Never Trust A Drinker
“I let a friend of mine that had a severe drinking problem move in with me since he was going through hard times and was basically homeless. I had to go out of town overnight for a work trip and thought I could trust him. When I came back, he had emptied my change jar (had about $400 in it) from my room and got wasted. House was a wreck, came home to a few guys sleeping in my backyard and bottles everywhere. Kicked him right the heck out.”
Her Life Was So “Perfect,” She Felt Free To Judge His
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“I dated a girl for a few weeks in high school. Our breakup was relatively amicable, but we didn’t talk after it. A couple years later (I was 21, she was 19), she got pregnant and the dude ditched her. She didn’t have her license or a job and asked me for help her practice for the birth. I obliged and we started hanging out again, just platonically. I’d go with her to her baby appointments, job interviews, the store, and whatnot, and in general, spent a lot of time with her. She still lived with her parents but got kicked out after the baby was born, and moved into a small studio apartment owned by a classmate’s mom.
Now, during this time, I worked 3rd shift and had a pretty bad sleep schedule that wasn’t helped by spending so much time with her, but I thought it was worth it because I was helping out a friend. One night shortly before I had to go to work, we were at her place and out of nowhere she just says, ‘You know, it’s kind of sad that you still live with your parents when I’m younger than you and have moved out.’ I didn’t know what to say to that, so I just left, and man the second I got my door shut, I couldn’t hold back the tears. I felt like I’d been wasting so much time for someone who didn’t even appreciate it. I hung out with her one last time after that and then just stopped responding to her texts.
Well, I shouldn’t say last, because about 6 months later she, still without her license, offered to pay me to drive her to work. I was out of work and was set to leave in a couple months to join the Air Force, so I figured why not, I just wouldn’t hang out with her. One other time, her dad was over her place, and I went to talk to him since he’s retired Army and I liked her parents. She invited me in to see the baby, and I did, and then after a couple minutes, I just told her I was going to go. The confusion in her voice, asking me why, just made me think she didn’t care or understand why I didn’t want to hang out with her anymore, and that was the last time I saw her.”
She Just Didn’t Want To Be Helped
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“She was one of my best friends for about four years, nothing ever physical, but we were very close. She was a bit crazy in the head and had no qualms about going into detail about things nobody wanted to hear. But she had a good heart.
Her relationship with her boyfriend broke down and I was there to try to help her get back on her feet and get some balance in her life again. Unsurprisingly, she wanted to go out partying more which was fine, I’d go with her a few times to keep an eye on her to make sure she didn’t go too mad (blackout wasted kind of trouble).
After she had bounced between her mother and her aunt, she finally got her own place and I’d visit and hang out with her. Around this time I had met my future wife and naturally, I was spending more time with her rather than my friend but it was never a big deal. However, we would go longer and longer without seeing each other with her work and my work hours not being the best.
It all came to a head when one day she sent me pictures of her arm all sliced up and I phoned her straight away and told her to come to stay with me and my wife, that we would look after her. My wife and I had both dealt with depression in our early 20s so we knew that she needed a safe space and I was more than happy to offer her a place to stay so she could get looked after. So she agreed to come and stay and texted me saying she was going to have a bath and pack a bag and come down. So I got the spare room ready, fresh sheets and went shopping to pick up something for all of us to have for dinner. Got home and went on Facebook to kill time while I waited on her coming down and the first thing that pops up is a status from her which was five minutes old, asking who’s up for a party tonight since she’s already out drinking. I was furious! I didn’t want to bother with her that night so I left it until the next day when I asked her if she was coming round or what. She never replied so I didn’t bother messaging her again.
A full year later, she messaged me out of the blue asking if we were still friends and I brought up the party and she just replied with, ‘So?’ So I told her that I was pretty upset about it and then she never bothered to reply to my message for a year and now she thinks that everything will go back to normal.
Again no more messages for a year until one night she started messaging me, having a rant about how terrible of a friend I was that I never bothered with her anymore since I have a wife (she didn’t get an invite to the wedding since it was a small family only ceremony) and that she didn’t need me anymore and more crap. Two years it had been since the self-harming crap and one she had never said sorry for standing me up and she didn’t care about, so I just told her that we were not friends anymore since she obviously didn’t care enough about me to even message me in two years.
Still, I see her about and on Facebook and am a little sad we are no longer friends but I’m in a good place right now and don’t really need the drama that she brings.”
A Drama Queen Wears You Out
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“I recently had to end a friendship with someone I’ve know about eight years. She was in an abusive relationship and her kids were taken from her. She didn’t try to get them back, instead she got into another abusive relationship, had more kids. Lost them. She lost her place because of the abuser. I stayed by her side as a friend still.
She was single awhile, got a new boyfriend who was more abusive than the last two. Now she’s pregnant again. One day this boyfriend is ‘perfect,’ the next day she’s crying about how bad he is. She’s had plenty of opportunities to leave him when he’s been in jail, even had a caseworker offer to help her relocate and get housing. She doesn’t want to leave because she is in love.
I felt like her living, breathing journal. She never asked about my life, her drama was way too much for me. I had to cut her off.”
They Treated Her Like Dirt
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“In high school, I had two ‘friends’ who would constantly gang up on me, make fun of me behind my back, ditch me at night, etc.
One night, they clearly prank called me pretending to be someone who knew about something that I ONLY told them in confidence. Literally no one else knew. Even if somehow it wasn’t them who made the actual call, they told someone else which is still a violation of friendship/respect. I called them out on it. And they acted all aghast that I would actually believe they’d do that to me. Um, yeah, you’ve done a lot of other stuff to me, why wouldn’t I think you were behind this? I told them I did not want to be friends with them anymore. They made my life horrible. Constant prank calls, egged my house twice, wrote notes about me in class and wrote my name in giant letters so that it would get my attention, crumple it up and throw it on the ground and wait to see if I picked it up or not. Clearly glad that I made the right choice to end the friendship. But through the prank calls, the egging, the notes…I ignored them 100%. They would get right in my face sometimes and torment me and I would just blank stare them into oblivion.
I’m kind of proud of 17-year-old me for being able to do that at such a young age.
They got a reaction out of me ignoring them, though, because ignoring them was a reaction.
I did creep on their Facebook a while ago just to see where they ended up. One girl ended back up with her ex-boyfriend (who just so happened to be the same guy who tried to assault me), so sleazy gets to be with sleazy, they deserve each other. The other ‘friend,’ has actually come out as gay and I think is married now. I hate the female friend because she was just a straight up WITCH but the guy who is gay, – it doesn’t make ANYTHING he did to me right – but honestly, he was obviously going through some things. His family was extremely conservative, and he was the black sheep of his family. As goofy as he was, being his friend, I did see a lot of depression in him, looking back. He seems happier now and it looks like his family is still a part of his life. I’m glad for that, but I still would have no interest in rekindling the friendship. I had run into him in college a few years later and he yelled at me when I didn’t say hi at him and caused a scene. So apart from his struggles of being closeted, I think he still could just be a grump in general.”
Discovering His True Colors Ended It
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“My former best friend of 15+ years started acting crappy towards me after I came out to him. It didn’t happen right away, but slowly.
He’d start making nasty anti-gay references that I just sort of brushed off (I live in PA, homophobia is the norm here so it wasn’t unusual), he then cancelled on a Fourth of July party we were both invited to all because he saw some tv show where two guys kissed and it offended him and he decided to call me (not the party host) and cancel because it ticked him off. That party would have been the first time I saw him since his wedding that I was in over two years prior. (And no, the 4th of July party wasn’t in any way gay-themed and I’d have been the only gay guy there, it was just a normal party).
The snide homophobic comments kept coming but the straw that broke the camels back was when I texted him being excited about the sequel to The Last of Us coming out (a game we both loved) and he sent a nasty response about the ‘wussy snowflake leftist, shoving gay crap in peoples faces all the time.’ I didn’t even realize that there was a lesbian kiss in the trailer, I only saw a clip of the gameplay.
At that point, I realized it’s not worth being friends with someone who is offended by a bunch of polygons and who purposely digs at the only person he knows is gay. Good riddance to trash.”
Lucky To Be Alive
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“I practically grew up with this kid. We were best buds from age eight to nineteen. As we grew up, he started doing some substances, mostly pot. Not my cup of tea, but I wasn’t gonna stop hanging out with him just because he smoked pot.
Last year, he started getting into pills and powders. I was really worried about him and tried my best to help him out, but he was convinced that he didn’t need help and he was ‘just having fun.’ One day, we were driving out to dinner together and he stopped in a Burger King parking lot and told me to just chill for a second. A few minutes passed and a car pulled up. A guy got out and took out an itty bitty little baggie filled with white powder. My friend pulled out his wallet and some cash. The other guy then pulled a weapon on him and demanded the money. He got it, then bolted out of the car. My friend just sighed and asked if I could pay for dinner now. I demanded he drive me home and I haven’t spoken to him since. A few weeks later, the guy that robbed him is in jail.
Eff you dude. You nearly got us both killed over an itty bitty dose of your precious freaking blow.”
Kind To His Face, But A Knife In His Back
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“I had a roommate who I caught in a series of lies. It started because he kept telling me he had no intentions with this girl I was pursuing and that he wanted to help (and, he did give her lots of advice about it, but bad advice). That was pretty humiliating.
But the last straw was when he said to my face that he didn’t say something he had texted me earlier that day. I just asked him what he meant by something and he told me he never said that. And he changed his story several times within that conversation and ended in a personal attack on me for something unrelated.
I can’t be friends with someone as deceptive and manipulative as him, so I haven’t spoken to him since, even during the month it took me to find a new place to live.”
To Top It All Off, They Were Thieves
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“Not justone person but a group of ‘friends.’ I just was tired. Picture the last year of high school, they were never my friends but they did pretend a lot so I would help them with school and stuff. They would constantly steal girls from me, put a bad word in school about me and stuff like that, I didn’t really see any of that because: ‘Come on, they are my friends! They would never do that!’
The final straw or the thing that made me see everything that they did was in a field trip we did to the beach, I had a brand new Blackberry (I feel old now) and one of them stole it from me and blamed it on the cleaning staff. I found my phone later in one of their bags. I just took it back and didn’t say a thing. It was an, ‘I’m done’ moment, didn’t even feel like confronting them or anything, just enjoyed the beach for myself and left a little earlier.”
He Was A Fool For Thinking His Friend Would Change
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“I grew up with this kid. It started off with weed, which we would mess with sometimes. I went to college and he stayed home and began selling it. Eventually, he started to do blow and pills while I was gone. He just about swindled/robbed everyone he knew (including his own mother) except for me. I gave him money and bought him dinner after he was robbed one night while trying to sell a lot of blow. I didn’t have money to give. I was a broke pre-med student. I believed him when he said he would change. He didn’t.
Fast forward a few months and he was selling A LOT more blow and sent pictures to me of wads of cash, saying stuff like he would pay me back for helping him when he was down if I ever needed it. I was short on student loan payments at one point so I asked him if he could help. He, of course, said yes, but would ghost me for days/weeks until I figured out the payments on my own. This cycle of him saying he would change continued until one day he made me drive him to go bowling together and he tried to make a sale without me knowing. I stopped talking to him after that.
He has since checked himself into rehab across the country and he called me to apologize saying stuff like I’m his ‘only friend who wasn’t only interested in doing substances with him.’ We talk sometimes, but it’ll never be the same.
Honestly, it wasn’t even me who decided enough was enough. The guy was like my brother. I vented to my girlfriend about it and she basically told me I was being a naive idiot, and that my good nature was gonna get me into trouble. I can remember multiple times he would act sketchy when I went out to eat or do something with him. In hindsight, he probably was on and/or had stuff on him. I mean, if I ever got pulled over while he had stuff on him, it would ruin my whole future.
I have been threatened/chased by random people who had problems with him solely based on our association. The only physical fights I’ve ever been in have been to defend him from getting robbed (and in one instance from getting STABBED). This kid could have ruined my life, and I stuck around because I cared about him. I look back and cringe at my stupidity for ever believing he would change.”
No Room For Bigots
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“There were a lot of reasons but the straw that broke the camel’s back was transphobia.
I broke up with my girlfriend because she just absolutely refused to call my best friend by his preferred pronouns, and tried to use that as a comparison because I complained one time I didn’t like how he cooked my steak for me. She said because he didn’t cook my food the way I liked (one time out of many times of making me dinner), I shouldn’t use his proper pronouns and stuff like that. She went out of her way to misgender him to me and it absolutely awestruck me, then and there, that I had just been ignoring that for so long. She used to do that a lot, even when I corrected her, but I just kind of chalked it up to be an adjustment.
But then I realized she really was just… Transphobic. She also said she wasn’t going to try and use mine either (I’m nonbinary, I prefer they/them but I don’t mind others) because it didn’t matter. It matters to me! A lot!
So yeah, it just kind of broke the rose-colored glasses off my face for me. We’d been dating for about three-four years by that point and I just couldn’t deal anymore.”
Facebook’s Supposed To Bring People Together, Not Drive Them Apart
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“My childhood best friend.
We did everything together as kids, but then she went to a different school and I never heard from her. Sure, she kept up with a few other friends, but not me. Even after a close family member died and I called her to have someone to talk to, I never heard back from her.
Until I was in college and she friended me on Facebook. I thought, ‘Great! We can reconnect, maybe be friends again!’ So I shot her a message. A simple, ‘Hey what’s up, how have you been?’ She never replied. I shot her another the next week, thinking maybe she got busy or didn’t see it or meant to respond but forgot. She never replied to that one either. I waited a month before sending her one last, ‘How have you been? Let’s catch up!’ and she once again did not respond.
So I stopped trying, I kept her as a Facebook friend but never messaged her again.
And then, out of the blue, she messaged me several months later.
To ask me to vote for her friend’s band in a contest.
I gave her one last chance, asked her if we could chat and she blew me off saying she had so much work to do she couldn’t talk right now. So I closed the chat box, didn’t vote for her friend’s band, waited a month and then quietly unfriended her. That was well over ten years ago. Haven’t heard from her since.
It sucks to not be as important to the people who are important to you.”
She Was Incredibly Ungrateful
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“I was there for her during some bad times. Putting down her cat, her dad dying, etc… I’d drive an hour every couple of days to help her grocery shop or pick up her daughter from school or whatever. She didn’t have a car, so we always ended up going to her place and her end of the city to hang out. I’d take off work when she needed help with something. I thought we were best friends.
Yeah, turns out when I needed something, she couldn’t be bothered. She also kept trying to fix me and my twin sister up with guys as well, since she had so many casual guys around, she thought we should, too. My twin and I are close, but not super close even though we live together. We don’t involve each other in that part of our lives.
She (the ex-friend) kept bringing one guy to events and telling him to choose one of us. Like we’re interchangeable. I found that highly offensive.
And then when my sister and I moved far away (a few thousand kilometers), she insisted she’d come and visit. Sure, cool. The apartment’s all ready for a guest. Two days before she shows up, we haven’t heard from her. She’s ghosting us. Finally, we hear from her. She’s only two hours away with other friends and her family but had changed her plans to not come to see us and didn’t even bother to let us know.”