Sometimes, enough is enough. People share the things that happened to make them realize they really didn't want to be friends with someone anymore. Stories slightly edited for clarity.
Three Times The Pain
“I knew I was done with the friendship when my son died, who was an identical triplet, and one of my friends told me that grieving would be easy as I have two other sons who look just like him.”
You’re Not As Fun As You Used To Be
“We were maybe 12 years old, and every single day was nonstop drama and a self-pity party with her. Every time her custom text tone rang from my phone, my heart jumped. That’s how exhausting she was.
One day she said ‘you’re not as fun as you used to be’. I was just furious and hurt by that comment after spending many nights trying to make her happy because she was always so sad. I basically said ‘excuse me for acting like an adult’. She never answered back and we didn’t talk at all after that.
Until I was 19. I reached out to her for nostalgias sake, and she was a lot more mature. She actually apologized to me for acting like an immature emo kid all the time. We chatted for a little bit and it was nice. We still don’t talk, but it was nice to catch up and be on good terms with each other.”
That Won’t Make It Better
“I knew our friendship was over when I quit doing illegal and informed all my friends that I am going clean. I was still drinking though, so one night I got really inebriated and closed my eyes on the couch. Everything was spinning, but I can hear my former friend trying to convince my girlfriend to allow him to put white powder in my nose, That it’ll make me feel better. She yelled back at him and said that we quit and we are going clean. He kept trying to push it and after a little while, she helped me into the car and locked the doors. Sleeping there till we sobered up and drove home. That was 5 years ago and I’ve stayed clean. I haven’t hung out with him since and from what I heard, he’s moved onto harder illegal substances and never got clean.”
Not Your Personal Chef
“I output a lot of effort to help her try and get out of a debt caused by shopping sprees (no car, no school, racked up 25k just to buy stuff) she admitted to spending like $1000 a month on Doordash so we focused on getting her out of that. I work in a place where I get a lot of excess food for free (meal kits so I have an excess of meat and produce every week!) And I offered to help her out that way. I brought her a selection of foods and recipes and when I brought it to her she expected me to cook it for her, stating that she hated cooking and would not cook for herself ever. It was the nail in the coffin that suggested she wouldn’t take care of herself and would find a way to get someone else to do it. At that moment I couldn’t do it and bounced.”
The Call Never Came
“I’ll offer mine as tribute. Best friends as kids. Still really good friends in high school. I left high school and we both went off to school. I went over to see him after he came home for Christmas from university. We hadn’t spoken in four months and I was really looking forward to catching up.
I went to his parents house and they invited me in. He sat opposite and proceeded to stonewall all attempts at conversation with single word answers and no return questions. I got the hint he wasn’t in the mood and told him to contact me in a few days if he wanted to get a drink and catch up properly. No call ever came. That was 8 years ago.”
You Can’t Be Friends With Him
“Our friendship was over when he disinvited me from a board game night because he’d turned it into a birthday party for the person who everyone knew had taken advantage of and assaulted me. He didn’t tell me till the last minute (like, I was literally almost on my way out the door). And yes, he’d known what had happened, and had promised to never let that man set foot in his house again.
Then, when I got upset and called him out on it, he told me he thought I’d made the whole thing up, that I was overreacting, and not to talk to him until I ‘calmed down and got over it’ (if I recall correctly, he told me that I needed to ‘be rational’ as well).
That was 7 years ago. I’m still absolutely furious.”
I Didn’t Know How Bad It Was
“I deleted my entire friend group who I was friends with throughout high school from my life entirely after I went to university.
My university friend group were all very caring for each other and so supportive, and celebrated each others successes. My friend group from my home town were quite the opposite, always in competition with each other and full of macho egos.
It wasn’t until I’d experienced what being involved with a genuinely good group of people was like, that I realized that wasn’t what I had with these people at all. After that realization I didn;t want anything else to do with them and their toxicity.”
Is This Bothering You?
“I met her when we were in out early 20’s and we clicked immediately. She was a little crazy, but I liked that about her. We partied together. We talked for hours. We did the whole best girl friends sharing a blanket and laughing at stupid movies thing. It was an intense but fun friendship.
But then time moved on. We started having a few arguments. She would lash out at me. We nearly came to blows one night when she was super inebriated and started insulting me. I forgave her. I had seen her have drama with darn-near everyone else we knew, but I thought what we had was different. We were like sisters! We remained friends.
Eventually, I got married, had a kid, and moved to another city. One night around 3 am, she called me upset about something her new boyfriend had done. Despite waking me and my baby up in the middle of the night, I tried to be a good friend and be there for her. Problem was, her phone kept cutting out and she kept calling back over and over. After the 6th or 7th time, she asked if her calling was bothering me. I told her it was fine, but it did keep waking the baby and asked if maybe we could continue the convo the next day. She went ballistic, screaming and cursing me out. She hurled every insult you can imagine at me. Once she had screamed herself out, I told her to pound sand and hung up on her. I was done. I’ve never spoken to her again.”
Tell Me I’m Pretty!
“I was out to dinner meeting my best friend’s new boyfriend. We were all having a good time. Then she asked him if he thought I was pretty. He handles it perfectly and told her that he only had eyes for her. But she would not let it up. Finally she told me to keep my hands to myself. We were best friends! I never once even looked at a guy she was remotely interested in! And I was engaged at the time! So I finished the meal, told him it was great to meet him, went home, and never called or texted her again.”
Living In Filth
“We all moved in together which never goes well. One of them didn’t have a job, the other one had a job but stopped showing up to shifts, so I was paying 90% of the rent while living off disability money from the government. I was basically their maid, whenever it wasn’t my turn to do the dishes they would leave the dishes until they got moldy, then I would do them. I did all their laundry for them and even bought food for them.
The straw that broke the camels back was, I went out of town to meet my boyfriends parents for the first time. I asked them to take care of my cats while I was gone which includes cleaning the litter box since I was gone for over a week. When I got back, the litter box was completely overflowed to the point there was poop on the floor all around the litter box and no one did anything about it. The garbage wasn’t taken out to the point where they would just throw their garbage on the floor beside it. Since I wasn’t there to do their laundry and they didn’t clean the litter box, they left giant piles of clothes everywhere which my cats decided to pee on because it was a clean spot to bury their business, and of course the dishes were out of control and disgusting. Also they ate all my food.
I just cried because I knew I would have to clean everything but I decided not to (except the litter box). I told the landlord I was moving out but they were staying. I left all the stuff they didn’t clean up even though the dishes were mine, towels were mine, and even left the tiny amount of food I had left. The power and internet was in my name so I cancelled it on them. All that happened to them was they just found someone else to leach off of which is unfortunate.”
Community College Math
“My childhood best friend invited me out for a drink at a restaurant he was at near my apartment.
He and his girlfriend had just finished dinner and we ordered a pitcher of PBR and chatted. After the drinks the waitress dropped off and he suggested we split it in half.
I was like… no dude, I’m not paying for your dinner. So I started to read the check and calculate my portion of the bill. He started making a scene saying ‘So the guy who went to community college is going to do the math for me?’
I called him the next day to tell him how uncool that was and he just kept interrupting me saying ‘We need to not drink so much. Seriously you were so inebriated’. Off a pint of PBR? No dude.
That was the last time I talked to him.”
Bad Liar
“So me and this girl meet in secondary school she just transferred because she was bullied. I thought I’d be nice and show her around and help her make friends. Few months later we are inseparably always sleeping over spending everyday together. So I never noticed that anytime she got a boyfriend or girlfriend that she would distance herself.
Fast forward 2 years later and I was going through a very dark stage in my life, coming to terms with a dark event that happened in my childhood and looking for my best friend for comfort but no…..
She just got a new boyfriend so she was ‘very busy’ or began making up fake excusing forgetting about her snapchat story so i could see her out with everyone and not inviting me and out in her boyfriend’s house. So me being in a dark place this made it worse as i thought my best friend was abandoning me.
Another week past and I pulled myself together and forced myself to get ready (track suit bottoms and a baggy hoody) the lazy look ya know? Go to meet my best friend after weeks of being ignored and stuck inside my house. I sat in our meet up spot for 3 AND A HALF HOURS. Waiting for her, texting her, asking where she was. Keep in mind its UK winter weather, so I’m cold and wet waiting for someone to talk to.
Nope she walks over to the other side of the place we where meeting with her boyfriend and texts me from there saying, ‘sorry I cant make it, I’m sick in the house.’
I am sitting ACROSS FROM HER watching her text me this message. I got up and left never replied to her messages after that.”
A Glorified Uber Driver
“When I came home from the military, I tried to get back in contact with my best friend from high school.
He was still living with his mom and dad, had no job, no car, and he just seemed off.
I got a call around 10pm from him wanting to go to the casino. I was like ‘sure, why not? Let’s have some drinks.’
He was all jittery in the car on the way there. When we got there he went straight to the ATM, then got on his cell phone and started walking towards the parking garage on the opposite side of the property.
Comes back 30 min later all messed up.
While high, he admitted he just needed to meet up with his dealer.
I left his sorry self at the casino and went home. Haven’t spoken to him since.”
No Fight, No Drama, Just Done
“A good friend of mine moved to another state with her boyfriend. She came back a year later saying that they had broken up and he was harassing her. She said that he used to verbally abuse her about her weight and spent all her money. He was still in the other state but called her every day. He moved back after 6 months of saving up. Turns out they had never broken up, nor was she abused. She just wanted to hook up with other men while he wasn’t around and wanted me to be her wingman. She even signed up for a dating site without telling him. It took a long time to realize I was being lied to since who would lie about something like that!? It took me overhearing a lie she was telling someone else that contradicted what she had said to me previously. I felt so stupid! Her boyfriend was a good man and she was bad mouthing him to anyone who would listen. I fell for it.
I let the boyfriend know what was going on. He respected my decision to simply walk out of their lives after that. No fight. No drama. Just done.”
Sister’s Betrayal
“My best friend of 20 plus years needed a serious life change. I moved her across country, told her she could live with my husband and me rent free and got her a job working at the same place I worked. She eventually moved out, met a great guy, married him and is blissfully happy. I did not attend that wedding.
About a year before she got married, a mutual friend told me that she had been talking negatively about me and my husband. Highlights: I’m a psycho, my husband and I needed her to move in with us to help pay our bills, that she and my husband’s aunt and cousin would hang out behind my back and talk about me, that my mother in law told her she wished my husband had married her and not me. She said a lot more but those were some of the best, and everything she said was untrue. It was the biggest betrayal I’ve ever experienced and I was completely blindsided. It’s been two years since we spoke and it’s still hurtful. She was like a sister. I’m still shocked that I so badly misjudged someone.”
Please Don’t Tell My Mom
“I had confided my friend about my moms ex-girlfriend abusing me. She comforted me and said she understood. I went to bed feeling better and woke up to a bunch of furious calls from my mother and notifications that my friend had taken screen shots of our conversation.
She had sent those screen shots to my mom’s girlfriend and I had to endure the backlash from that. Needless to say, I blocked her and never spoke to her again. Wish I said what I really thought about her beforehand though, if I’m honest.”
Some Friends You Are
“I had just told them I had finally gotten away from my abusive mom and asked if they wanted to come over to my new apartment to celebrate my freedom with a few joints and some video games. I only told three people where I lived and I considered all three friends.
Guess who shows up at my apartment? That’s right, my abusive mom who had no idea where I lived.
So after calling the cops to get her away from me, I texted them again and rightfully asked what was going on and they never responded. So I would only have to guess it was all three of them.
Then a few weeks later one of them asks to hang out and I reply back and say ‘you mean you and me, or me and my mom’, he then spills that she paid all three of them to tell her where I lived and that they would gladly take the money again if she wanted to know anything else.
Dropped them faster than a ton of bricks from a plane, I also had to move again because of them, this time I didn’t tell them where I lived.”
Double Loss
“I had been dating a girl for a few months. Everything was going great. I was planning on meeting her for a drink after work. I arrived to the restaurant and was waiting at the bar. Twenty minutes later I texted her to see if she was almost there. She said ‘ I can’t make it tonight.’ I then called my best friend to see if he wanted to come have a drink since I was already there. No answer. I left and went home… I found out later that night she met up with him to hook up. He said she talked him into it and it wasn’t his fault. I no longer associate with either of them.”
Three Friends, Three Strikes
“Former friend A: sold me a lemon at an exorbitant price claiming he’d had the whole engine serviced and rebuilt, which nearly killed me when the crank shaft snapped on the highway less than a month later. He knew it had terminal problems and that I needed a vehicle desperately at the time.
Former friend B: crawled up to my sleeping bag to spoon in the middle of the night while I slept. When I woke up terrified and told him to get out of the room, he refused and–instead of trying to play it off like he was too inebriated to make sense of himself (which I could have believed)–insisted we were meant to have some sort of gay awakening together.
Former friend C: the third occasion of, after smoking my weed, that he told a gangster about it–leaving himself out of the story–who then attempted to blackmail me. For the cherry on top, after the fact, he tried to frame this as some sort of tough-love intervention. I realized later that he was also being extorted by his gangster ‘friend’ and it was probably a plot by the two of them to swindle me.”
Thing 1 and Thing 2
“I was friends with two people. Let’s call them 1 and 2. We became friends when I first joined there and it wasn’t a very stable friendship. We told on each other to lunch staff so much they got sick of seeing us. Anyways, the problem was 2 was an utterly terrible person. She would always switch between who she wanted to hang out with leaving the other person all alone. One day it would be 1 she wanted to hang out with and I’d be left without my friends and the next day it would be 1 who was left out and me she hung out with, preventing me from hanging with my bestie.
Me and 1 were very close friends and 2 kinda came in between that. A year or two later, 1 left the school, much to my sadness, and 2 just became worse. She would be mean to me and just flat out leave me for someone else way to much. I finally decided I had enough of her antics and that I didn’t deserve to be treated that way. I didn’t want to be mean so I just slowly drifted away from her. Luckily she landed a spot in the ‘popular’ group and left me alone. I became friends with some nice people in the year below me and I was fine.
2 was a terror though the rest of the time I knew her. Unfortunately for me, she moved to the same secondary school as me but she was in a different class, and still left me alone.
I’m glad I ended that friendship. She was a terrible person and a bad influence in general. I still miss 1 to this day.”
Fool Me Once…
“I was going through my biggest breakup to date. It was a really hard one. I was only 21, we’d been off and on for 3 years when he decided to join the army for ‘some direction in life’, in other words his Mum no longer cooked his dinner for him and he didn’t know how to function. We couldn’t talk a lot during his training but I thought we were fine every time he was able to call me. One day I just get a text saying ‘yeh I think it’s best we don’t talk anymore’. And that was it.
So at the time i’m crushed, going through all the stages of grief. About a month after the fact i’m hanging out drinking a glass with this friend (known her for years but we’re essentially just drinking buddies) and I say some sad thing you normally feel during a breakup, suddenly she bursts out with ‘Oh my god! Will you stop talking about [guy]!! I’m so bored of hearing about it!!’
This was maybe the second or third time I’d seen her since it happened, and if I got back all the hours I’d spent listening to her tell the same stories over, I’d probably have enough time to start and finish and a college degree. Anyway, told her to get bent and go home. She tried to reach out a few times after but that wasn’t a bad day or a random inebriated moment, it’s a huge aspect of her personality- she’d just never directed it toward me before.
My Mum always told me ‘If you can do it once, you can do it again.'”