Content edited for clarity. Friends are supposed to be with you for your whole life. They are your ride or die. That seems like fantasy though. Sometimes a friendship is not worth fighting for and it's best if two friends go their separate ways. Even if that means they have to go through some awful experiences to get there.
“That Was The Moment”
“My friend was going through a bad time with the woman he was living with and they split up. I offered to take him on a snowsports holiday, he accepted but he was struggling for money. So I paid for him to have a place to stay, lift passes, food, etc. Basically, everything was paid for and all he had to do was get there. I got a call a few weeks before we were going and he says he can’t make it, too much work because his workers had let him down (he ran a building and home improvement business), etc blah, etc. I said ok.
I went away on holiday and whilst I was away he put pictures of himself snowboarding in Bulgaria with his workers (the ones who apparently had let him down) saying ‘snowboarding with my mates,’ ‘another lovely day up the mountain,’ etc.
He’d rather go with his workers than the person who met him at 12 years old, who protected him at school and beyond, who gave him money, who was his best man at his wedding, who picked up his stuff when they divorced, who knew him for over three decades, etc.
That was the moment I stopped caring for him and refused to speak to him since.”
Who Does That?
“This gal and I had been friends for a long time, almost 10 years by this time, I suppose. Pretty much best friends. After some time, lots of bad relationships, knowing each other well, being there for one another, we finally started getting emotionally closer. You know, the cliche movie stuff we like to want to happen. She told me she loved me, we said we wish we’d done this sooner, we made out and are intimate, but don’t seal the deal all the way.
A couple of days later she got really awkward and ducked out on me. She began avoiding me, avoiding texts, etc. for about three weeks, which really hurt me. Like, what happened? You just told me you love me! After that time she said it was a mistake and it should never have happened. Turns out she went on a date with someone online about the same time we got emotionally involved and started banging them, and was more invested in plowing the bean field. I found this part out from a third party. It felt awful.
Well here’s the kicker. After the grace period of her feeling bad and avoiding me, and then telling me she thinks it was a mistake, she then assumed we could go right back to being best friends. Whoa, whoa whoa! Hold the boats. You were my best friend. And you basically professed your hidden love for me, were intimate on a deep, emotional level, and then you went and banged someone else and blew me off as if it never happened. Then you expect us to be best friends again like nothing ever happened? What kind of person hurts their best friend like that?”
It Wasn’t Worth It
“She was in school and working while I was working and just starting to get serious with someone. I was maid of honor at her wedding and went above and beyond to help pay and plan things because she kept asking and saying I had better taste and knew how this stuff worked since she had never even been in a wedding before. I have no regrets about doing that, it made her very happy and it was a beautiful day.
But after the wedding, it was very hard to get out on her own. A girl’s night always had her husband involved because he was very insecure and didn’t like her spending time away from him. Problem was that he is seven years older so any of the activities we wanted to do he wasn’t interested in so we usually ended up sitting around. I will admit I became a little distant as I found other single friends to hang out with. However, I still talked to her several times a week on the phone and helped her with whatever problem was going on that week. Seriously there was some life-changing drama every week. It got old but friends help friends out.
Finally, in December of 2015, I started to hear from her less and less. I would text and get no reply back. I invited her to my birthday and she said no she was busy. Finally, I said I wasn’t stupid and asked if she wanted to talk about her problem like an adult and she went off on me. She told me I was never there for her. I was livid. I started listing off everything I’d done and asked her to do the same. She said her list was longer but I didn’t deserve to know. Okay sweetie.
I told her it was obvious we were both on different paths in life now and had grown apart but that I will always cherish the good times and that I hope she and her husband had wonderful lives. She texted back telling me to go f myself. I can honestly say there has not been a single day where I grieve that friendship. We had good times but they weren’t worth all her drama.”
So Much For That
“My best friend was supposed to be my best man. We were childhood friends, knew him since I was a kid. We had been through a lot together, our friendship managed to last through him moving away, me moving away, etc. My wife and I had a destination wedding, flights booked, rooms booked. We did it right, even got the airlines to give us coupon codes to make it easier for guests. No one in the wedding party paid for their room neither did the family. (Wife and I paid for the entire wedding too, even our parents’ rooms/ flights. We had saved for a long time to do this.)
My best friend called me up the day before hour wedding (the morning of the flight) at 6:00 am. I missed the call by 20 seconds. The voice mail was him stumbling through an excuse for not being able to go because his girlfriend didn’t want him to go after all. (They were on again off again, I had thought they were in their off again period, but they had made up days before or something). I tried calling him back, but he did not pick up. Tried again. Nothing.
So that was it. The last I heard from my best friend of nearly a couple of decades was him mumbling through an excuse for not being there for my wedding. I never spoke to him again or tried to call him after that. It was too big. It’s been three years, and he never called me back after that voicemail. My wife and I had our wedding, and it was seriously amazing. I had another close friend who was a groomsman fill in for the best man speech/duties. He did great and we became even closer friends.”
Why? Just Why?
“My ex-best friend and I got hired at the same time. We met in the waiting room for the interview. When they got to the part about ‘any more questions’ we both actually inquired about the other and both of us basically said, ‘you should hire that person, they’re really cool,’ just from our chat in the waiting room.
We both got the job and when we got our assigned pod, we got seated together. We were close pals and went from co-workers to friends. To friends who traded numbers. To pals who hung out occasionally. To good friends who visited each other weekly. To best friends who I considered someone extremely close. Her husband and I were best friends too! When she thought he was cheating on her, she called me crying to ask for advice. We worked through it and he wasn’t. When he thought she was a dead fish in bed, I worked with him to help their relationship thrive.
I’d have taken a bullet for either of them. They were, in the three years that I knew them, the MOST important people in my life. She got a new and better job, I was so excited to see her moving up in the world. We stayed close pals. When she changed jobs I actually caught her crying because she would miss working with me.
Few months passed, nothing had changed. We texted daily, hung out a few times a week, and we’re still best buds. Her birthday rolled around. We all went out. Celebrated. I went home early. The next morning rolled around. She was mad at me for ditching early. So, I explained. She said, okay it’s fine. Then there was sparse chatting for a week. Then, dead stop. Nothing. No texts, calls, hangouts, online messages, etc. I called, texted, everything I could think of, but never get anything back. I got really worried and asked mutual friends, but they just said, ‘She just texted me today, she’s fine.’
After 3 months I took the hint. I removed her from everything. It was rough. She never spoke to me again. It was awful and I wish I knew what I did wrong.
Double Take
“When I was much younger, there was once a girl on my school bus who was extremely attractive. Like insanely so, and all every guy I can think of thought so. She always sat at the back with the cool kids, whereas I was quiet and kept myself to myself at the front.
Anyway, one day she had one of those fall-outs with her friends that all teenagers seem to have. The next day I got on and happened to sit on the row next to her, and over the course of the week, we became good friends. She talked a lot about how she has no friends now, and we became really really friendly with each other. We would always sit together, and I really enjoyed the journeys to and from school. Over time, her quarrels with them faded, and the two of use gradually began to sit closer to the back of the bus.
Eventually, a day came when I got on the bus and she was sitting on the back row with her old friends, and I remember that It made me so very happy to see her finally back with them given how sad she had been about losing them. As I had done for a few months now, I went to go and sit with her.
For reasons I’ve never truly worked out, she looked at me and simply said, ‘What are you doing, shouldn’t you be sitting at the front, fatty?’
She never even acknowledged me again after that”
Stop Drop And Get Out Of That Friendship
“I fired a friend once. He only spoke to me when he needed something or wanted to feel big about himself. He was consistently inconsiderate (like being an hour and a half late to his own birthday dinner, leaving 10 people waiting, because he impulsively bought a new car). He always loved telling me about ways in which he manipulated people or charmed them or dominated them in some way, yet he was always a huge mess himself (constantly wasted and ruining relationships).
I always knew he was very toxic and when I fell in love with my current SO I realized just how toxic he was. I took it as a bad sign that I didn’t want my partner to hang around him because he was such a scary person. When we would hang out as a group, he would always make ‘jokes’ about my partner and would say that this new guy ruined me. I could tell he felt threatened by my new relationship. I’m also sure that he couldn’t remember his name, despite the fact that I had dated him for almost two years.
Eventually, he made the mistake of lying about something I said and he incorporated me into his drama. He was trying to destroy my friendship with another girl that he had fallen out with and lied about me. I found out when the other friend confronted me about it and I cut the toxic friend out of my life. He is still friends with a lot of people that I know, but they all know that he is fun but more than a bit crazy.
It’s so wonderful to not have to feel like your best friend is a ticking time bomb.”
Whose Fault Was It?
“I have a friend, since near birth, our parents are friends. We grew up together while attending different schools, different groups of friends, etc.
When we were 16, he was dating a girl for a few weeks and introduced us. We talked a few times, and over the phone. She broke up with him a few weeks after she and I met, she was into me. I guess he knew it, and he started dating her friend. I started dating his ex-girlfriend. We dated for close to three years until we moved away for college. We all were friends, hung in the same group for all of it, everything was cool.
Cut to our late 20s, he was seeing this girl from his work, she liked him, but he isn’t into her really. He’s never really liked long-term serious things. The two of them broke up. I was seeing this real piece of work, but we broke up after four or so years. Everyone was single now. I ran into the chick he worked with, super nice girl. Cute as heck, chill, and hilarious. My buddy said he didn’t care, she was a fun time, whatever. She and I developed a friendship, but nothing physical. About a year passes, and she and I started dating. My buddy flips his lid.
Seven years later. She and I are still together, live together, and I’ll be proposing to her in the near future. The relationship I have with him is almost nonexistent. We see each other maybe three times a year for family stuff, but I don’t know how to handle the situation. I miss the friendship I have with him, he was like a brother to me. I don’t know how to approach the situation.”
All For Nothing
“We were casual friends until he started traveling for business a lot and ended up on my side of the country more often. Then, we regularly spent time together and started getting close; we had a lot in common and had a lot of fun together.
About six months in, he told me he started using coke recreationally. One night, he called me at 10:00 pm because he was feeling talkative. I could hear him scraping and tapping with his credit card in the background. I kept him on the phone because I didn’t want him to do anything stupid. We (he) talked for four hours. This set the tone for the next two years. His habit got worse. His phone calls got more frequent, my anxiety got deeper and deeper. He told me I was the only person in his life who really knew him. He told me I was amazing, that he admired me, that he truly felt close to me, that I was his best friend.
I believed it because I had never had experience with coke before. I didn’t know that it turned him into this charming, reckless, confident person. I believed we were emotionally close; we talked all day every day via text. And I mean ALL DAY. And on some level, we were very close. I grew to care about him on a deep level. And he grew to love his powder more and more.
During the last six months, he started disappearing for a few days. I wouldn’t hear from him. I’m currently an engineering student, and I need all the focus I can get for school, but I was so invested in his well-being at this point, and so scared he was going to die, that I failed two classes during that time. I lost a major internship for NASA and set myself back from graduation by two terms. But I was so scared.
The ball dropped one weekend when he went too far. Thank goodness he decided to check himself into rehab; I flew across the country that weekend to be with him and make sure he was stable that weekend. His treatment went great. He’s been clean for over a year now. But he also doesn’t seem to understand the extent of the damage he wrought over that two-year period. He tried to make it right, I guess. He bought me an expensive present, offered to help me out of a tight spot, made a big deal about how important I was to him, told me he was committed to keeping me in his life. And then he started dating someone, and just stopped talking to me.
And after two years of absolute hades and after a lot of broken promises, I don’t know, it was just over. He was just gone. As quickly as he came into my life, he was gone.”
“Never Bring Him Over Again
“My former friend became supremely unhappy with himself because he traveled around the world, met some high society people, and decided he wanted to join their ranks. And in his quest to do so, he became an incredibly nasty person to be around. Said things that I hope people wouldn’t even think.
So eventually he started thinking he would try to find ways in which he was ‘better than me,’ and try to exploit them. For example, at the time he had more money and I was just out of college working a low-paying job so he’d constantly berate me for accepting such a job, saying things like, ‘I wouldn’t even get out of bed for less than 100k a year.’
And then he’d talk about starting his business and how he wanted to find in-debt college students to work for him so he could financially mess them up and purposely treat them like garbage so they couldn’t afford to quit.
He was given a few bucks by his parents and it went to his head. Eventually, he got this ‘class’ thing in his head where he’d treat people with less money like him like poop and would justify it by saying they were poor and so it didn’t matter.
I brought him to a friend’s house, she was having a BBQ. And he tried to hit on some girls, and once they shot down his advancements, he would act belligerent to all of them until I had to take him home. My friend took me aside and said very seriously, ‘never bring him over again.’
I felt horrible. He spiraled into this whole thing of treating everybody like garbage and justifying it by saying they were poor or in debt so it was OK and only wealthy people deserve respect. And of course, since I was not wealthy, I was in that camp too. It started to very rapidly get into psychopath territory. I tried to steer the friendship into the right direction when he turned the attention on me and basically berated me for my low-class job (but didn’t have the guts to do it directly, just in a roundabout way, perhaps thinking I wouldn’t be smart enough to notice).
I literally got up, walked to my car, and left. And as I was turning on the ignition, I decided the friendship was over. That was a few years ago and I feel much freer now. Though I regret sticking by him and trying to help for so long.”
Thanks, But No Thanks
“My friends and I made the mistake of living together with his girlfriend. There were four of us. Myself, Phil, Lisa, and Keith. Phil and Lisa had been dating for four years, long-distance, and Lisa was transferring to our college. Phil and Lisa had the top floor of our townhouse, with two bedrooms, Keith and I were downstairs. So they had their own space.
We got near the end of the school year, April, and Phil dumped Lisa. Totally out of the blue. Lisa had been talking about marriage and Phil had apparently been cheating. [The year before Lisa had borderline cheated on Phil but they said they’d gotten past it.] Lisa promptly moved out. Our lease was to June 1. By this time Phil had started being a prick to me pretty frequently. Never really got a reason for it but I think it was in part because I had a good friendship with Lisa, and was not taking aides in their ridiculousness. Also, he didn’t like my new girlfriend, Penelope. So our lease was rounding out, it was now May, and Lisa had been gone a while. It was Memorial day, Keith and Phil had moved out but were still paying the rent. I still lived there. Lisa showed up on the Sunday of Memorial Day, while I was at the beach with Penelope, freaked out seeing my messy bedroom and thought I had moved out and left a bunch of stuff.
Stuff like: My bed, my books and homework, my sports equipment (which was like 90% of my life), my clothes, and my computer, which was still on. Still, she was convinced I’d moved out and left a mess. She told Phil. Phil freaked the frick out, sent all-caps text messages about how I better get up there and clean up, how they’re going to sue me, how I’m paying back their portion of the security deposit.
Then he blocked me on all channels. Why bother giving me a chance to explain? I called Keith, an even-keeled person and Keith made it clear I hadn’t abandoned all of my worldly possessions to cost Phil $250. Phil chose not to respond at all. Likewise, Lisa began ignoring my communications. I moved everything out the next day, Penelope and I hate-cleaned the entire apartment. It was flipping spotless and ready for the new tenants on the 27th. I handed in my keys and decided not to tell Phil, Lisa, or Keith. I moved in with Penelope.
Phil, Lisa, and Keith agreed to come down on the 29th to clean the place and hand in keys. Keith told me since Phil still refused to talk to me. I didn’t respond. Keith was living in town but Phil and Lisa were driving two-plus hours. Because I’d cleaned the frick out of the place they could just mail their keys in, but because they were being pricks I decided not to tell them (not that I could tell Phil if I wanted to) so I let them drive all the way in. Keith called, I told him I wouldn’t be around (I got called into work, out at 7:00 pm) but assured him I’d do my part afterward.
At 1:00 pm Phil texted, ‘House looks great, man, thanks for doing that.’
Keith texted, ‘Holy shtick dude! You cleaned the whole place yourself? That’s freaking awesome thanks!’
Nothing from Lisa.
And after Phil gave me the money he owed me I never heard from any of them again. I don’t miss them, in retrospect they were huge whiners, all the time.”