Why Haven’t Sanctions on Russia Stopped the War? The Money Is Still Flowing. – The New York Times https://t.co/IqbR8zxnfz
— Michael Novakhov (@mikenov) August 24, 2025
Day: August 24, 2025
Yusuke Nishizawa/Getty Images
- All friendships experience highs and lows.
- But if you feel like a friend puts you down or doesn’t care about you, it’s a red flag.
- If your relationship feels one-sided or dramatic, it might be a sign to break up.
Just like romantic relationships, friendships have their ups and downs. Conflict doesn’t mean your friend is toxic.
However, not all tensions are fixable, and not all differences are worth enduring. Miriam Kirmayer, a clinical psychologist, told Business Insider that if you feel invisible or emotionally unsafe in any relationship, it’s doing more harm than good.
Assessing if a friendship is healthy and fulfilling “is one of those questions that we don’t take the time to ask ourselves,” Kirmayer said, even though the answer is usually “very telling.” It’s even harder to do if you share a deep history with a childhood or school BFF.
Kirmayer shared some red flags that a friendship might be worth ending, whether it’s too one-sided or filled with drama.
1. They’re inherently self-centered
All close friendships should feel balanced, without “scorekeeping or counting the minutes,” Kirmayer said.
It’s not to say that you’ll always feel like perfect equals. Your friend’s communication style might be more talkative than yours, or they might need more support during a crisis.
But they should also find time to ask you questions back and remember details about your life. Otherwise, you’re in a relationship with an energy vampire, drained from listening to your friend’s vents without ever getting the floor, too.
2. They tear you down under the guise of ‘brutal honesty’
Great friendships will occasionally involve telling each other what you don’t want to hear.
But Kirmayer said there’s a difference between sharing hard truths and insulting your friend’s life choices under the cover of “I’m just being honest!”
“We feel the truest sense of belonging and connection when we feel seen, heard, and appreciated for who we actually are,” Kirmayer said. If you constantly get told you’re doing something wrong, “it can end up feeling like that friendship is conditional on our willingness or ability to mold ourselves into who they want us to be.”
Whether they’re taking jabs out of jealousy or highlighting your faults as a “joke,” they’re not helping you grow — they’re cutting you down.
3. They don’t take any feedback
If they can dole out lots of feedback but can’t take any themselves, that’s a sign of an uneven friendship.
One good way to gauge this is by watching how they respond when you bring up an issue, Kirmayer said. “Are they willing to take accountability or just hear you out in a way that allows for constructive conversations?”
If your friend is reactive to feedback, no matter how politely and diplomatically you present it, it’s a sign that you might be people-pleasing in the relationship to avoid explosive conflict.
4. They rarely text you first
For a friendship to feel stable, Kirmayer said it’s important for close friends to take turns initiating plans, rather than everything falling to one person.
“That consistency is important for keeping our friendships thriving,” she said. Otherwise, it can build resentment and distrust over time if one friend is always the one reaching out.
5. They always need to have it their way
True friends respect your boundaries, Kirmayer said. If you say no to talking about a vulnerable topic, do they keep prodding? If you don’t want to go out on a weeknight, do they start shaming you or try to change your mind?
She said someone not respecting the word “no” is a huge red flag in all relationships. Ironically, it can make you crave even more distance from a friend.
6. They badmouth people all the time
Not all gossip is bad, and it doesn’t always mean someone who talks about others will talk about you.
“Sometimes, our friends are gossiping as a need to secure support or to set out our perspectives and experiences,” Kirmayer said. It can be a way to work through a problem or grow closer via shared values.
However, gossip isn’t the same as a friend frequently putting other friends down to make themselves feel better. In general, Kirmayer said a solid friendship should present other ways of connecting besides what you don’t like about other people.
If you get a pit in your stomach about all the small things your friend rips other people apart over, it might be a sign that they’d speak just as badly about you, too.
7. They’re attached to the old you
Lifelong friendships undergo big life changes, like moving away, marriage, or having kids. Inevitably, those can change the dynamics of a friendship, too.
That’s why Kirmayer said it’s a great sign if your friend wants to keep learning about you. You should welcome new life updates and support each other through major milestones, not “only repeating the same conversations that you’ve had for years on end.”
If a friend is only invested in a past version of you, it can be a sign that you’re outgrowing your friendship.
While there’s no perfect way to break up with a friend, some methods are better than others. Even if you feel they’re worth ghosting, abruptly ending the friendship (or sending them a long therapy-speak text) will cause extra pain. It’s always better to try to have a conversation, even if it’s your last one.
Read the original article on Business Insider
Lagarde Highlights Migration’s Impact on Eurozone Labor Market
The President of the European Central Bank (ECB), Christine Lagarde, emphasized the pivotal role of migration in bolstering the eurozone’s labor market, noting that without migrant labor, Germany’s GDP could be about 6 percent lower today, and Spain has seen significant recovery thanks to foreign workers, reports 24brussels.
Lagarde pointed out that since 2021, employment within the eurozone has increased by over 4 percent, despite the most aggressive interest rate hikes in decades implemented by central bankers. She argued that migration is essential to counteract Europe’s declining birth rate and the increasing demand for shorter working hours, which in turn facilitates business growth and mitigates inflationary pressures even as wages struggle to keep pace with rising prices.
However, Lagarde acknowledged the political ramifications of migration. The EU’s net immigration reached an all-time high of 450 million in the previous year, prompting governments from Berlin to Rome to impose restrictions on new arrivals amid rising pressures from voters leaning towards far-right parties.
“Migration could, in principle, play a crucial role in easing labor shortages as native populations age,” Lagarde stated. “But political economy pressures may increasingly limit inflows.”
She highlighted the current robustness of Europe’s labor market following recent economic shocks, but warned that this positive trend may not be sustained. Ongoing demographic decline, political pushback, and changing preferences among workers continue to pose threats to the eurozone’s stability.
Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto/Getty Images
- This post originally appeared in the BI Today newsletter.
- You can sign up for Business Insider’s daily newsletter here.
Welcome back to our Sunday edition, where we round up some of our top stories and take you inside our newsroom. A luxury gym, a massive food hall, and a 24/7 grab-and-go service. Those are some of the amenities at JPMorgan’s new 60-story Manhattan headquarters — and they send a clear message: work-as-life is here to stay.
On the agenda today:
- Inside America’s 250-year pursuit of the perfect morning routine.
- A psychologist and day trading coach shares his tips and tricks.
- Millennials’ favorite companies are growing up or dying out.
- The FDA caught radioactive shrimp headed to Walmart. Any takers?
But first: Forging a new (career) path.
If this was forwarded to you, sign up here. Download Business Insider’s app here.
This week’s dispatch
Fewer entry-level doors are opening
Jack Taylor/Getty Images
For college grads, giant consulting firms have been a great place to start a career — and sometimes finish one.
That path is narrowing.
Business Insider’s Polly Thompson reported this week that PwC plans to cut entry-level hiring in the US by almost a third over the next three years.
PwC US hired 3,242 tax and assurance associates in the latest financial year that ended in June, part of an internal presentation showed. Three years from now, that number is expected to be 2,197, a 32% decrease. The firm plans similar decreases in its advisory division.
PwC didn’t get into the details with Polly but confirmed it was lowering campus hiring goals, saying “the rapid pace of technological change is reshaping how we work.”
It’s AI, but not just AI. It’s also offshoring more work to less-expensive labor markets, the presentation indicated. Meanwhile, PwC also says it’s dealing with “historically low” attrition — people aren’t leaving. We’ve been covering that phenomenon lately, known as “job hugging,” or if a worker is down about it, “quiet cracking.”
Polly’s story should be an alarm bell for people in college or early in their careers. She wrote in January that the Big Four firms — PwC, EY, Deloitte, and KPMG — collectively employ 1.5 million people.
Less consulting hiring out of colleges means more grads will need to get creative. Small firms and startups can be a great option, and AI might enable more innovation. But as Aki Ito recently wrote for us, that means a much different approach to navigating your career.
So where does Business Insider fit in? We’re committed to bringing you the hard facts about the landscape, and then helping you succeed in it. One quick place to start is our job guide. As always, let me know what you think at eic@businessinsider.com.
The morning routine industrial complex
Peter Dazeley/Getty Images; BI
When Benjamin Franklin — who crucially woke up at 5 am — published his daily routine to promote the pursuit of happiness as a public good, it launched a centuries-long obsession with personal routines.
Spend any time on the internet today, and you’re bound to be inundated with the strange, sometimes masochistic regimens meant to boost productivity and enforce discipline. So, how did our quest for the perfect morning routine go from “early to bed, early to rise” to “at 8:45 am, rub banana peel on face”?
Tricks of the (day) trade
Courtesy of Andrew Menaker
Andrew Menaker was a Navy psychologist before Wells Fargo tapped him to be a psychological consultant on their trading desk. Now, he runs his own coaching practice, where he works with traders on and off Wall Street.
Menaker said he’s seen traders struggle for a common set of reasons, like having a big ego, being too aggressive, or being too scared. He told BI the usual mistakes he sees traders make.
Millennial brands hit middle age
Reuters / Getty Images
In the 2010s, direct-to-consumer brands like Glossier and Warby Parker wooed millennials with their pastel packaging, quirky ad copy, and mission-forward focus.
Now, though, harder times have fallen on beloved brands like those. Many have been snapped up by bigger companies or closed completely. The ones that remain have largely settled into boring, old retailers — aptly analogous to the middle age millennials themselves are adjusting to.
Isotope cocktail
Kevin Trimmer/Getty Images
A batch of frozen shrimp from Indonesia tested positive for the radioactive isotope Cesium-137, the FDA said. The shrimp was set to be sold under the Great Value brand at Walmart.
That would probably make most people want to chuck whatever shrimp might be sitting in their freezer right now. It also creates a unique opportunity for anyone feeling like they could be the shrimp equivalent to a certain spidery superhero, writes BI’s Katie Notopoulos.
This week’s quote:
“People are going to start putting those homes back into the market, and I think it’s going to be a bit of a shock to them, what they have to reprice at.”
— Rick Palacios Jr., the director of research at John Burns Research and Consulting, on the growing risks of mortgage rate buydowns for homebuyers.
More of this week’s top reads:
- Exclusive: AT&T is directing more managers to relocate or face layoffs.
- America’s great people shortage.
- Paper résumés, trick questions, in-person job interviews: Hiring is going old school to escape AI slop.
- Cracker Barrel’s new look isn’t everyone’s cup of sweet tea.
- Leaked Microsoft pay data shows how much hundreds of employees report making in AI, cloud, and other teams.
- Investors warn AI FOMO could be fueling a risky bubble in companies like OpenAI and Anthropic.
-
Americans want their stuff delivered fast — and they’re willing to pay.
The BI Today team: Jamie Heller, editor in chief, in New York. Lisa Ryan, executive editor, in New York. Akin Oyedele, deputy editor, in New York. Grace Lett, editor, in New York. Amanda Yen, associate editor, in New York.
Read the original article on Business Insider