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Have you ever had to break up with a friend? It’s much harder than ditching a significant other. If you’ve been there, you know what I’m talking about.
Take a look at these stories from AskReddit folks who had to do the deed and ditch their bffs.
1. Bad move
“We were completely inseparable through middle and high school and had always planned to stay together through college. She didn’t get into my choice schools, so (being an extremely dumb and anxious teenager) I foolishly agreed to attend a second-rate school with her instead… as not to be alone.
Shortly before the start of our freshman year of college she informed me she was no longer going to school with me and was instead moving to NYC to live with a guy she met on the internet. She’d known this for months but neglected to tell me until it was too late to do anything about it.”
2. Psyched myself out
“Ally and I were best friends and both in marching band, we went through a lot together and we tried to do everything we could together too lol. I got her and her bf together (they’re still together!) She came for support when I had surgery, and I quit band with her when our director accused her of being at fault when a teacher tried to be inappropriate with her. Lotsa stuff.
She’s 2 years older than me and when she graduated HS, I psyched myself out. Told myself she’d have cool new college friends and she wouldn’t need me or like me anymore. I stopped putting in effort in a “I’ll stop talking to her before she stops talking to me to avoid being hurt” kind of mindset. I regret it very much. By pulling away I made my fear come true. She did make new friends obvs but that didn’t necessarily mean I would be replaced, but since I wasn’t there anymore I was.
We reconnected recently and text every once in a while but it’s certainly not the same.”
3. Addiction
“I tried to help her with her addiction to drugs and she cut me off. It’s been six years since I talked to her and I just found out she died. I have known her since I was sixteen and I am fifty four now. It was very hard to see how she changed from a sweet girl to a completely different person.”
4. Let me make you an offer
“It was a lot of things individually but on the whole it came down to selfishness. Wall of text incoming.
Moved in with one of my best friends at the time. We’d lived together in college and we were about a year or so out from graduation and had an opportunity for a real cheap apartment. Moved in with her and her boyfriend. Very quickly it became apparent that she was gonna be treating this place as her Barbie dreamhouse, complaining about anything I brought into the space as “going against her vision” and trying to get me to throw in on the expensive furniture she wanted to buy. You could never say anything negative around her or she’d start going on about how much “negative energy” you put out and was always very quick to remind everyone how many hours she worked and how no one worked as hard as her. Constantly complaining about everything, EVERYTHING. Going out of her way to start fights because it was her way or the highway. Just generally unpleasant. Don’t know how the boyfriend put up with it. I tried to just ignore it as best I could and play Good-Time Charlie.
Then she joined the MLM scam.
One of those health and wellness product lines. She was pushing that down EVERYONE’S throats. Hard sell, 24/7. You couldn’t escape it. Forced her boyfriend to sign up. Started taking over the living room as her “work space” i.e. “TV off, radio off, no talking because I have to listen to this conference call of people waxing poetic about the wonders of this scam company for the next two hours.” We’d asked her to do it in her room if she needed space but she said she didn’t want to feel excluded… even though she was excluding herself.
She had started to distance herself from me because I was skeptical about the whole thing. Kept trying to convince me. Started guilting me. Eventually made it clear that the only way to stay friends with her was to join the thing. Stupid me, I joined the thing. It was only to save what little friendship was left, which was stupid in hindsight. I lost a LOT of money.
So we’re nearing the end of the lease, and she’s talking like she wants to renew and all this stuff. Then like 3 weeks before the time comes, she decides she’s like bored with her boyfriend or something, and she just f*cks off. Like straight up dips and has no contact with either of us. Turns out she’s taking mental health days from work to do drugs and go cavorting around the city with one of her other friends who’s been putting her up because she didn’t want to be around us. She left her two cats with us to take care of. Her now ex was frequently away as well (with good reason though) so it fell to me. Shoveling cat shit was not something I wanted to add to my now frantic to-do list as I was trying to secure a new place to live all of a sudden.
So during all this, girl’s ex-boyfriend is a MUCH better friend than she is. Seriously, total bro. I mean the guy is going through this nasty-ass break up and yet he’s calling to check in on me because he know’s I’m freaked out about suddenly having to find a house. Good kid. So the two of us work it out and decide we’ll figure it out together. Meanwhile, suddenly girly-girl shows back up because she’s got to go back to work. She’s acting like a total martyr, no one can complain because “it’s hard for everyone, okay?” and this is all something that’s happening to her, not something she caused herself or whatever the hell her rationale was. She just needed to do something new with her life and we needed to be understanding. Which is fine and all, but doesn’t give her free reign to be a total b****.
Obviously, we weren’t too ready to be all friendly with her, but like she was already to hang out with us and ask for puffs off our joints and shit like that. Afterwards she asked me why I was so “standoffish” and I was just like “are you kidding me? Like you pull all this crap and complain about how this place is toxic for your and then show up and demand we try to make you feel welcome?” After that I think she got it and kind of withdrew. She went back to flopping around the city until the time came to divvy things up and go. She sent me a message asking to still be friends and I sent her a bullet-pointed list of all the reasons I couldn’t do that. I ran into her only once since then and it was awkward AF, but civil. I do have one old mutual friend who is bent on fixing our friendship but I think I’ve made it pretty clear now that it won’t be happening.
Her ex-boyfriend and I are still buddies though. We’re on like our third apartment together. Good times are had by all.”
5. Sick
“I got ill, regular doctors appointments and didn’t have the energy to do lots of activities. They just stopped talking to me and blanked me when they saw me.
Edit: Wow I didn’t expect so many people to have been in the same boat. I hope those of you who have been abandoned by friends through illness have managed to find better friends and make stronger relationships with others. Unfortunately my situation made me not very trusting and I don’t form any kind of relationship easy.
For those who asked, I did try to reach out to my friends both at that time and also in the future. Unfortunately at the time I was just blanked and ignored, if I saw them in the street or around college they’d just look straight through me. Acquaintances and ‘friends of friends’ also stopped taking to me and I got horrible glares and looks as if I’d been the one to do something. Naturally I was upset and hurt but because I was ill I just didn’t have the patience to care.
It turned out my best friend took a year off to work and then came to my University (so I was starting my second year and she was in her first year). I only found out when she graduated and her parents put her picture in the local newspaper.
A few years later my second best friend got a part time job for the firm I work for, albeit in a different department and office. I reached out and asked if she wanted to meet for a catch up and she was very enthusiastic about it. I said I was free whenever and asked for her availability- no reply. I waited a few days and thought maybe she wants me to make the plans so I suggested a time and place. No response. This was about 5 years ago.
Also to those who asked about what I would have wanted from them, the simple answer would be just to have things carry on as normal. Basic things- reply to texts, tag me in memes, usual sleepovers, study sessions. Only difference would be I couldn’t come to anything when I had doctors/hospital appointments.”
6. Sounds like fun
“After several years just realized I always felt awful about myself after leaving his and his family’s presence. Our mutual friends had a saying “it’s not a trip to XXXX’s house until you get criticized.”
From the clothes you were wearing, to how dirty your car is, just a barrage of sh*t.
The final straw was when I was dating my now wife, we went to go hang out at his house, and he immediately pounces on my appearance (was wearing a hardhat all day do my hair looked a little funky), then handed me a bag of aluminum cans for me to recycle “and put towards my house fund” (was in deep saving mode). Fortunately my wife was a good sport, but realizing what the hell this guy was trying to accomplish… embarrassing me in front of someone I’m interested in for no reason at all? Walked out after that and never looked back. Cut out completely.”
7. Changes
“She changed completely our senior year of high school. We were the exact same person, loved the same things, got along like sisters. Then she started prepping for her freshman year of college at a southern school, and completely overhauled her life to look “perfect” for the sororities. She started partying, only hanging out with the “cool kids”, refusing to let me tag her in photos, and just became really focused on her appearance (not just physical, but how her whole life appeared to an outsider). It’s like she lived her life as an Instagram model. Everything had to look perfectly perfect. We just faded out and stopped talking because I didn’t fit her new life.
I still think about her a lot because we were so close and I’ve never had a friend remotely as close to me as her. It hurts a lot that she just changed and left me behind and didn’t seem to care.”
8. Talkin’ sh*t
“She couldn’t stop smack talking me to everyone. She had incredibly low self-esteem and when I met her, so did I. But each step I took towards being more confident in herself, she saw as a threat.
I started working out and losing weight? She told everyone that I was trying to look better than her; eventually that turned into “she stopped going to the gym and just did coke to stay thin”. Nope, never done hard drugs in my life and I was attending double sessions at the gym.
I started seeing this guy who was really sweet and nice to me; she said I was just seeing him to show her what a jerk her boyfriend was.
I was getting a dog after moving out of the apartment; she said I was doing it to taunt her since her new place didn’t allow dogs and mine did (I specifically looked for dog-friendly places).
I’d hang out with different groups of people because my anti-depressants had kicked in and I wanted to be social again; she said I was going out to make her feel bad for not having friends. Except that I’d invite her to come. But she told me she didn’t like those people (whom she’d only met once and was rude the entire time).
I changed my major to business while she was in writing because I found business to be ridiculously easy; she said I did it because I wanted to make her feel poor after graduation.
My parents rented a place at the beach and I invited her along and told her that they’d cover expenses because my parents remembered being poor college students and wanted us to have good meals and fun; she went but later said I invited her along because I wanted to show off my family’s wealth. We went off-season to a cheap place within driving distance.
It got to the point where I couldn’t say any longer that the people telling me these things were lying. It seemed like almost every day I was telling someone they must have misunderstood her, that she wouldn’t say that. But nope. She reveled in being a frenemy and I thought I had a friend. I distanced myself and she went nuclear. I had friends send me screenshots of the insane messages she was sending them about me, completely unprovoked. We haven’t been on speaking terms in almost a decade.”
9. Downward spiral
“Alcoholism, drugs, robbed his family blind, tried robbing me and even though he had 800 bucks of my cash stuffed down his pants along with two gold chains sticking out of his pocket and a gold and diamond ring he still denied it.
Took my stuff back, took him back to his house so his parents could deal with him. They tried shipping him off to the army but he failed the drug test, wound up moving to another state and becoming an alc*holic bartender.
We’re the same age, when I see pictures of him now I can’t even recognize him, he looks easily 20+ years older than I do.”
10. All about her
“I was best friends with someone for 12 years and we did everything together. Well, everything that she wanted. It was always about her and her schedule, never compromising for me. I went to every event she had, even her parents anniversary dinner.
One year my mother had just passed away and I was home alone. I asked her to come over and she said she was going to a friends house to party because she broke up with her boyfriend. We havent spoken to each other in probably 2 years and I’ve never been happier.”
11. Aggressive
“They showed up on my doorstep red-faced in anger and picked a fight with me (out of nowhere). I was completely dumbfounded and confused but had to defend myself – so I broke their nose. That pretty much ended the fight. I immediately helped them stop the bleeding and get in a taxi. I tried reaching out that day but they ignored all my calls.
Some months later I wrote them a letter asking what had happened. We were such good friends right up until that moment. Turns out a mutual friend had told them I stole something from them (I didn’t). There was some stuff going on in their personal life involving death in the family. They admitted they had had what amounted to a psychological meltdown and taken it out on me.
I forgave them and we grabbed a beer together, but it was never the same.”
12. Paranoid
“We were best friends for 10 years, both 19 M.
One day we decided to smoke some weed, it wasn’t anything out of the usual for us. After about 30 minutes he started getting very paranoid. I don’t mean worried about getting caught (we live in an illegal state & we were smoking in a local park), I mean paranoid that people were out to get him.
It got worse as time went by, every single person who arrived or left the park was a suspect in his eyes. Eventually he then felt as if I was “setting him up”. I kept trying to comfort him but nothing was working. In fact, it escalated things and made it worse.
I finally convinced him to change locations so we got in my car and drove for about an hour until he felt comfortable enough to park somewhere. During that drive I was trying to tell him I’m not setting him up and I’ve no idea where or how he got this idea. He kept denying it and saying I wasn’t telling the truth and he was completely on edge.
We stopped at a fast food restaurant and I got him some food. He didn’t eat it because he felt as if I had done something to it, then he asked that I eat some of it first. I did. He still was not convinced and by this time it had been roughly 2-3 hours since we smoked so he should be sobering up if not coming down.
I dropped him off at his house and ever since then he has never been the same, I’ve only seen him two times after that occasion and it’s been many, many months since we’ve last been in contact. My parents ask about him all the time and I always make up excuses as to why we haven’t been hanging out. We were inseparable
I honestly don’t know what happened, before this we would smoke together left and right. My best guess is some sort of psychosis that came about faster by him smoking weed. We were supposed to enlist together and now I’m leaving alone in December.”
13. Odd person out
“It was a culmination of differing interests and lack of initiation from both of us that led to our falling out. I noticed that the gaps in communication got longer and longer and I didn’t care enough to change it. Everytime we hung out I felt more and more like the odd one who didn’t belong. I don’t think that was his intention but that’s how I felt. Looking back, the only thing we had in common was that we were both held up in the same building for 4 years and nothing more.”
14. Low points
“We were there through our lowest points in life. I watched her body and life fall apart when she developed an unknown chronic illness in high school. She watched me fall apart when my “friends” and long term boyfriend abandoned me when my mother was dying. She saw me before I was broken and she saw me at my worst. I was there when her dog died. She was my family. Even now if she needed me I would ignore all the problems and go be there for her.
I know her chronic illness causes her to be very depressed. But after so many years of being the only one putting effort into the friendship I had to call it quits. I had suffered an attack from a family member, and had to leave my home. I was homeless for my birthday and her family let me stay on their couch – but she left me alone on my birthday during such a difficult time. She left to be with one of her friends from online – and they went and did all the stuff I always invited her to do but got told no. Going to theme parks, the beach – you name it. And she never did mention my birthday after it passed. That was the final sign I needed that she just didn’t want to be my friend anymore. I’ve cried a lot over that girl.”
15. Two birds with one stone
“Two of them at the same time actually. Have known them both since early gradeschool. They came to my place and then I drove us downtown. We were bar hopping but ended up at a show. None of us were messed up yet so I asked “hey can one of you guys drive? I wanna take this Molly. But I’m not going to if y’all can’t drive.” My buddy grabs my keys and assured me he’ll be good to drive. So I dove in.
Well, I had a bad reaction and got sick. So we left. Once we hit my car, I laid down and blacked out. Next thing I know, one of my other friends who went to the show was knocking on my window.
Turns out, they got too drunk, ubered back to my place, and got their cars. Instead of taking me home, they left me blacked out in the back of my car in the middle of downtown. They literally took an Uber to my home. And they didn’t take me.
I have not spoken to either since and will more than likely never do so again. These are supposed to be my ride or die bro’s. If they wanted to keep drinking, they shouldn’t have taken my keys. And once that mistake was made, they could’ve fucking got me home safely. But instead they left me alone and unconscious in the back of my car. I could’ve been robbed, my car could’ve been stolen, I could’ve been arrested, etc.”
