Breaking up with friends is weird and feels a little silly sometimes, but some people are so awful and there are no other options. These people breakdown how terrible supposed friends can really be and what happened when they finally ditched them.
(Content has been edited for clarity.)
She Swore She Was Going To Get Clean
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“She got hooked on speed really bad. I told her I couldn’t deal with that because she didn’t want to get help and I wasn’t going to watch her keep killing herself.
One night, she showed up at my door, sobbing. She said she was done with that life and that she wanted to get help. She said she wanted to get her stuff and leave, but she had nowhere to go. I told her she could stay with me if she stayed clean. She asked me to go with her to her boyfriend’s house so she could grab her stuff. She couldn’t do it alone (he was a speed cook). I agreed and we drove to his house across town.
We went in to get her things and he was there. They started fighting, so I told her we should just go. She said she needed to calm him down and to wait for her in the other room. I waited and waited. Finally, an hour later, I went in the bedroom to find them shooting up. I left right then.
It was a 22-mile walk back to my house. I walked all night until almost noon the next day. My feet were bleeding and I could barely stand up after that. I took a shower and crashed out. I woke up and went about my usual routine. I ended up going to check the mail. My wallet was in there. Evidently, I had left it in her car. She had taken the money ( $400) that I was going to use to pay part of my rent, KNOWING I was barely getting by. So yeah, she let me walk home alone AND ripped me off. Forget that.”
She Ghosted Everyone
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“She secretly planned a new life on the other side of the country and dropped her life here without any notice. She left her husband, her friends, her job, her family, everything. I had spoken to her a few days prior, nothing was out of the norm. I didn’t hear from her for a few days, which was unusual. I finally got a hold of her husband and he told me he came home from work and she had already moved her stuff out, handed him the divorce papers with her attorney’s business card and said her attorney would be in touch to discuss the sale of the house and division of other assets. Then she hopped in her car and was gone in less than five minutes. Never heard from her to explain why or to let me know she was okay. We’d been friends for almost 20 years.”
Jealousy Doesn’t Look Good On Her
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“We were both single and well into our 30s. Then I meet my future husband. Over several months, she said the following:
-‘Who would have thought you would meet someone before me?’
-‘I don’t know what you see in him. I’d be ashamed to take him home’ (everybody else loves him; she objects to his computer geek tendencies).
-‘Are you sure you’re not with him because you’re just sad and alone?’
-‘Really? You want me to be a bridesmaid? I guess.’ (Best friend, remember)
And on the wedding day:
-‘Ugh, I thought I’d taught you to do makeup properly.’
-‘Just ignore her (Me), she’s had too much to drink.’ I’d had nothing, she said this to shock my teetotal mother.
About 5 weeks after the wedding, for no reason whatsoever, she said, ‘You don’t seem happy. Are you sure he’s not beating you?’
At this point, I realized a few things:
1) She’s actually an incredibly vile, toxic person.
2) She was keeping me around because I was an easy source of company and she was ‘clearly’ my superior.
3) She treated me like dirt all the time and my low self-esteem kind of agreed with her so I didn’t notice. But there was no way she was going to focus her crap-throwing laser on my amazing husband, and I haven’t seen or spoken to her since that last conversation.”
He Just Wanted His Friend To Find Love, But Then Things Went Too Far
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“I was in the 9th grade and my friend was in the 8th because he had to repeat a year. He had a huge crush on a girl in my class. He tried to do everything to get her attention, he even enlisted me to help him out because just talking to her was overrated. I, being the whimsical 14-year-old I, was down with it. This continued for a while. He would actively go looking for her and find out what she was doing. He would try to interject himself into her routine. I didn’t realize it at the time but it was weird. And I was his partner-in-stalking
One day, he came to me with a wide beaming smile palming his right arm. ‘Look what I did,’ he said, proudly revealing his arm. He had taken a shaving blade and carved a small ‘G’. Her name started with a G.
I noped out after that. Didn’t really talk to him much after that. Some weeks later, I heard his parents saw his little art project. He, being extremely great at making decisions, said to them, ‘Seniors bullied me, did this to me’ or something to that effect. Cue an onslaught of police, commissioners, and politicians getting involved, boycotting the school for not doing anything. The school’s reputation went down the drain. The ‘bully’ got expelled, his life was ruined. He couldn’t join any schools after that.
When I was 14, I didn’t really understand much of what was happening. I didn’t realize this was such a big thing. If I had known better at the time, I might have said something to the cops. I could have helped that bully dude if I just said something. I messed up.”
First Came Love, Then Came Friendship, Followed By Betrayal
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“I started out dating this guy (we’re both gay) and it was a really unhealthy relationship and we broke up after about 6 months.
However, we realized even though we weren’t good together as boyfriends, we enjoyed each other’s time so much just being friends. We always understood each other’s humor, played the same video games, watched the same shows together, had the same interests, could have intellectual and deep conversations together, everything that would equate to the best friendship.
So we started calling each other our best friend.
One day, I invited him and his boyfriend (who he’d been together with for three months) to my birthday. I also invited this guy I’d been dating for a month and who I had really strong feelings for. To make it short: we all got hammered and I caught my best friend making out with the guy I was dating.
The next day, I confronted my best friend and cried to him about it, telling him how hurt I was. He hugged me, comforted me and apologized over and over. He felt so terribly sorry about it and cried himself. He told me what he did was unforgivable and understands if I didn’t want to talk to him ever again. I loved this guy so much and he’s a friend that I’ve been through so much with and I didn’t want to lose him. I felt he was genuinely sorry, so I told him I wanted us to keep what we have. He was completely shocked and cried more, saying he doesn’t deserve my friendship.
We continued our friendship like normal.
A month later, we’re at another party and enjoying ourselves. I saw his phone light up on the table and saw that he received a text from the guy I dated (I stopped dating that guy immediately after my birthday). I asked my best friend, ‘Why are you still talking to him?’
His response was that they were still friends and just talk every now and then. My heart sank and every part of me felt hurt all over again. I told him that I wasn’t okay with them talking. My best friend’s response was, ‘Why are you trying to control who I’m friends with?’
Immediately, I told him we were done. I didn’t want to be his best friend anymore after hearing that and knowing he was still talking to the guy I dated.
It’s been five months now and I still think about him almost every day. What we had was really special and I miss him so much. Not who he is right now, but the person I was best friends with before and who I felt so connected to. People change and it’s the hardest thing to accept.”
With Friends Like Her, Who Needs Enemies?
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“We’d had a falling out after she was terrible and mean to me, but then we reconciled. I said sorry every time she’d take her anger out on me and she’d stopped talking to me. She was my only friend and we were close, so I couldn’t stand not having her in my life. I was dumb and always apologized to her even though she would get mad at me about stuff like not drinking with her or not having a car. This was in high school.
Eventually, she ‘accidentally’ got knocked up by the loser she was dating. One day, she went off on me again. I understand she was a new mom but I finally told her I didn’t do anything wrong. I understood being a new mom was hard but she couldn’t talk to me like that because I do not deserve to be talked to like this anymore. She went off on me and blocked me on everything. Also:
-She gave me trouble about my major in college and graduate school. Her parents paid for her college and she dropped out.
-She was relentlessly mean and made me cry. She told me that she doesn’t care what or who made her angry, she was going to take it out on me and I’d just have to deal with it.
-She would tell me it’s a matter of time until to my first and only boyfriend would eventually be unfaithful to me, all because her boyfriend wasn’t faithful to her.
-I came from a really abusive household and she didn’t care. Once, while I was on the phone with her, she could hear some abuse going on in the background and she was all like, ‘Eh, I don’t care.’ Once, I was legit kicked out with only two trash bags of my stuff and she didn’t care.
-I also suffer from depression and she mocked me for taking Antidepressants.
-I later found out she told mutual friends I would end up pregnant.
-She also made degrading comments about my weight. I was skinnier than her partially because we didn’t have food in our household.
-She started really getting into drinking and dabbling in substances in high school and I didn’t want any part of it. So I wasn’t ‘cool enough’ to hang with her.
-She started fights with classmates about their race and their mental health issues.
Looking back, she was a mean person and later so many people told me that she was so terrible to me for years. She didn’t grow up and I wouldn’t tolerate the abuse anymore.
She ended up having three kids total and is a stay at home mom. She did mention a few years ago that it must be nice that I can be selfish. No, I decided not to have kids ‘by accident’ since I’ve been on my own since a young age with no help. That’s when I realized people do not change.”
She Warned Her This Would Happen
“I didn’t particularly like her boyfriend, especially after I found out he was tweeting weird neo-nazi stuff. We’d been growing slowly apart for years, so I didn’t really know how to talk to her about it. I voiced my concern to some other friends one night at a party some of them were attending, and later I got a message from her – turns out my concern got to her after all.
She told me he wasn’t the reason we didn’t hang anymore (which I never said) and that I should ‘stop bothering about her life and leave her alone!!!!’ So I did. Turns out the boyfriend monitored her phone with spy programs and treated her badly, so they broke up not long after. At least I was vindicated.”
A Terrible Person She Turned Out To Be
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“I have a low tolerance for rude people so there are quite a few people I no longer speak to including two former best friends. Life’s short, don’t waste it on arseholes.
My best friend from school: She moved away to go to a prestigious university but came home for holidays. She brought some of her uni mates a couple of times and they were vile people.
We stayed in touch through uni and beyond (though we lived in different places) and she invited me to her wedding. Her fiancé was a great guy, I couldn’t have been happier for her. I didn’t get a +1 for the wedding, which was fine because I didn’t have a serious partner then and figured I’d get chatting to people there.
Not quite. Everyone was downright rude to me then for the meal, I was seated with her closest friends – the complete arseholes I’d met before. They talked down to me for not going to an Oxbridge university (though they were all now unemployed and I was then a lecturer at a Russell group uni) and even at one point said, ‘Do you think best friend didn’t give you a +1 because she was hoping you wouldn’t come?’
After her wedding, I stopped speaking to her. My view is that you choose to be friends with people who are like you and who are the way you’d like to be – anyone who actively chooses to be around people like those nasty, arrogant buffoons isn’t someone I want to associate with.
BF from uni: things were great for a long time but after we left uni, and met up for nights out, she would get wasted and be rude to everyone around her, especially taking her nonsense out on me. I put up with it because she was going through depression and needed her friends.
The depression eased but the abusive behavior when hammered didn’t and we talked about it many times that I would have to draw a line and walk away at some point. That point came very close, and she stopped drinking as much as a result.
Then my grandad (we were very close and BF knew that) became terminal. I told BF because now I was having a crappy time and needed her support – but it wasn’t there. I didn’t talk to her about important things after that.
Towards the end, I was with my grandad in the hospice and got a text from BF inviting me on a night out. I explained the situation, including that my grandad would die in a matter of days and that it would be a while before I’d fancy a night out but I’d give her a call when the dust settled.
3 days later, she included me in a group chat again seeing if anyone felt like a night out. I messaged her separately, giving the benefit of the doubt that she just didn’t want to exclude me. Nope, got a message back ‘sorry, forgot all about your grandad!’ – exclamation mark included. Umm, bye woman.”
From Best Friend To Worst Roommate
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“I let her live with us so she could save money after breaking up with her crappy abusive boyfriend. She trashed our house, didn’t do dishes ever (I texted her once and asked her to clean out an uncovered bowl of salad that had been in the fridge for a week and she sent me back a frowny-face emoji and never cleaned it). She never bought anything for herself the entire six months she lived with us, she’d slam doors for no reason at all hours, lied about everything, let her cat pee and poop all over and never cleaned its litter box.
We let her live with us rent free to save money and instead she spent all her money on vacations and things like getting her nails done. I always knew she was irresponsible and careless, but she had a crappy family growing up so I let things slide. I thought she would be a little bit more respectful of someone else’s things than she was with her own things. I was so wrong. She ended up getting back with the awful boyfriend and getting pregnant. She also asked if she could stay longer than the agreed upon six months after being a horrible roommate. We explained to her that the reason we let her stay rent-free for six months was to save money to start her own life without the boyfriend, and if she was with him again there was no reason for her to live in our home. Her reply was to stay out of her freaking business.
On top of this, she stole a bunch of expensive makeup when she moved out.”
Crazy And Off Her Meds
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“When I made friends with her, she wasn’t like that. She was there for me for a lot of things I won’t discuss today. But she started being really abusive about three months ago.
I went on a date with someone and cancelled on her once and she was so angry she threatened to key my car. ‘Not gonna lie, I was seriously thinking about keying your car and slashing your tires. The only reason I didn’t was because it isn’t technically in your name. But I think you would have deserved it, for what you did.’ Granted, I was super vague about cancelling on her and it was confusing, but to threaten to destroy my means of success was a slight overreaction.
She was also rude to my other friends. She has ended up hating every single person I regularly hung out with that isn’t her. She said terrible things about them to me WHILE THEY WERE WITHIN EARSHOT. She’d run off and throw a temper tantrum when I paid an ounce of attention to them instead of her. She was the most embarrassing and relationship-hindering attachment I have ever had in my life.
She would also: call me three times a day and get angry if I didn’t pick up at least once; use me to validate her anger at others but twist the conversation back on itself if I didn’t give the reaction she wanted; expect me to hang out with her every second of the day I wasn’t at work or class; ask me to skip school to be with her when she was having a bad day; never admit fault; thoughtlessly one-up me on every single thing I said; and generally use me until I was used up.
I gave her many chances. The second chance was after she went off her meds and pulled a knife, then blamed it on her fiancé because he got wasted and was too difficult and goofy for her to handle. ‘I told him I wanted to talk about my problems but he got trashed anyway, and he should have known that would set me off.’ The third chance was after the car-keying thing. Fourth chance was after a specific incident where she treated a couple of my friends absolutely horribly. Fifth chance was after she pretended to lose her voice because she wanted to get me to hang out with her in person instead of talk over the phone. We’re on number six. I told her I needed space. She wants to hang out again. I hate it but I’m too much of a wimp to say no. I’m scared I’m just not capable of holding another friendship.”
They Didn’t Want Her To Get Better, They Just Wanted Their Party Friend Back
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“They left me during the worst part of my depression by cussing me out on every part of social media, threw shade at me through some subtweeting, all after having ignored me for weeks. After some bad stuff happened at a party that THEY pressured me into, my depression relapsed and I attempted suicide twice because of it.
Instead of being understanding, they’d always scream at me about how I ‘didn’t care about them,’ wasn’t hanging out with them (while I couldn’t even go a day without wanting to end my life, let alone hang out with people), and how I needed to break up with my boyfriend. And on the day they left me for real, they cussed me out and said that my head was up my behind and that instead of ‘moping around in myself,’ I needed to ‘party and have some fun.’
God, it all makes me so mad– the fact that they couldn’t even be asked to think outside of themselves, that they wrote off what I was going through because they didn’t like how it made them feel, and that they essentially got me into the shitass situation in the first place.”
Her Mental Illness Was No Excuse For What She Did
“She’s Borderline Personality Disorder and bipolar. We used to hang out every day for months, and the more we hung out, the more manipulative and abusive she became. We were friends for a few years (when I was 11-15) and the psychological damage she inflicted on me was intense. She finally was sent to an intensive rehabilitation camp to get the help she needed. I wish her the best and hope she continues to heal. I know she didn’t mean to hurt me and it was her crummy life and mental illnesses controlling her, but I don’t ever want to see her again.”