Friends Who Bully Friends Aren’t Friends

[Hopefully last in a series]

Last week I received a bittersweet call from a former Taekwondo student who had grown over 6 feet tall—in more ways than one.

I rarely get phone calls from my students, so it was a surprise and a treat to hear from Marvin.

As a frail, pip-squeak 8-year-old, Marvin walked into the dojang one day years ago with his mom. I thought he was a girl. He had beautiful, long and wavy golden blond hair. The only thing that indicated he was a boy was the sleeveless David Robinson San Antonio Spurs basketball jersey he wore and the fact that his mother referred to him as “he.”

Marvin studied Taekwondo with me for about three years until he reached green belt and budding basketball height. Now over 6 feet tall, Marvin was on his high school basketball team. But Marvin’s call indicated that he was growing in more ways than height. He was going through a hard social and emotional growth spurt after one of his friends struck him in anger.

“Oh, I admit it,” he began. “It was a stupid confrontation, and I started it.”

While in his room after school, Marvin and two friends were casually jawing when his friends began a tirade of gay slurs. Marvin asked them to stop.

“I said, ‘Hey, guys, that’s not cool,’ but they kept on,” Marvin explained. “Then I said, ‘You guys have to go. Seriously, I mean it.’”

They didn’t leave. Instead, one of his friends began to tease and taunt Marvin about being gay because he defended homosexuals. Marvin has a girlfriend, but that’s beside the point. His family raised him to be open-minded and open-hearted and to be compassionate, accepting, and respectful of everyone—period.

Marvin admits he was tired and overwhelmed by the stresses of school. His family also was dealing with a tough issue at home. So he asked his friends again to leave, but they remained. In a moment of frustration, Marvin made the terrible decision to throw a cup at one of his friends.

The cup hit his friend, and the friend exploded in a violent rage, repeatedly punching Marvin in the head.

Marvin said he saw the attack coming. “It was like a slow motion movie. As he was coming at me, I started thinking of all the ways I could take him down.” Then Marvin remembered something I said in class many years ago.

“You said to only use my skills if my life was in danger,” Marvin said. “Even though I haven’t been in class in years, I knew I still had skills that could really hurt him.”

He chose to take the hits and not fight back. Marvin’s other friend stood nearby and watched while the boy screamed and pounded Marvin’s head. The attack lasted only seconds, and then both friends left in a huff.

Marvin was shaken but thankfully wasn’t physically hurt. Instead, he was baffled by his friend’s strong reaction, which didn’t seem to match being hit by a cup.

Marvin had seen this side of his buddy before, but his friend’s anger had never been directed at him.

“I knew right after I threw the cup that I shouldn’t have thrown it,” he said on the phone. “I wish I could have taken that cup back. But it was too late, and then [his friend] just flew into a rage.”

“You obviously struck a nerve,” I said.

“Yeah, he’s had a rough life so far,” said Marvin, who described the foster homes his friend had been in before being recently adopted.

“I would bet his biological parents were abusive, and that they threw things at him,” I said.

“That sounds right,” Marvin replied.

There was a pause in the conversation, then I said, “You know you could have blocked, right? Blocking an attack is OK. Even if you started it, you didn’t have to sit there and take it.”

“I know,” he said. “I just chose not to fight back.”

The incident opened a dialogue about his relationship with this boy, and whether they were really friends.

“Well, I started it. I shouldn’t have thrown the cup,” he said.

“True,” I agreed. “Did you apologize?”

“I did,” Marvin said, adding that it didn’t do much good. His friend had already texted and emailed him with trash talk and was threatening to post disparaging things about Marvin on Facebook.

“If you are sincerely remorseful, and you make amends by never repeating that behavior again, then you’ve done your part,” I said. “You can’t force him to accept your apology, and you don’t have to take further abuse.”

It was during our conversation that Marvin questioned whether his friend was a bully.

“Friend” bullying happens more than some might think. In this situation, it appears his friend took on the role of a Bully, Marvin was the Target, and his other friend was the Bystander, who did nothing.

Marvin was able to recognize the dynamics and of how this wasn’t the first time events had played out this way.

Marvin was disappointed in himself—wishing he hadn’t thrown the cup—but also disappointed in the friend who exploded and the bystander friend who did nothing.

“I know it’s hard,” I said, “but sometimes you have to let people go.

“Own up to your part, make amends, and then make sure you control your emotions going forward. Once you’ve done that, though, if your friend doesn’t accept your apology, doesn’t own his part, and doesn’t change his behavior, you have to walk away.”

Marvin took a second to check his latest text message. It was another angry tirade from his “friend.”

He sighed.

“You’ll be O.K., [Marvin],” I reassured him. “You’re learning a lot from this.”

“Yes, ma’am, I am,” he said.

“And you’ll be stronger because of it,” I said, adding a last question: “So what can you do the next time ‘friends’ in your room start throwing gay slurs around and won’t respect your boundaries or leave when asked?”

He paused, then said, “Find real friends.”

Marvin has indeed grown in more ways than height since his last Taekwondo class. And although I'm not crazy about the fact that he now towers over me, I'll gratefully be the smaller woman in exchange for him being a bigger man.