Let’s learn to ignore selfish people just like the way we ignore ‘Terms and Conditions’ of any software

There is a very fine, often invisible line between self-care and selfishness, and most of us do not truly understand where that line lies until we have crossed it unknowingly and paid for it in emotional hurt, confusion, or exhaustion, because selfishness rarely announces itself loudly; it arrives subtly, disguised as confidence, charm, or even vulnerability, and at its core it is the consistent habit of placing one’s own interests above everyone else’s—without pause, without reflection, and without concern for the emotional cost to others, which is why the world, unfortunately, is filled with such people in familiar forms: friends we trust, colleagues we tolerate, and at times even family members we feel obligated to excuse.

When you surround yourself with individuals who are chronically negative, deeply self-absorbed, or emotionally unavailable, the outcome is rarely dramatic but always damaging, because over time you begin to feel mentally drained, emotionally hollow, and subtly diminished, as though your energy is being siphoned off in small, almost unnoticeable amounts, until one day you realise that maintaining such relationships feels like pouring effort into a vessel that never fills; keeping a selfish friend is much like investing in a dead stock—it promises potential, it demands patience, but it never delivers returns, only a quiet accumulation of regret.

What makes this dynamic especially difficult to recognise is that selfish individuals often wear a convincing mask of charm; they appear kind, engaging, and agreeable in the beginning, saying the right things, mirroring your values, and presenting themselves as emotionally intelligent, until slowly, almost imperceptibly, the imbalance reveals itself—usually when you need them, or when your expectations of reciprocity are met with indifference rather than care.

Based on decades of observing people and patterns of behaviour, there are certain quiet warning signs worth noticing early—not with bitterness or suspicion, but with wisdom and clarity—starting with how someone reacts when you do something genuinely thoughtful for them, because a person who values connection will acknowledge kindness with warmth and gratitude, whereas a self-absorbed individual will often brush it aside as though it were expected, as if your effort was an obligation rather than a choice, revealing a mindset that takes far more than it ever notices.

Over time, you may also observe that plans are almost always on their terms, where cancellations come easily to them and apologies feel hollow, carefully worded but lacking genuine remorse, while your plans are weighed against other possibilities and quietly discarded if something “better” appears, leaving you with the uncomfortable realisation that you are not a priority but a placeholder—convenient until replaced, invisible the moment your presence requires effort.

In social settings, such individuals often treat relationships as transactions rather than connections, scanning rooms and conversations for opportunity rather than intimacy, calculating who might be useful, influential, or advantageous, and even within friendship maintaining an unspoken ledger of benefits, where every interaction is assessed through the lens of “What’s in it for me?” rather than shared experience or mutual care.

You may notice that they frequently talk about their “other friends,” dropping names and recounting stories of impressive people in their orbit, yet those relationships remain oddly distant from you, never materialising into real introductions or shared spaces, because such connections are often superficial and carefully compartmentalised, and they prefer to keep you close enough to serve a purpose but far enough to prevent genuine closeness or overlap.

Generosity, in all its forms, tends to be foreign to them, because they experience emotional sharing as loss rather than expansion, viewing friendship as a balance sheet instead of a bond, where giving feels depleting rather than enriching, and the idea that sharing one’s circle can actually make life fuller is something they simply do not understand or trust.

Perhaps the most insidious pattern of all is how they subtly keep you unsure of yourself, never openly diminishing you but withholding affirmation just enough to keep you seeking their approval, offering backhanded compliments, delayed responses, or gentle rejections that are strategically timed to keep you emotionally invested, creating a dynamic that is not accidental but manipulative, though carefully sugar-coated as concern or honesty.

So what do we do when we recognise these patterns—not dramatically, not confrontationally, but with self-respect? We do exactly what we do when a website asks us to read its Terms and Conditions: we stop over-analysing, we scroll past, we disengage emotionally, and we move on without expecting explanations, closure, or accountability, because selfish people rarely offer any of those things sincerely.

Instead, we choose peace—the quiet kind that comes from detachment—by accepting people as they are, not as we wish they would be, and by refusing to keep proving our worth to those who will never truly see it unless it serves their interests, remembering always that we deserve friendships that energise rather than exhaust us, conversations that feel like soft places to land rather than emotional evaluations, and relationships that do not keep score, because life is far too short to keep investing in connections that only take, and never give back.