’s like the Alex Baldwin character in Friends.

To be fair I’m more of a Wednesday Addams so the whole super marvellous wonderful thing is never going to be for me .

Maybe she’s just really happy and positive

It can feel a bit insincere. My mil is lovely and positive but on occasions it can mean I just don’t feel we are having an honest interaction. She shys away from anything negative and is quite repressed emotionally. Can’t deal with difficult or ugly stuff and brushes it under the carpet. It makes things a bit superficial. On the whole though it’s a pleasant experience!

My work friend does it in a different way. Hers is all about her reputation rather than other people. So her kids school is amazing, she loves it so so much blah blah. It’s definitely about PR for her. I dislike her way of controlling the narrative because she doesn’t match it up with any warmth actually. It’s quite curious. I think she wants to be admired for her perfect life.

To be honest I rather overly positive people to overly negative people. I dislike people who always have a drama and the drama is always bigger than other peoples. And if you say eg your job is going well, they will make it negative and tell you they hate their job. Or you’ve been on holiday and they say they’ve been there and thought it was crap.

My OH is like this. He freely admits that he chooses to look at things positively because he'd prefer to be happy than sad. However since meeting me he has toned it down a lot (don't I sound like a barrel of biscuits!) and can be more realistic these days. Equally, since meeting him I am more optimistic/peppy than I used to be. Relationships are like that I s'pose. Especially now we're parents!

Agree with PP's that it's far nicer to have a positive friend than a negative one, albeit that it can be a bit much sometimes!

I mean, you're the one who made friends with her. If the positivity annoyed you, you could have kept your distance. It's like you've got all the way to being friends with her but have only just realised what her personality is like.

She is who she is. She isn't going to change (and doesn't need to). You're free to keep her as a "small doses" friend or to distance yourself altogether if you don't like who she is.

Some people who is usually overly positive have a very exaggerated and in most cases limited vocabulary. No everything is magnificent. Some things are just alright.
Does she works in marketing? , I ve noticed that some people I know that work in that sector use more those positive "infuriating" words because is in the nature of their sector. They are not going to win a tender or a contract saying "we in this company are above average".

I do this too. XP was the world's most negative man - everything was 'shit', everyone was out to rob him, shops put prices up just to spite him, you know the sort of thing. I became so overly positive in an attempt to prove to him that life wasn't all out to get him and the world was a much nicer place if you just looked for the good things in it.

I'm a bit more normal now I'm not with him any more. But God it was wearing!

I had a friend like this, she did my bloody head in. We grew apart over lockdown and that was a good thing. No one wants negativity but it was like hanging out with Pollyanna.

I have a work colleague who does the positive affirmations, everything is wonderful and we all live in la la land routine. She sees it as her mission to 'spread positivity'. I find it extremely annoying and quite disrespectful at times, for example, after attending the funeral of a very close friend, seriously these people need to read the room and think about what they are saying. Not everyone feels positive all the time nor should they be under pressure from the 'happy police' to be so. A flippant 'wishing you a wonderful day' when you are at your lowest ebb can be quite triggering.

Meh. It's just her personality. If you don't like her personality in not sure why you'd bother being friends. She either adds something to your life or she doesn't.

I quite like people like this because I'm quite shy

It would annoy me too.

Surely in order for things to be brilliant some things have to be mediocre, and some things are inevitably terrible.

I have got two friends like this, both I used to be quite close to but see a lot less frequently now. I started to explore the concept of toxic positivity because I couldn’t quite get why I struggle to connect with them more and more. I find it quite lacking in self awareness.

Friend 1 I have known since school and see about once a year, never without her husband, and they are both prolific social media posters who both pitch themselves as positive thinking life coach / relationship gurus. She has a background in sales and marketing and is also very competitive with other women which I think might be the drivers. In the 40 years I have known her she has only let me know she is struggling with anything in life right up to the crisis situation e.g. Divorce and parent’s death . Although we have been through a lot together I don’t feel a strong to connection to her because of this and have been trying to let the friendship lapse as I find it all hard work.

Friend 2 always without fail asks me if I am happy and doing things that make me happy because she is happy and always does things that make her happy every day. If I just say, I’m ok, same old, neither happy or sad which is good enough for me, she gives me a lot of sympathy and assumes I am having a really bad time when I’m not. I think it’s because our lives have gone in different directions, I’m really busy and have a full time interesting but demanding job , kids still at home and husband. She works 3 days a week, kids moved out, has lots of holidays and hobbies and has been single for over 20years. I think she’s curious about my choices and wants to explore this which I try to indulge but I’m really not arsed one way or another about our different lifestyles and don’t think in superlatives so I find it a bit exhausting.