freepik @freepik

Our circle of friends can greatly impact our image and mental well-being. Unfortunately, some people we thought were friends turn out to be fake, frenemies, or even social enemies. These Reddit users have experienced the worst kinds of bad friends, but the silver lining is that they were able to rid themselves of these toxic individuals. Read on for their stories about the most terrible fake friends.

1. You Can’t Take More Than You Give

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I am a giver to my friends and loved ones. Giving without explanation of any return. Over the years, my wife has continued to complain about my fake friends, claiming they are around me for my generosity only. So she came up with an ingenious plan. She asked me to be a bit selfish and ask something of those she suspected of being fake.

I did, and, well…most of those so-called friends suddenly disappeared or found themselves extremely busy with other, more important, matters than to help a friend in need. For some it took just a text to make them disappear, others a call. What can I say. I am lucky to have a partner who is very emotionally intelligent, and she read them with ease.

As for my remaining best friends, I say: Thank you for being there when I needed you, and I’ll be there for you. Love you all.

2. My Best Friends Slept With My Fiancée and Kept it Secret

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Me and three other guys were supposedly all best friends. Then I found out the disturbing truth. Two of them were sleeping with my fiancée, while the third knew all about it and didn’t say a word. Funny thing is, I was more sad than angry. I didn’t want to get any sort of revenge, I just wanted all of them to leave me alone forever.

A few weeks after this all broke, one of the guys who was sleeping with her snuck up on me at a party and sucker-punched me. I never saw it coming. Apparently, he ASSUMED I wanted to fight him, so he attacked me first. I cut them all completely out of my life. I recently found out the guy who didn’t say anything died about two years back, and I found out my ex didn’t make it to 30.

3. When Roommates Ghosted Me After I Moved Out

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Toward the end of college, I had two roommates for about two years. We had enough in common to live together and even though we didn’t do EVERYTHING together, we spent enough time doing stuff on our own or with our extended group of friends that I had thought we were all fairly good friends. But when I had a chance to move into my own place, they instantly ghosted me.

Like, it happened the moment I drove my moving van out of the driveway. I never got a phone call, never got a response to any messages I left for either of them, not even a text in reply. About three years later, I ran into them in Las Vegas and they both looked me in the eye and then walked past me like I had never met them. Screw those guys.

4. When Your Friends Plan Trips Without You

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I was hanging out in a group and someone mentioned their upcoming trip to Japan. Oh, I thought, that’s cool! What I heard next made my stomach drop. Someone else mentioned their upcoming trip to Japan. By the third person mentioning it, I knew where this was going for sure and I casually asked when they were all going. One person got the biggest “Oh no” look.

She nervously asked if I’d be interested in coming with them. They’d already planned the dates and itinerary. This wasn’t the first time they’d done things without me and excitedly talked about it in front of me, but this was the biggest. I don’t talk to any of them anymore.

5. Fair-weather Friends

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My parents have a beach house, and I made a lot of friends in May and June one year. A couple of years ago, my wife and I bought a lake house with her older brother and his wife. All of a sudden this flurry of “old friends” came out of the woodwork again. I’m totally fine with sharing and inviting people over and all that fun stuff, but at least put us on your Christmas card list or wish us a happy birthday.

Or, you know, something other than “Hey what week can we come up?” Or my favorite: “Well, when will it be empty? We would love a private weekend to ourselves.” This isn’t a bed and breakfast.

6. A One-Sided Friendship Story

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When I was injured and housebound for four months, they went radio silent on me, apart from a text message telling me it was my fault, since I probably had a brittle bone disease. They then later told me they didn’t contact/check in on me on purpose because they don’t like “needy people.” Eventually, though, karma came back for them.

Six months later, they get injured and are housebound. They start phoning me up, asking me for favors, to run errands for them, etc. Me being a forgiving person and for some reason wishing to keep the friendship alive, I did. This culminated in them taking a twisted delight in telling me how they had sent “thank you” flowers to a mutual friend who had popped in on them.

It was a lot of fawning about how touched they were by their thoughtful gesture, all while I was basically running myself ragged driving this person around, fetching/buying them stuff, and generally trying to keep them happy and not wanting them to feel abandoned like I had. At that point, it hit me like a ton of bricks. I wasn’t a friend anymore, I was a groupie.

Unappreciated and not respected. I cut off all contact and never looked back.

7. Striking A Nerve

freepik @freepic-diller

He openly berated me in front of my roommates and tried to play it off as a “joke,” even though I made it pretty clear that the things he went on about were pretty big insecurities. He kept making snide comments about me being unattractive, making fun of my attempts to lose weight and then got snappy when I got short with him about it.

Thankfully he’s 100% out of my life now, don’t want anything to do with that guy again.

8. My Former Friend Slept with Every Guy I Liked

freepik @wayhomestudio

She slept with a guy I was in love with. We weren’t in a relationship, but she knew my feelings for him and slept with him the very night that I confessed that to her. I found out much later that she had invited him over and cried and begged to sleep with him. I forgave her and actually let her stay with me over the summer rent-free because her housing fell through.

Then she proceeded to sleep with another guy I was hooking up with and then flirt with another guy I was potentially wanting to date—like, she came out in a flimsy bathrobe when he was hanging out with me. She then always played the victim and claimed life had wronged her. It took me a year of this stuff, but I completely cut her off.

9. When Friendship Becomes One-Sided

freepik @karlyukav

She was so busy scrolling on her phone, stopping only to tell me that she “couldn’t be my therapist,” when I was pouring my heart out about some really difficult stuff. I chalked it up to her own mental health and my bad method of delivery. Turns out, it’s not just my hardships she doesn’t care about. She wasn’t excited about any of the great stuff in my life, either.

She also doesn’t care about my needs unless they’re somehow able to fulfill hers—i.e. concert tickets to her favorite band for my birthday. She will actually walk 10 feet ahead of me and not notice that me, a disabled person, is struggling to keep up. I’m also expected to be aware of and in support of every single aspect of her life, giving 110% to our friendship.

Meanwhile, she’ll ignore my messages unless or until she wants something from me. We’ve been friends for over half my life and I can’t even talk to her about feeling like garbage because of the way she’ll turn it all on me. I’m gonna have to just cut my losses. I can’t keep forcing myself to hang out with her when it makes me feel so bad.

10. Other than Common Interests

freepik @freepik

It occurred to me I hadn’t seen her post anything to Facebook for a while, so I checked and she had blocked me. I emailed her to ask what was wrong, and her response made a shiver go through me. It was a rambling, manipulative, domineering list of everything she thought I had done imperfectly for the past two years, attached to an ultimatum that I accept full responsibility and believe what I was told to believe.

The most bizarre of the passages was when she declared that if I truly understood “the basis of friendship” I would be a fan of Kanye West. Unfortunately, we had a wedding of a mutual friend coming up so as much fun as it would have been to let her know how I really felt, I didn’t want her making a scene at the wedding. Instead, I bit the bullet and told her what she needed to hear and then cut her out of my life entirely afterward.

11. What About Me, Though?

freepik @freepik

When my dad died, my best friend didn’t call or text me, but managed to message a mutual friend who I had previously slept with a few weeks before for a quickie of her own. He asked her if she had messaged me about my dad, and when she said no, he said “You should message your friend.” He was texting me throughout this situation, too.

She knew for five days that my dad died, and the weekend it happened I comforted her through a breakup. I hadn’t told her then, but she found out two days later from a mutual friend of ours. I ended the friendship after that. I lost two of the most important people in my life within a week, even if one of them wasn’t as great as I thought she was.

12. Boys Drool, Girls Rule

freepik @nakaridore

I knew I didn’t want to be friends with this guy when he lost his mind that we came second to a group of girls in pub trivia. On the car ride home, he then ranted about how “It’ll never happen again” and he “refuses to let a group of witches get the better of him.” Really disappointing stuff, and that was the last time I voluntarily hung out with him.

13. A Two-Faced Friend

freepik @master1305

When he started cheating on his girlfriend indiscriminately and then would brag about it to me. To make matters worse, my then-girlfriend was friends with his, so he indirectly involved me in his lies when I had to cover for his dumb behavior, which honestly I regret doing to this day. We ended up fighting over it and aren’t really close anymore.

14. Avoiding Touch

freepik @freepik

When I moved across the country I had a going away party, gave people a month’s notice, and the day of, I get “I couldn’t find anyone to look after the dogs” from one group and “The dog couple was our ride” from another. The party was at my mother’s house at the beach where they could both stay and bring the dogs…Of course, these are also the jerks who visited the city I moved to when I moved away from home without telling me at least three times. I had to find out about it from a mutual friend.

They were apparently only great friends when I was willing to cover their dinner but not when I wanted to, like, be friends.

15. The Opposite Of Having Fun

freepik @freepik

When he kept on trying to jeopardize my sobriety. I would block his number; he would get a new one. I blocked him on all social media; he would create new accounts. I’m going on a year of being sober and to this day he stalks me and tries to get me to slip up. It’s quite exhausting running from him while trying to maintain my sanity and sobriety.

16. Frenemy And Toxic

freepik @freepic-diller

My “friend” refused to come to my wedding because she hadn’t had weight loss surgery yet and didn’t want to look fat and frumpy on my wedding day. That was the culmination that led to me severing ties. She used to refer to me as her “DUFF,” the designated ugly fat friend. Then as we grew up, I slimmed down and grew into my appearance rather nicely.

Meanwhile, she did the opposite, which infuriated her. Relatedly, she tried to make up a dozen excuses as to why she couldn’t be my maid of honor. She couldn’t afford to travel to my wedding; I offered to pay for it all. She couldn’t afford the dress; I also paid for my bridesmaids’ dresses. Then when she went on a very lavish and expensive trip to a resort and posted photos on Facebook, so I called her out.

That’s when she said she didn’t want to go and be in pictures because she was having gastric surgery and my wedding was too soon for her to be hot in my wedding line. At that point, our other mutual friend melted down and literally listed all the ways my best friend was a frenemy and toxic to me and to all of us. Feels bad, man.

17. Extraordinary Steps

freepik @benzoix

She threatened to hurt herself if I didn’t do what she wanted. She asked me if she could sleep over at my house one night. I told her no since I had grandparents visiting the next day. She continued and tried to convince me to let her. She then said that if I let her, she would stop cutting, but if I didn’t, it would be my fault if she finished the job.

I didn’t let her, and I “ditched” her the same year. She’s still alive to this day. She has a girlfriend and is moving out of town soon.

18. The Father is NOT You

freepik @prostooleh

She tricked one of my friends that she was pregnant with their child, and used my phone to do it. She used to take my phone while I was sleeping and text my friend—the guy she hooked up with—pretending to be me, saying stuff like, “She is throwing up again this morning” and various other pregnancy things to convince him. She was not pregnant and 100% knew she wasn’t.

19. The Most Disturbing Kind Of Praise

freepik @cookie-studio

This girl started copying me. Everything about me. It was something straight out of Single White Female. She started using my frequent phrases, tried to pick up all my hobbies, and started dressing exactly like me. The final straw was when she started getting really possessive when I would hang out with people without her and tried to turn me against all my other friends.

We aren’t friends anymore, but everyone tells me she’s still obsessed with me and talks about how I abandoned her to anyone who will listen.

20. Trying to Project Much

freepik @drazenzigic

She told me she was cheating on her husband, while laughing about how funny it was that her boyfriend would come over to the house and hang out with her husband and her and their newborn. After I told her that wasn’t cool and we weren’t friends anymore, she told everyone that I was sleeping with her husband and an abusive alcoholic.

None of this was true. There was a happy ending, though: The husband got divorced and got full custody, while I got new friends.

21. Unwanted Affection

freepik @freepic-diller

It turns out I wasn’t as good a friend as I thought. My best friend of 20 years got married, and while I was invited to the wedding, I wasn’t in the wedding party, though a number of other friends were. I was asked a number of times by fellow guests at the reception why I wasn’t in the party, and had to brush it off with, “Oh, she knew I was really busy.”

I never asked her why. I just kind of left it alone because I’m not quite ready to be told flat out that while she’s my best friend, I’m not even a close one of hers. I suppose I should have known. I’m always the one to initiate contact, and she sometimes doesn’t even respond, but I kept chalking it up to her being busy and a bit of a ditz because when we did get together, we both seemed to have a really good time.

22. Missing Out On The Big Day

freepik @v-ivash

My wedding was the moment I realized I had fake friends. I invited friends from college to my bridal shower and nobody showed up. A few had legitimate reasons, and I wasn’t upset about them. When I kept getting RSVPs as “no” for the actual wedding, I was disappointed, but nothing was going to ruin my special day. Something almost did, though.

My favorite was when I had to call my college roommate because I hadn’t received her RSVP. Her excuse? “Oh, it’s on my birthday.” That’s it. That’s all she said. I just asked if it was a yes or no, but she gave me that excuse.

23. The Perils of Making Excuses

freepik @cookie-studio

She just kept delaying or canceling our meet-ups. ONE time she had a valid excuse, or at least one I didn’t blame her for, when her uncle landed in the hospital. But I still wasn’t happy about it because she could have texted me what was going on, rather than three hours after we were supposed to meet up. How am I supposed to know what is happening?

But excuses just kept piling up, and the one that did it was when I had asked her for a ride to work the next day. She said cool. Even after she had already accepted, I offered to buy her dinner to sweeten the deal, and she accepted. The next day came, and I heard NOTHING from her. Tried to confirm half an hour before, tried 10 minutes before, and then I had to scramble to find my own way to work.

Uber/Lyft/Taxis were all delayed because it was a Saturday night, so I got on one of those rental Lime scooters. The brakes didn’t work. I had to end that ride and start another one and made it to work 12 minutes late. Even two hours into my shift, she STILL hadn’t replied, but I could see she had SEEN the messages. I unfriended her and blocked her on Facebook.

With the exception of her being in a near-fatal accident, there was no excuse strong enough for me to care about her again. The next day, she tried to text me, but I never opened it. I only saw the preview: “I have no excuse.” I mouthed You’re right before I blocked her number and deleted the conversation. She earned me my first tardy at that job, ever.

24. Realizing My Friends Didn’t Care

freepik @balashmirzabey

I realized that they didn’t care about me like I did them after this incident. When we went shopping, I felt pressured to buy a pair of shorts that were way shorter than what I was comfortable with just to make them feel like I wasn’t wasting their time by dragging them around and then not buying anything. The shorts were short enough to show scars on my thigh I was self-conscious about, but they were like, “If you tug it down before you sit then you’re fine.”

We went to a bar/skate rink that night and the whole time they mostly focused on taking selfies with my phone (it had the better camera) and occasionally remembered to include me to make sure it still felt like we were all hanging out together (it didn’t).

25. The Cost of Lying

freepik @marymarkevich

She pretended to have millions of dollars but lived in a condo. She always told ridiculous lies like she “flew to New York overnight” and she had “five pairs of AirPods and three Apple Watches, she just kept them at home.” All lies. She was a pathological, compulsive liar who was manipulating and told unbelievable and outrageous lies and expected everyone to believe them.

She also was a know-it-all and used fake facts to make it seem like she was right. I was only friends with her because I was the new kid and no one else was nice to me. To make a long story short, I cut her off, made new friends, and now I don’t even talk to her anymore.

26. Small Town Resentment

freepik @teksomolika

This one hurt so badly. See, I was the only one from my “real” friend group that finished college. During the time where I was away and each of them was understandably struggling to figure out what to do next, we obviously had a hard time not growing apart. It wasn’t that bad until they started dating these guys from our backwater hometown.

I tried to be happy for them, until these guys showed their horrible true colors. I’m a Black woman, and they turned out to be disturbingly prejudiced about both these parts of me. After a particularly bad night, I made my feelings about them known because I was hurt, fed up, and honestly I thought my friends deserved better than these jerks.

After that, they barely answered my messages, stopped including me in their plans, and actively made up stories when I tried to make the plans first. We use to hang out every day when we weren’t at school or at work, so this behavior didn’t go unnoticed to me. Then, my dad got really sick and spent the entire summer I was home in the hospital.

I was really stressed and struggling and these friends knew it, but barely reached out. That’s when I knew despite everything we had gone through, they were fake friends. We had a fight at one point and I never spoke to any of them again. My only “consolation” to this day is that they stayed in that stupid town for those guys. They had plans about moving down south and doing other stuff and never fulfilled any of them.

Meanwhile, I have done all the things I said I was going to do. However, I don’t consider it much of a consolation because despite how they treated me, I didn’t want them to live sad lives. But oh well, karma comes for everyone.

27. It Will Get Easier

freepik @freepik

I wasn’t popular in school at all. I had a reputation for being a freak with an attitude problem, but I performed well in academics and sports and was often seeing the same people within that high-performing group. I got relatively close to the girls I did sports with since we spent so much time together at practice and at meets, and we even had lunch together sometimes.

BUT when it came to anything social, I was never invited. They went to parties every weekend, they even threw the parties, and they didn’t ever invite me. Sometimes they had the excuse of “Oh there were just too many people,” but most of the time they didn’t bother explaining why I wasn’t included even though we spent a lot of time with the same people.

I ran into some of the girls I was closest with a year after graduation and they acted like they barely knew me when I said hi.

28. Taking You On A Wild Ride

freepik @drazenzigic

When several of them messaged me on Facebook during the last week of high school to say that the only reason they ever hung out with me was that they were pitying my best friend. I should have caught on when they made me pay for the gas and ride in the trunk of a Ford Explorer every time we went anywhere. That’s one reason I never go back to my hometown.

29. Learning to Identify True Friendships

freepik @freepic-diller

My “friends” I made at university were so fake. They were the first people I met there and got along with. There were three or four guys, in addition to myself, who were inseparable for months. Well, one semester my course registration got messed up so I wasn’t able to enroll in classes with them. Eventually, I managed to protest with my school enough so that they let me into a full class they were in.

That way, I could at least see them once a week and hang out with them after class. Big mistake. It was like I didn’t even exist anymore to these guys. They would say hi to me and ask what I was up to, but I was never invited to anything anymore and was removed from the group chat we had. It hurt like heck at the time, but I think the most important thing I learned from all this was how to distinguish between actual friends and acquaintances.

I didn’t expect much from acquaintances and learned to rely more on my actual friends.

30. Overcoming Toxic Friends and Eating Disorders

freepik @freepik

I had an eating disorder for two years, though I no longer do. During this time, I was in a toxic friend group. None of them seemed to trust me at all and wouldn’t tell me anything. One day, a boy named Jake who I was talking to asked me out and I said yes—only it turns out one of them liked him. Again, I didn’t know this as these people never confided anything to me.

I walk up to them one day and I hear one say, “You know Jake deserved better, not a fat whale like her. At this point, she deserves to starve, tell her to keep up the good work.” Words can’t describe how sad I felt and it took a lot to get over. I’m much better now and even though that was two years ago, I look back and the past me and the current me, and I couldn’t be more proud of myself.

31. How to Navigate Social Connections with Care

freepik @user15285612

As soon as I got out of a difficult and manipulative relationship, they all said “Oh, we knew you were struggling, we just thought it was a thing you needed to go through.” On some level, I get it I guess, but still…Once I went off to college, they all cut ties with me anyhow. Still trying to find my social footing, but at least now I know some red flags to watch for.

32. The Journey to Self-Love and Acceptance

freepik @freepik

I think I realized the fake aspect of my old group of friends when things started to happen to me in a way that didn’t fit their narrative, and so they blocked me out and continue to do so to this day. Specifically, it was one of my closer friends, who I was constantly hanging with since third grade and was also in a band with.

The biggest asteroid of realization came when my current, only, and actual best friend told me recently that this ex-friend said verbatim, “He can be your problem now,” when I was in a psych ward for a manic experience. Like, I’m sorry that my mental framework isn’t up to your standards, but didn’t we confide in each other for no less than a full decade?

Didn’t we develop as friends over several years with tons of common interests? Didn’t we have tons of fun playing music? It just doesn’t matter because I chose to experiment with substances and you didn’t? And that my brain is wired in a way that couldn’t handle it? I never took from you. I never hit you. I never intentionally harmed you in any way.

When I found out he said that and felt that way, it gave me a lot of insight into how this guy really is for the most part. His nonchalant reflection on our days of being in our old band was always, “Yeah, we suuuuucked,” with a very condescending and critical attitude. Like yeah, but wasn’t it fun? Why be so critical and treat it like it was just some stupid ephemeral portion of your life?

You probably wouldn’t be teaching music to kids now and having a successful new band had we not done what we did. But everything has to be perfect for it to be worth it to him. I’ve always had problems with depression, various mental health issues, and so on, so it hurt when it really hit me that his choice was, “Nah, I’m gonna distance myself” rather than, “Is there something I can do to help or understand?”

It definitely continues to have long-lasting damage and impact on how I view the world. I hold myself accountable for the awful stuff I have done. But my real friend stuck around, the only real friend I ever really had among them. I’ve been sober for almost four years now, and he supports me even though he’s not into the whole sobriety thing.

33. When Friends Don’t Understand

freepik @freepik

When I had a miscarriage and was grieving, my “friend” just wanted me to focus on her pregnancy and just forget about what I was feeling and to act like nothing had happened. Literally two days after my miscarriage, she insisted I got out with her to go shopping for her baby and talk about cradles and things like that. Selfish jerk.

34. Stolen and Stained

freepik @yanalya

For some reason, this friend took a hoodie from me when we were hanging out. I knew it was him, even though he denied it. When I finally confronted him, he called me a “spoiled rich brat” and said it was a prank. He even somehow looped in my other friend into pretending it was just a dare. That much dishonesty over a hoodie? No thanks.

35. Coming Out and Falling Out

freepik @freepik

Right after I came out of the closet, I lost a ton of friends. They were all super supportive and encouraging at first, until I started openly seeing guys. Then my closest friend started excluding me from things. When I confronted him about it, his answer was, “I know you’re gay, and that’s great! But I don’t want to see or hear about all this gay stuff.”

So I was allowed to be gay, I just wasn’t allowed to talk about dating anyone or flirt with anyone…and just like that, all of the other friends in that group fell in line with him. Good riddance, though. Now I am surrounded by people that matter.

36. Abandoned and Alone

freepik @yanalya

I got convinced to go to homecoming without a date by my “friends” in my sophomore year of high school. This was after getting ditched by my homecoming date freshman year. Everyone told me that going with friends would be a lot better than going with a date and that I would have way more fun than last time, so I decided to take a chance and go.

The plan was to get dressed by a specific time, wait until my friend’s parents come to pick me up, go out for a nice dinner, then go to the homecoming dance. I got dressed at the time I was supposed to, let my friends know I was ready and waited…for hours. I texted and called every single person that was a part of my homecoming group, letting them know I was ready, and not a single person responded. Then something in me broke.

I remember sobbing about it in the backseat of my dad’s car when he took me to McDonald’s 30 minutes before the dance started. He felt bad and didn’t want me to go hungry. After I ate, he drove me to the dance, and as I get out of the car and start walking toward the line to get into the building, still wiping tears from my eyes, I see the same group I was supposed to be with right in front of me.

I went up to them and asked why no one bothered to respond to my messages. They pretty much responded with, “Oh, sorry,” and split off from me the second we got inside the building. That was about five years ago but I still remember it like it was yesterday. People suck.

37. Recognizing and Ending an Abusive Friendship

freepik @katemangostar

I had this best friend, Josh. He and I grew up together, and we’ve been friends since the second grade. We went through everything together. When I was young, I was very stupid and naïve, and I didn’t realize how destructive our friendship was until we started drifting apart. For example, as a child, he would always say things to scare me.

Josh always used to talk about creepypastas, doing his best to convince me they were real. I ended up having to go to therapy because I was so terrified of slender man that I was having nightmares and hallucinations because I was so scared and sleep-deprived. It sounds stupid, but I was only 7-8 or so. One of the most blatant examples was when I was called to the office, but they didn’t specify why.

Josh turns to me with panic on his face and says, “Your dad could have been shot!” My father, who I was close with at the time, was an officer. When he played with my emotions and let out his sadism on me, this felt normal and I didn’t know any better because I had a rough childhood. I remember about a year and a half ago—the last time we hung out—he was on the phone with his girlfriend.

Apparently, she had cheated on him, so he was purposefully humiliating her and berating her. I wasn’t in the next room, we were thigh to thigh on my bed playing Call of Duty, so I could hear absolutely everything. I didn’t know how abusive he was to everyone until I saw him take it out on other people, and since then we just haven’t talked.

38. Not All Friendships Last

freepik @nakaridore

I knew she wasn’t a true friend when she wanted to uproot and move a fourth time in almost two years. We were best friends/roommates and she was never happy where we were living, and I got tired of her trying to move all over the East Coast. She would get all upset whenever I said that I wanted to at least try and stay where we were.

It’s not healthy to just leave every time you don’t like the weather here, you hate your job here, you can’t get a boyfriend here, etc. Also weird flex, but she claimed on a few occasions that she was prettier than every girl with brown eyes (me) because she has blue eyes. We’re in our 20s.

39. Learning to Let Go

freepik @freepik

I had the same group of three friends since elementary school, but that was because I was very introverted and didn’t make any other friends. Because of this, I stuck with them for 10+ years. However, I was considered the “weirdo” of the group. They constantly belittled me, and they would “accidentally” hit me or throw me down. Even in high school, I was the joke of the group.

My life problems were brought up and laughed at, and at this point, I started distancing myself from all of them. Once we graduated high school I told myself that I will never speak to them again, which I did. Truthfully, I miss having a group of friends (I have no friends now), but I’m so glad I’m not friends with fake people who hurt me day in and out.

Four years later, they still complain about me leaving their friend group, because apparently, “I think I’m better than them.” It’s pretty ridiculous that they think they’re entitled to my friendship when all they did was hurt me for years.

40. The Pain of Being Dumped by Your Best Friend

freepik @freepik

I’ve had a couple of bad friends, but the one that stung the most was my “best friend” who kept me around to feel good about herself. There were things I didn’t realize until she ghosted me after nearly seven years of friendship. While we were friends, she always had a guy, a job she loved and was constantly getting promoted, plus a fancy apartment.

Meanwhile, I was always single, had a job I hated, and while my apartment was nice, it was nowhere near as “nice” as hers. I’m not complaining about my life, by the way. I was fine being single and was working on finding a good job. Fast-forward to me getting in a very solid, serious relationship (we’re now married), renting a nice house instead of a small apartment, and having a really good and secure job.

Add on to that being medicated for anxiety, so I’m much happier now. Suddenly, everything changed. The last I spoke with her, we had made plans for her to visit me. When that date got closer, I texted her to see if she still planned on coming and she never responded. I reached out to her a number of times over a couple of months. Nothing.

From her perspective, I was no longer the friend to feel sorry for, or the friend you could compare yourself to and feel better about your life. Therefore, I was no longer needed. It broke my heart and took me months to get over.

41. Experiencing Rejection After Making a Big Life Change

freepik @senivpetro

I switched career fields; I was in grad school for music performance and had lots of friends from my undergrad and my graduate program. When I decided to leave music and move towards a different path, it showed me how many of those friendships were shallow. Most of them just stopped replying to texts. They were always “busy” and never initiated conversation again.

This unfortunately includes one of my groomsmen, one of my wife’s bridesmaids, and several professors I was close to and had developed friendships with beyond the student/professor norm. The friends who remained are very, very dear to me now. I’m also very intentional about making friends now that are more than just friends out of convenience.

42. The Insensitivity of Self-Centeredness

freepik @senivpetro

When a friend of mine was murdered, I called my best friend, obviously distraught. During that call, she couldn’t stop talking about how much her mother annoys her.

43. How to Cope With Well-Meaning Friends

freepik @freepik

I live in severe chronic pain every day due to several illnesses. The friends I had would either just complain about their own life nonstop to the point I’d be exhausted of conversation, or else tell me, “If I were you I would have offed myself a while ago now.” Maybe it’s meant to be endearing, saying I’m strong, but it never comes across that way to me.

44. The Harsh Reality of ‘Christians’

freepik @wavebreakmedia-micro

I got an apartment off-campus and invited all of my friends to come to visit—then no one showed. Later, that same apartment burned down when I was in college, and not one single person let me crash on their couch while I got situated. I had to commute from my parents’ home two hours away for each day I had class. I had classes daily, and this went on for over four months.

Because apartments near the campus are on rental leases, it was hard to find an apartment mid-semester. The worst part about this is that I belonged to a Christian organization and I would put in a lot of money for the collections that were to help others in our circle when they needed it. For example, I put in $50 once for a person whose mom had cancer.

Meanwhile, for me, my home burns down and I lose everything, and those so-called Christians were nowhere to be found. All of them would go up to me the next day and say, “I heard your apartment burned down,” but with no follow-ups like, “Do you need anything?” I mean, I was wearing old T-shirts and raggedy sweats because I didn’t have any clothes.

I took out an emergency student loan, and it was one of the worst periods of my life.

45. Lessons in Naivety

freepik @freepik

Hindsight is 20:20 with this situation, but I was very naive at the time. I had just been broken up with and was feeling the lowest I’d felt in my life. I started going out with people who I thought were my closest friends at the time and we were drinking a lot. This evolved over time to partying all the time at either my house or another one of the guys’ houses.

One day we decided to trip together at my house, and they came over. After we had all taken it, one of the guys started being really weird and was hiding from us. We looked all over my house for him and he texted us to say he’d got his grandma to pick him up. Me and the other guys decided to go for a walk, but as we’re passing my house, the guy that said he’d left hops over my fence.

At this point, we’re all like, “What the heck?” I was getting in my head and feeling like I wanted them all to go. That’s when the realization hit me. These guys were just using me for my house. I said I’d like them to go because I was just going to stay on my own. Barely listening to me, they were like “Nah man, let’s go back to yours, it’s fine.”

Eventually, I put my foot down and said, “No, I’m going back on my own.” The guy who was being weird walked past me and cussed me out. After staring at him for a second, I just went home. At that point, I called one of my other friends (who is still my friend to this day) and asked if he could come up because I was having a bit of a hard time on my own.

He came up and I felt so much better. It’s such a difference, you know? When you’re around someone who you truly like and who truly likes you. And wouldn’t you know it, while my friend was there I got a call from one of the guys that left. I said to my other friend, “I guarantee he’s going to ask if I have weed.” I pick up the phone and he’s like, “Hey, man you alright?”

I say yes, and immediately he asks exactly what I thought he would. It really solidified in my head that these guys were just using me. I stopped talking to those guys for a while, and it was a good thing too. Although they protested, I later found out that one of them was sleeping with my ex—the one I was having such a hard time getting over—behind my back. Trust your instincts on people.

46. The Sad Reality of ‘Friendships’

freepik @mindandi

A couple of my closest friends stopped talking to me when I got divorced from my husband. I finally stood up for myself in a loveless marriage where I did all the work and handled all responsibilities around the house and kids. Later, he even admitted to avoiding the house because it was too stressful, not that he was doing that much better at work.

In fact, he stopped doing his duties at work for six months and got a warning. Then he still didn’t shape up and got fired six more months after that. I didn’t know any of this was going on until he was fired, and he proceeded to lie to me for the next six months about working on “new certifications” for his industry. Well, I found out he was just jerking around online.

I lost any remaining love and respect for him after that, plus when I discovered he made out with a co-worker at an office trip to Vegas, though he did stop himself when she invited him into her hotel room while they groped each other in the hallway. So yeah, when I got out of THAT relationship finally, all of my friends seemed to turn on me.

My one friend still isn’t speaking to me because she thinks I should have stayed for the kids and to help my husband through his life crisis. The other friend and I are barely friends now and she still says stuff like “None of us knew how unhappy you were” and “Oh well, that’s the difference between us, I don’t mind reminding my husband here and there.”

They know everything now but still act like I’m the crazy person. I feel like all those years of supporting them, when I finally needed it in return, they completely let me down. I didn’t have my “girlfriends” to help me through my divorce. I felt alone and betrayed. I’m finally in a better place with my new fiancé but that still hurts me to my core finding out my friends weren’t really my friends.

47. A Tale of Unreliable Companions on My Birthday

freepik @user23054844

One week, I invited everyone in the group chat out for my birthday drinks; I was turning 33. One person was on time, the rest of my “friends” decided to go fishing and arrived a full four hours later. Then, when my girlfriend was rounding up the group to carry on drinking at a bar that closed later than the one we were at, I said we would go ahead and get a table and for them to catch us up.

They just looked at me sort of vacantly because they hadn’t finished their drinks, because they had turned up so late. Then they bailed out without even saying goodbye. Great birthday.

48. How a Request for a Favor Turned Into an Unforgettable Ride

freepik @pvproductions

One day, my wife needed to go to the airport. I didn’t have a car and Uber is not cheap, so I asked my friend if they could drop us off. After all, the airport was on their way to the club they went to on weekends. They agreed very reluctantly but didn’t call or show up when it was time to leave. I got this sinking feeling in my stomach at that point.

It was so bad that I didn’t call them to remind them or anything. I just got the feeling that they didn’t want to help us and I didn’t want to make it weirder. I was on my way to the bus stop to catch the bus when we bumped into them. Now having no way out, they said they forgot about it and offered to drop us off after all. Honestly, I wish we hadn’t even said yes; in the car all they did was taunt us about buying a car.

We didn’t speak again after this incident.

49. The Cruel Reality of Rejection

freepik @freepik

The day I told all my friends and even my family I was going to be a father was the day I lost so many people I considered friends. Then, the day I had my daughter was the day everyone stopped responding and started ignoring all my texts and calls. Like, I got kicked out of some group chats, people started unfriending me off social media.

Now I have a handful of childhood friends and some family members that still see me. Some people can’t handle when you’re happy.

50. Loose Lips Sink Friendships

freepik @freepik

So, my mother had two friends she frequently visited—about twice a month—but when she wasn’t there, one of them was constantly complaining about her, saying that she is a bad person and a bunch of other stuff. Unfortunately, the other friend believed her. It came to a hugely awkward climax. One night we went to visit them, and they were talking so little with her.

It was just SO clear they didn’t think of her as a friend anymore. Three years later we moved (not so far) and my mother saw the friend that believed all the stories, and the friend just walked quickly away from my mom. Worst of all, I had played with their kids way back when and I was sort of like a big brother to them. They wanted to at least say hello and so did her husband, but she dragged them away, too.