What would you do if one of your best friends, be it your significant other or a childhood friend, completely betrayed your trust and stabbed you in the back? Well, the only logical thing of course --- share your story on the internet. Some of these entries make us wonder how these people can ever learn to trust again, and we don't blame them. Et tu, best friend?
That’s So Cold…
“My best friend, my fiancée. We were together six years, lived together most of it. Lived apart for the last because we went to school in cities two hours apart. We had an argument the day after thanksgiving so I made a surprise drive to visit her that night. Caught her red handed cheating on me. She swore up and down it was a misunderstanding, and since I loved her, I believed every word. We spoke briefly for the next month because of finals, but afterwards she invited me over. I drove two hours to see her, and when I get there the cops show up minutes later and hand me a restraining order. I found out, months later why she did: she didn’t want me to find out she was already getting married to the guy she was cheating on me with. F_cked me up for years.”
Awful Friends
“I was in a geek rock band in college. We played around Chicago almost weekly. We also had a side-job as a jazz band. We were pretty tight. We went to each others’ weddings, hung out outside of gigs, etc. After several years of this friendship, I was going through a divorce. I kept gigging with them. One gig with the jazz group was rough. I wasn’t there emotionally. I didn’t miss a note, and had some pretty sweet solos, but I probably looked like I’d just been beaten and drugged. A few weeks later, I get a mass email saying, come to our next gig, with new bassist, Joe Schmo! I was devastated. Not one of them had said anything to me. No one had checked in, no one had cared enough to say, ‘You’re going through a rough time, maybe you want to take off for a bit.’
One of the guys is a fellow teacher nearby and I have to see him a few times a year. Breaks my heart again every time.”
A Betrayal Of His Kindness
“A couple of years ago I got really really sick and moved back to my parents’ house for a couple months. My roommate asked me if some friends of ours (his very long-time friends) could stay in my room for a few days because they were temporarily homeless. They had like 4 kids and the kids had to stay somewhere else. It was Christmas time and these people were pretty poor and weren’t going to be able to afford presents for the kids. My parents were actually going to give them a couple hundred bucks to help with presents. I came back to the house a week or two after they came and stayed only to discover they had stolen my MacBook, another gaming laptop, a kindle, a set of gaming headphones, and my external hard drive (like 15 years worth of pictures stored on there). They also stole my roommate’s college ring. I’m still mad and it’s going on three years later. You don’t steal from friends. Especially ones who are saving your homeless necks.”
Now That’s Positivity
“Back in late 2008, I had one of my groomsmen/best friends train my fiancée (he had a personal training studio business) because she wanted to tone up for our wedding. Shortly after that, her and I were constantly arguing and I was always doing something wrong. Come early 2009 I left on a weekend trip and when I got back she broke up with me. Two weeks later they were together. 6 months later they got married. Now like 8 years later I think they’re expecting their 4th kid. I don’t talk to them anymore, but good for them, they seem happy. At least it wasn’t for some temporary fling.”
Academic Dishonesty At Its Finest
“At my university (it’s very small) we have the same group of people who we work on projects with for the entire semester. I had done about 60% of the work for every project we did thus far, and then I had to have emergency surgery during a final, major project. I did as much work as I could leading up to the date of the surgery and then handed the reins over to them as I would be in surgery and in recovery through the time of presentation. (I know, stupid decision.) I go through surgery, recover, come back and get called into the dean’s office.
They took my name off of every project and claimed I did no work, fabricating evidence that I would not respond to their messages. I was blind sided, and had only my word to defend myself. I ended up having to complete 5 semester long projects in one week to graduate. I did it, graduated, barely, and at the graduation party they didn’t even have the courage to face me, they asked a friend of mine how it was possible that I graduated. Luckily my friend told them to ask me themselves. They never did. This was recent and I don’t really trust any teammates much anymore, as I had issues with relying on strangers before this incident anyways. I’m trying to get past it.”
The Ultimate Betrayal
“I was 18 years old, one month away from graduating high school, and my mother was on her death bed. She had Hep C and her liver that had been transplanted a couple years prior was failing. I had been driven up to the hospital 4 hours away after being taken out of school for the day. It was the phone call we had all prepared for: ‘your mother has taken a turn and we want you up here.’
My best friend at the time, a flamboyant gay boy (who we shall call Brian), drove my car up to the hospital per my father’s and my request. This boy was very loved by my family. My mother wanted to throw him a birthday party after he said he’d never had one before. She bought him birthday cake, expensive cologne from her trip to Las Vegas, you name it. She treated him like a son, but only because I called him ‘friend.’
He cooked dinner for us sometimes, and my mother trusted him enough to employ her at her bridal shop that she owned. So, he worked there as a cashier and general back room guy, just like my dad. Well, my mother passed on about a week after I got up to see her. She could no longer speak, she was in a drug-induced coma, and I still have some minor triggers about the experience. The day she died, they were taking her off oxygen, and they asked each of us if we wanted to be with her. My father said yes and held her in his arms as she passed, I said no and waited in the next room, Brian said yes and watched my mother die.
A month passed, and it was summer. I was at the bridal shop a lot because my dad couldn’t quite handle it alone. Looking back, neither of us could handle it at all. And Brian knew that… We found out, thanks to a returning customer and a receipt they brought back, he had stolen upwards of $10,000 from my mother’s business by using her screen name and password in our computer system. We brought the police in and everything, but the police said they couldn’t prove it ‘beyond reasonable doubt,’ so they had to drop the case cold. Everyone else knew he did it, and I did too, because that’s when the razor blades and “laundry detergent” (cocaine) on his window sill finally made sense. Brian stole tens of thousands of dollars from my mother after watching her die.”
Thank You, Karma!
“I got a friend that I worked with at another company a job with the (better paying and much more stable) company I had moved to. I was working through my ‘lunch hour’ and leaving an hour ‘early’ at the end of the day (simply moving my hour) with full permission of my direct manager. (I keep a small farm, thus had animals to care for, and this made it possible with some daylight remaining).
Friend got jealous (and also probably wasn’t doing a good job in his department, so looking to divert attention) and went straight to the VP who was above both of our departments, skipping over his manager as well as mine, to let him know I was “leaving work early every single day.” Unbeknownst to me, the VP started observing me, and sure enough, ‘caught’ me leaving early several days in a row. I told him that I had my manager’s explicit permission, but he didn’t want to hear about that at that point. I lost my job over it, my ‘friend’ kept his, and still somehow wondered why I didn’t ever want to talk to him again.
I landed on my feet, the company changed hands a year later (from founder to investors) and within a year, had lost so much value they were de-listed from the stock exchange. ‘Friend’ went down with the ship, and last I heard, was working a local retail gig that can’t have paid much more than minimum wage. I still have the farm.”
The Selfish Thief
“I had a great friend that I knew since 4th grade. When we both got out of the military we decided to get an apartment and were room mates for about 8 months. I was working 2 jobs, so I was not around a lot. One day our apartment manager caught me in the hallway and asked me if I had the rent. At the time I was giving my roommate the rent and he said he was paying it. Turns out he had not paid the previous 2 months and had pocketed my cash. I ended up paying for 4 months of rent for both of us, got evicted, and lost my security deposit.”
One Crazy Roommate
“My roommate tried to convince my girlfriend that I was secretly a rapist and a pedophile, got his girlfriend and some others and held an ‘intervention’ where she couldn’t leave until she said she was going to do something about me. Luckily, my girlfriend decided to talk to me, realized it was all bullsh_t, and is still by my side today. My roommate dropped out of college and still hasn’t finished their degree.
A Highly Manipulative Lawyer
“I was a mentor to a young lawyer who had no self confidence and was in a very male, conservative company. I taught her, advocated for her (actually fought for her) and got her 3 promotions over 10 years. She went through a terrible depression and I literally did her job for 4 months and covered for her while she sat home and cried (this is important later). I truly believe I prevented her suicide twice. Eventually she got better and became the general counsel of a huge company, and still called me 3-4 times a week to make big decisions for her. I decided to go out on my own and needed a 1-sentence blurb for my website (totally bland, like “X is a smart lawyer whose judgment I trust.”)
She refused and said she doesn’t give recommendations. She also refused to consider me for a job in her organization. The real kicker was when someone called her for a job reference she said she wasn’t aware that I ever had managed a certain kind of project — when the project I did for her while she was depressed was exactly that. When I confronted her, she said that I may have done the work, but I was not the project manager (she was).
Gossip Girls
“‘I’m so sorry honey, I don’t know who could be spreading those rumors. They’re sick and they don’t know you at all.'”
Rumors had been spread that I, an awkward nerdy girl who’d never done more than hold hands, was not only sleeping with the whooole school, male and female, but also that I was pregnant! Yay! News to me, right?? My best friends swore they’d defend me and when they found out who it was they’d make them regret it. Then I went down to the lowest floor of the high school (foreshadowing much?) and walked up behind my best friend and noticed she was talking about… Me? About what a slut I am? That she’d never be friends with me? The girl she was talking to started frantically signaling to cut off her convo but GUEEESS WHAT too late. I switched schools halfway through that year and never looked back.”
Better “Prove” Your Friendship
“I used to have 2 very good friends when I was ~19 years old. We always hung out and smoked weed together. One day, the two of them teamed up on me and said ‘We think you are only friends with us so you can smoke our weed. If you want to prove that you are really our friend, you should pay for all the weed we smoke for the next two months.’ Each of us, including me, had always fairly contributed to our purchases, so this was completely unwarranted. Also it’s completely ridiculous to ask your friend to prove his friendship by paying things for you. So yeah I told them to f_ck off and blocked them on all social media, never saw them again.
Two years later, I met one of the two at a concert. He told me that he wasn’t friends with the other guy anymore because he realized what a manipulative assh_le that guy was. He explained to me that the guy had talked him into ganging up on me back then and I forgave him, so we became friends again.”
What A Scumbag
“I dated a girl all through high school but when school ended we started drifting apart because real life was coming at us fast and it’s just the way things were. We didn’t officially break up, but we became a lot less close than we had been. Then one night my phone rings at like 2:30am and it’s my best friend calling. I figure he needs a ride home from a party or something so I answer to see what’s up and…it’s her. Well, it was him calling. But I hear her in the background laughing, at which point he starts laughing too. I’m thoroughly confused and pretty much start yelling into the phone “What the f_ck?! What the f_ck is going on?!” and then I hear the unmistakeable sound of naked skin slapping naked skin with her moaning like crazy. Yeah, she cheated on me with my best friend and called me in the middle of the sex as a joke so I could hear them going at it via speakerphone. Relationship instantly over, friendship instantly over. That was 16 years ago. Haven’t spoken a word to either of them since and the few times I’ve seen him (I believe she moved away, thank god) I just breeze right past him as if he doesn’t exist. I’ve had trust problems with people ever since that night though. It would be one thing to have a relationship end, or a friendship fall apart, but to have both of them, the two people I trusted most, that had been by my side for years, do that to me? Done.”
That’s Just Evil…
“So, several years ago my grandmother died. Driving home from her house (she lived very close to us) we ran into one of my best friends driving the other way. He had known her and had eaten Sunday dinner at her place on several occasions, so we stopped to let him know that she had passed and when/where the funeral would be. While we were at her funeral, he and a couple of other guys broke into our apartment and stole all of our sh_t. Then, a couple of nights later, they tried to break into her apartment too but a neighbor saw them and scared them off. This guy had been near the top of my best friends list and we’d known each other for about 12 years (I was 18 at the time).
“Wanted To See If I Still Could”
“My best friend is married, and I’m single. Before he was married, he got a lot of female attention (used to be a model). We were at a bar and drinking and I started talking to this girl and hitting it off. Out of nowhere he jumps in, commandeers the conversation, and starts flirting with her. It’s very apparent that she would pick him over me. Of course I’m livid, since my married friend just stole the girl I was trying to pick up. In the end she invites him back to her place with her, and he politely declines and tells her he can’t since he’s happily married. When the night was over I asked him why he did it. He said ‘I wanted to see if I still could.'”
“I Don’t Like Your Boyfriend, So I’ll Ruin Your Life”
“My roommate and good friend in college had my email/school password — you know, as happens over time. She didn’t like the guy I was dating and that I ignored her criticisms of him (I literally never brought him to our room while her beau used to stay overnight). So she dropped classes off my schedule and deleted emails about my study abroad and financial aid. Caused hours of headaches and I didn’t catch her until like halfway through the semester. As you may guess, we are no longer on speaking terms. F_ck her. Oh and I’m engaged to the guy, so he was worth it.”
“You’re Just Not Fun Anymore”
“I dated my best friend for about three years. About a year and a half in, her mom passed away and she took it really hard. For several months, I was there for her everyday helping her cope. It was difficult but we got through it together. A year later my dad died from a sudden heart attack. She broke up with me after two weeks because ‘you’re just not fun to be around anymore.'”
Conflict Of Interest
“A group of my friends from high school had talked for a long while about going to Japan. Around age 24 or so all of us finally had jobs and money, so three of us finalized the plans. Then another friend joined in, and then yet another. Just before we booked the flights one of them called me up and said ‘the four of us don’t want you to come on this trip. We have different interests. The others can’t even bring themselves to call you and tell you, but I figure this way is better.’ I talked to some of my new colleagues about how awesome it would be to go to Japan and ended up going with them on the original dates that were planned – a great trip, too. Of my high school friends, the only one I have any contact with, and the only one who kept any of my respect, is the one who called me and fessed up. Confession: My HS friends wanted to do a lot of video game type stuff – hang out in arcades in Akihabara, that kind of thing. I wanted to check out the fashion district in Shibuya and buy some Japanese jeans e.g. Iron Heart, Sugar Cane, maybe a Buzz Rickson flight jacket. You’d think that a day at the arcades and a day of clothes shopping could fit into a ten-day trip, but there you go. At least that’s the not-quite-an-explanation I got out of them.”
Best Friend No More
“My best friend of 25 years was single, so I hooked him up with my girlfriend’s best friend. A year later, when me and my girlfriend broke up (because she cheated on me), my best friend came around to tell me that i couldn’t be his friend anymore…because his girlfriend wasn’t cool with me being around anymore. Turns out none of my other ‘friends’ were cool with that either. They all dumped me to make her happy. I moved away and haven’t seen any of them in 6 years. I lost most of the friends I made as an adult in about 2 weeks.”
Bunch Of Petty Liars
“I was in a band with some friends in high school. I wrote all the songs we played. They kicked me out and said they didn’t like my music anymore and wanted to go another direction. I later found out they had booked a show and played my songs they said they hated. I felt pretty crummy after hearing that.”
When The Tide Turns, He Abandons Ship
“Was friends with a guy since middle school. We were inseparable. I helped him with his depression, got him to move out of his parents house, supported him when he was emotionally wrecked, etc. But the moment I lost my job and became depressed, he wasn’t there for me. Stopped talking to me, hanging out with me, answering my messages. Asked him why he was ignoring me and he said I was being too sad.”