It's a sad fact of life some friendships don't stand the test of time. This can be for a number of reasons; a huge fight, people growing apart, or unfortunately, realizing that person is a toxic friend. Whatever the reason may be, there's no denying it can be heartbreaking when a friendship ends.
People on Reddit share the moment when they knew they had to end their relationship with their best friend. Content has been edited for clarity.
“Haven’t Seen Each Other Since”
“He wouldn’t come to my wedding, even though he introduced my wife and me. I tried my best to explain to him there was nothing I wanted more other than for him to be there with me. His girlfriend at the time didn’t want to go because she was insecure about her appearance.
We haven’t seen each other since. My wife and I will be celebrating our 33rd anniversary soon.”
“I Was Horrified”
“She did a lot of really nasty things and gaslighted the heck out of everything to make me apologize for them.
The breaking point was when she said, ‘I know you think you really love (fiancé’s name), but really, they should be preemptively assaulted to get rid of some of that pride. Take them down a notch.’
I was horrified.
I ended the game night as quickly and safely as I could and ended the friendship immediately after. She tried to explain why she was right. Then she tried to figure out how this was my fault and I was unreasonable for saying that she was wrong. At most, she was willing to admit to being tactless.
Six months later she reached out again, but it was to apologize for my misunderstanding her words and offering to forgive me. Apparently she should have anticipated I wasn’t ready to hear hard truths about the love of my life.
Yeah… Nope. I don’t need that. At all. Still, not friends with her.”
“She Didn’t Care In The Slightest”
“My childhood best friend was always ditching me at the last minute for any better opportunity that came up. Babysitting jobs, sleepovers with more popular girls at school, there was always something.
She literally told me to my face, ‘We can always make plans another time.’
Well, excuse me for thinking that my best friend would actually want to honor her commitments to me.
Enough was enough when she called me during the evening on a day she was absent from school demanding to know why I hadn’t called her to see if she was ok. I had broken up with my boyfriend that day, but she didn’t care in the slightest. She just assumed I would always be there for her when she wanted me, but she’d kick me to the curb when I wasn’t any use to her.
The sad thing is that I -wanted- to always be there for her. When things were good, she was an amazing friend and we had so many great times together. I still think back and wonder if ending our friendship was the right thing to do. But she didn’t treat me right and I finally had to leave. I have never had the same best friend or sister level friendship with anyone else. But I no longer invest my loyalty where I know I won’t get it back.”
“Don’t Need That Kind Of Poison”
“My house was robbed in college, and somebody made off with like $3,000 that I was saving up on tips. Found out two years later it was him. The twisted part was he ‘was there for me’ the entire time from, like 30 minutes after I had found my house and called it in. Never suspected him till I found out and it all made sense.
Sick narcissistic idiot, he’ll eventually mess up his own life without me wishing ill upon him. I don’t need that kind of poison in my life, I’m trying to be a better person every day not worse.”
“I Was Too Trusting”
“My best friend and I met as entry-level employees. We both helped each other and elevated each other over the years. I stayed in corporate in middle management and made good money. He went into business for himself. His company was struggling so he asked me for a favor. To quit my job, help him build his company, he could only pay for 1/2 of what I make but promised in success we split the profits and share credit.
He made it also sound really appealing having a best friend as a boss, ‘C’mon it’ll be fun!’
So I did. Six months later, I landed our first million-dollar client. Money rolls in and I ask him when will I start getting a split of the profit distribution.
‘What profit distribution?’ He asked.
He started taking back everything we talked about; ‘No, no, no you heard me wrong. I never said half the profits.’
Was there a written agreement? Nope. Yes, I’m just that stupid to trust a person I used to spend vacations together, talk to every day, and treated him like a brother.
I was the idiot for being too trusting. But at the same time, I could not be his friend. I left his company. That client I introduced him to took their business elsewhere when the company was in breach of their agreement. His company went bankrupt. And he got a divorce because his wife (who did the accounting) saw a receipt of his that didn’t make sense. She looked it up and found out it was a Russian brothel. Yes, he’s that stupid too.
I went back to a corporate job, with lesson learned to never do anything without formalizing it in paper. People were impressed I landed that million dollar client so I actually came out better and was highly recruited.”
“Knew Darn Well We Weren’t Friends”
“They got promoted to manager at work and were exceptionally hard on me because they didn’t want to give the appearance of favoritism. They went so far in the opposite direction it wasn’t funny.
I had a man physically shove the customer I was serving out of the way and threaten me (I was 21 at the time) with these words when I told him he couldn’t cut in line: ‘If you don’t, I’m going to wait for you after work and I’m going to beat you and I’m going to assault you.’
I told him he needed to leave right now or else I would call security.
My best friend gave me a written warning for threatening a customer and comped the man who threatened his entire order.
After that, I knew darn well that we were no longer friends.”
“I Didn’t Say Anything Wrong”
“My best friend of three years got swiftly kicked to the curb when she decided to use me as a sounding board. Her ‘predicament’ was that she didn’t know if she should invite me or someone else to her house for a BBQ. When I called her out on it, she chose to Gaslight me, instead of just saying she was sorry for messing up.
Her exact words were: ‘I’m just so… gutted that you took what I said the wrong way when I didn’t say anything wrong.’
She has a lot of issues, mainly with heavy drinking. She will also drop her friends at a moment’s notice if she has a chance of sleeping with someone. And she would use her friends to basically do everything for her when they were guests at her house, which is pretty funny. This woman is 54 years old and acts like a 19-year-old.
I’m just so ‘gutted’ that I put up with her nonsense for so freaking long.”
“Didn’t Think I Owed An Explanation”
“She was my friend from elementary school. We basically grew up together as babies all through high school and remained in contact through college by hanging out in between semesters.
Fast-forward to our mid-twenties, she was attending med school on the east coast but I knew she was interested in getting a residency back home in California. Meanwhile, I had made a new friend who worked as a nurse in a very well regarded hospital in Northern California that was known for only hiring employees through internal references. So while we were on winter break, I invited New Friend out to one of our group dinners so we could socialize, and maybe they could connect up.
I introduced them to each other at a dinner and my childhood best friend spent most of the dinner just passive-aggressively bullying New Friend; phrases like ‘only a nurse’ were tossed around. As humiliating as it was for me, I knew New Friend felt even worse. Looking back, I am ashamed that I did not defend New Friend as much as I should have, as she was the odd one out of the group.
Later as I was preparing to drop childhood best friend off at her house (I drove her to the dinner at the restaurant), I overheard her talking to a mutual friend from high school about how rude and inconsiderate I was to invite New Friend over when it was ‘their’ time.
I ghosted her the next day. I dropped 15 years of friendship without an ounce of remorse. I didn’t think I owed her an explanation.”
“Yeah, She’s Toxic”
“She told me how bad my personality is, and how it must suck for the people who have to deal with me. She was just trying to ‘help’ so none of my friends would have to deal with my way of doing things.
The funny thing is, she tries to talk to me like none of it ever happened. I know it sounds bad for how I respond to her trying to talk to me (I ignore her) but what does she expect? She was the one who said I was rude when I really was only being myself, and she had the audacity to say she’s never been rude to me, even though she was pointing out everything I did “wrong”.
Yeah, she’s toxic.”
“That Was It”
“We were best friends through most of the elementary and all of high school. We went to different high schools, but would still hang out regularly. He was more than a frequent guest in my house, sleeping there sometimes, eating, hanging out.
Things were going up and down for those several years, with him ‘forgetting’ to invite me to barbecues and stuff like that (he always came with his friends to mine), or birthdays. Slowly, the ‘cool’ metalheads from the local scene were his exclusive company. After high school, we were both planning to go to the same city for college and I agreed to share a flat with him. I took it upon myself to search for one. After everything was agreed with the landlord, my ‘friend’ didn’t answer his phone for two days. Turns out, he applied to a university in another city, on the opposite side of the country, without telling me a thing.
I was furious, lost good opportunities for living space. Still, didn’t want to hold a grudge, but was waiting for him to be a man and make amends… I never got an apology, nor he ever bothered to call at all. Some 15 months later, he called me, asking for money. He knocked up some girl, married her (!) and they divorced, all in the span of 2 months. Told him to get bent.
It didn’t really end there, his father disowned him quickly, and he had nowhere to go. So eventually I offered him to live in my parents spare…you could call it a mini-house, an extension of the house. He didn’t want to pay the rent, so I told him to go get bent once more.
A few years later, he somehow managed to get to the USA. He returned after six months (work injury, no insurance…), and he asked me for help one last time. He still had several bolts in his arm, couldn’t work, semi-disabled. I took pity on him and gave him a room in my flat (I was already working then so I could afford it for the time being), he would pay the rent later when he is able to get some cash. It seemed fine for about two weeks.
It finally happened when I was working a sudden night shift. When I returned home at nine in the morning, I went back home to find the doors unlocked, vomit, and broken glass on the floor of the kitchen. The bathroom was covered in pee, my room was trashed and there was a girl in my bed, and my ‘friend’ and another girl on the couch.
Some of my possessions were broken, and a rubber was sadly hanging from the lamp. That was it. I didn’t let them pack and leave, though, not until everything was spotless.”
“That Was It For Me”
“Compulsive liar. I always knew she had a lot of mental health issues, but I thought I could tell the difference between the lies and the truth. She lies about stupid things most of the time. But she then told me her partner had cancer, and because he was morbidly obese with a lot of health issues, I believed her. Also, because I never thought she would lie about something this big.
She also told me he didn’t want anyone to know. I know I sound stupid, but there were so many things that made it sound true. Waited a year for this guy to die or be hospitalized. It never happened. I’m also close with her partner and my father died three years ago from cancer and her dad five years ago. It was all a lie. I was stressed for nothing.
Then I found out she’s been going into groups of people with disabilities on Facebook and telling them she was a nurse and giving them health advice. That was it for me. I had to basically publicly expose her to find out all of the stuff she had done. I’m still really confused and upset about it. A 20-year friendship gone just like that.”
“I’ll Never Forget That Morning”
“She had issues. We were best friends, but I could never really be open with her- any honesty or sharing from me was turned back on me in criticism and contempt. She was the weak one – I wasn’t allowed to struggle. We were housemates for three years, and she was self-harming throughout that time, and also starving herself. She told me one day that who I am made her want to kill herself. I came home to two suicide attempts in that time, and after saving her life she told me it was all still my fault.
I was hiding knives, I was hiding the drinks, I was hiding the pencil sharpeners because she took out the tiny blades and carved words into her body. I was then told I wasn’t helping enough.
I ended up drawing firm boundaries about our interactions, which included meeting with her parents. This infuriated her, led to another attempt, and ultimately led to her moving back home and getting a semblance of mental health support. She wrote me a long letter saying she now needed to cut off contact with me, completely, because my ‘goodness’ was the issue and made her want to kill herself.
Her boyfriend, a dear, dear friend of mine who I had known for nearly 10 years before meeting her, also had to distance himself from me so he could support her better. However, we worked together and made a point of meeting up every month to talk about how she was going, share advice, support each other, and hug it out. This lasted for 12 months, during which time they got engaged, and then at the end of that year they were married.
I was not invited to the wedding. We had many, many mutual friends, and my absence was noticed. Several people messaged me afterward, asking me why I hadn’t turned up, why I had abandoned her when she was clearly ill and needed friends like me the most. I had never told anyone the depth of her struggles or shared her suicide attempts or extent of self-harm with anyone other than her family members (although about 60 scars were visible with her wedding dress). I did receive a message from her mum and dad after the wedding, saying they loved me, missed me, and knew how much I had loved and supported their daughter. They said that although they understood why I was not welcome, they had wished so much that I could have been there. I cried and cried and cried reading their words.
The wedding looked beautiful. She still looked unhealthily thin and was ribboned in scars, but they looked so happy together. I remember hoping that, although a relationship wouldn’t make the problems go away, she now had someone by her side who adored her, was supporting her in getting professional help, and loved her and treated her as she rightly deserved – to be treasured and cherished and loved no matter what.
He died three months later, on his commute to our workplace. I’ll never forget that morning.”
“I Lost What Little I Had”
“He had feelings for me, and neither of us was out or had ever dated. I really loved him like a sibling and turned him down, but we also were attached at the hip and continued spending time together like before. He was my only close friend, and we had known each other for eight years. We came out to each other a few weeks apart and neither had any idea.
I frequently asked what he needed from me, and he agreed multiple times that it was fine. I didn’t really want to be alone, so I followed along.
Fast-forward a few weeks, and suddenly every acquaintance, even the teachers, started commenting about how I’m using him and not being considerate of his feelings (I had not come out to these people). So he outed me, threw me under the bus, and after barely being able to cope with the bullying in high school, I lost what little I had that made me feel safe or welcome at school.
I chose to remain silent and apparently that was admitting guilt, so I gave everyone the silent treatment for the last few weeks of school. I graduated top in our class, refused a speech, and threatened to f-bomb in the middle of the stadium with 3,000+ people if I was forced to. I was the first to walk and receive my diploma, and then immediately left the ceremony from the stage without looking back.”
“My Wife Will Always Come First”
“I distanced myself from my best friend after a trip to see them for a week or so. I never knew, but they kept making snarky comments towards my wife. Which is strange, as I always had that vibe that she wasn’t completely welcome because they clearly thought she made me dull, boring. Which is so untrue. (I’d been out to see him a couple of times and I’d taken my wife a couple of times).
As my mum found out many years ago, my wife will always come first. She is my priority over everyone. I don’t have much respect for blokes who choose their mothers over their wives. Especially if they’ve married a beautiful person.”
“It Was A Brutal End”
“We met in elementary school and became really close in junior high. She was practically my only friend in high school because she was very possessive of me. She got jealous if I talked to others and threatened to end our friendship. I chose her every time. After all, I had known her longer.
She had self-esteem issues (didn’t we all) and would misdirect them at me, lashing out at me and tearing me down. It hurt. She’d apologize and say she didn’t mean it. I’d forgive her. It would happen again, an endless cycle. I think she liked having someone she could feel superior to. She got better grades than me, sometimes – if I ever got a better grade than her, it was ‘just because that teacher likes you – I’m too smart for her class, she favors the dumb kids.’ I had horrible acne, bad hair. I didn’t think much of myself at all. I was an easy target. Too meek to stand up for myself.
She began spinning fictional stories about how she was hooking up with guys, which was another blow to my self-esteem, since guys wouldn’t even look at me. I was mostly upset that she was lying to me about it.
I began getting a little closer to other people, and she really didn’t like that. She felt like I was leaving her behind. She wasn’t wrong, I think I had mentally checked out of the friendship due to the lying and general condescending behavior. At the same time, it wasn’t simple – I cared about her well-being, even if she wasn’t good for my own. We had known each other for so many years and certainly had some good times.
At that point in my life, no one knew me nearly as well as she did, so it was hard to let go of the one person I was close to, even if it was horribly toxic. We ended up bottling our feelings until we couldn’t contain them, and then we said some pretty awful things to/about each other. That was the end of it. I wish her well, but I’d be ashamed to look her in the eye. It was a brutal end.”
“That Was The Final Breaking Point”
“My former best friend was… oof. We’re mostly on good terms now, but there was a time where we absolutely hated each other’s guts. He had anger issuesm and couldn’t think straight when he got mad. I had the horrible trait of always wanting the last laugh. The man says something stupid, I correct him, then he gets mad, then I get mad back because I didn’t want him having the satisfaction of thinking he’s right, and we got off at each other.
The man even stabbed me with the pencil in the eye once (I’d be half blind if it weren’t for the fact that he wasn’t paying attention and stabbed me with the eraser end and didn’t hit me dead center in the eye, just very slightly to the side of it). That was the final, final breaking point.
Again, he and I have gotten over that and we’re on good terms, and he’s managed his anger while I got rid of my stupid little mentality. Thankfully, I have a new current best friend, and she’s the most relatable person I know, and he’s doing well in the friend department too, so happy ending”
“She Constantly Played The Victim”
“She had this massive crush on a very nice guy who tried to let her down gently the best that he could. I don’t remember the exact details, but I started taking his side because she was becoming overly obsessive with him despite me trying to convince her to move on and that he wasn’t interested. She stopped talking to me for at least a month.
The nail in the coffin was the month I started dating my (now) wife, who she did not get along with at all. She constantly played the victim in whatever negative interaction she had and it just wore me out to the point where I intentionally started letting go.