Human beings aren’t static: they change over time, whether for better or for worse. That, in turn, means that their relationships also shift, either getting stronger or—quite the opposite—weaker. Unfortunately, some of them break and fall apart, seemingly beyond repair.
Redditor u/Dismal_Option1974 sparked an interesting discussion online after asking everyone about the reasons why their friendships with their BFFs fell apart. We’ve collected some of the most honest and interesting stories to share with you. Scroll down for a reminder that true friends celebrate your wins, support you when you need it, and stick together through thick and thin, not just when things are convenient.
#1
My mom was weeks away from dying and my family was falling apart at the seams. Brother relapsed and almost burned my mom’s house down, our dad was setting in motion what would end up becoming a horrific betrayal. I noticed she had been acting distant and weird so I asked her what was up and she said “well you haven’t really asked about me lately. I wasn’t going to say anything, but since you asked.” When she did pass, I got a text 6 days later saying “I’m sorry about your mom. Hugs.”
This was my best friend of 20 years. Someone I answered the phone for any time of night, poured so much emotional labor into, traveled every year to see when she lived out of state. I learned that death will often bring a ripple of secondary losses- she was one of those losses and I’m still processing it.
Image source: cakelift, Kateryna Hliznitsova
#2
I found out he got married by seeing it on facebook instead of him telling me. It made me realize I wasn’t that important anymore, so I just stopped talking to him.
Image source: kfenrir, Leonardo Miranda
#3
He was only a friend when he didn’t have a girlfriend.
Image source: JimmyAintSure4646, Spencer Davis
#4
She didn’t believe me when I told her I’d been assaulted. That was the beginning of the end.
Image source: bewitchedfencer19, Curated Lifestyle
#5
Introduced him to another friend and they became bestfriends and stopped inviting me out.
#6
He was an alcoholic and I wasn’t going down on that sinking ship.
Image source: anon, Fellipe Ditadi
#7
Last 5 years, has gone completely right wing and conspiracy theorist (anti-vaxx, flat earth, celebs eating babies. He and family moved to Florida so they could be around similiar people.
Was pretty smart guy, owned his own business. Scared off all his high paying clients with his garbage.
I finally had to cut he and his wife loose, blocked them from all my social media accounts, deleted and blocked from phones, etc. I am done.
Image source: anon, Natilyn Hicks Photography
#8
I was friends with a woman for 12+ years. Once, when I was homeless, she loaned me $200. I paid monthly payments until it was paid off. She called me and said I was 46 cents short and to “pay up”. I said I am paid up! She fought me over 46 cents (that I didn’t owe) and I just stopped responding.
Image source: Foundation-Bred, Alex Green
#9
Former friend got slowly red-pilled during the pandemic. We used to be able to talk about just about anything pre-2020. After a while, former friend’s focus narrowed more and more to anti-vaxx issues, stolen elections, freedom of speech, ivermectin, etc. Even a simple low stakes hang would quickly devolve to former friend’s limited menu of unilateral conversation topics. Nothing was up for debate. Just former friend’s takes on these specific issues. It got old and boring and you can only do so much with a one-way street so I had to move on.
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#10
He said none of my other friends even like you, and said he only invited me out because he felt sorry for me. Over losing a game of risk.
Image source: Baculum7869, Getty Images
#11
He lied about having an underage girl living with us.
We were 25 at the time and he said she was 20. One day she called the cops to the house because her mom/grandma wouldn’t do something (can’t remember exactly as this was 8 years ago) and while the cop was filling out the report she gave him her name (her real name, not the one he told us) and her age.
We got into an argument and they moved into a different apartment in a different town and we haven’t spoken since.
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#12
I couldn’t be myself around them anymore. Very dismissive about my feelings. Centered male attention too much. Immature.
Image source: anon, Getty Images
#13
He was, let’s say, my second-best friend.
I found out he was violent with his wife, who was loved by all our circle of friends. We got to know in an awful way without him knowing we knew. A friend and I called the police on him and we waited not far, on the corner, in the dark.
All of his friends dropped him like the t**d he was.
His wife left him and I was so glad she did.
Image source: Kveld_Ulf, Vitaly Gariev
#14
She couldn’t be bothered to check in on me when she knew my mom was on hospice. She also didn’t bother going to the funeral. Her lack of actions ended it.
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#15
He said he would look after my cat for a week and stay at my house, he didn’t and then my cat had stress peed everywhere and lost his voice from crying constantly. Took a year to get him to stop peeing everywhere.
Image source: laurasaurousrexy, Yerlin Matu
#16
We just grew apart. Got to point where we had nothing in common anymore.
Image source: PatientNetwork2174, Trung Thanh
#17
Realizing that they didn’t really like me for me, they just liked what my friendship brought into their life (self esteem, favors, someone to keep them company). It was other friendships in my life that made me feel really seen and loved that opened my eyes to how shallow that friendship really was.
Image source: anon, Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦
#18
I kept growing. She didn’t and really wanted the world to feel sorry for her. After dragging her along and helping her with every self-made crisis for 20 years, I let go.
Image source: ZollieJones, Nini FromParis
#19
Unfortunately i’ve got a few
Best friend 1 couldn’t handle me having a girlfriend and not being available 24/7 to pick him up when he gets drunk. He tried to sabotage my relationship several times, he told my gf I was a d**g a****t, he insinuated that I had lied to my gf about being sick and that I was out with someone else. That was it for me I ghosted him and haven’t spoken to him since.
Best friend 2 wasn’t a necessarily bad person, but he was selfish, always had to have his way, and he wasn’t very empathetic. The straw that broke the camels back for me was we went on a trip together. There were a bunch of little things that bothered me, but there were two events that really set me off. One day we were out in the desert and it was really really hot, and I pulled out a hand towel from the hotel we had stayed in, wet it with cold water, and then put it under my hat. My friend noticed and asked if I would let him use my towel to wipe down his sweaty body. I told him no , that was gross, and to just wipe down with paper towels in the bathroom. He asked again and I said no again, he waited for me to turn around and yanked it out and used it anyway. Next thing happened the very next day. We went on a big group hike and I wound up passing out at the top of the mountain and had to be brought down to the bottom. A friend I had made in the group practically ran down the mountain to check on me, and as the group arrived everyone came to ask how I was. When my friend arrived he just gave me a nod and went and sat down. That was it, after we got home I ghosted him too.
Best friend 3 was a good person inside, but just couldn’t stay away from d***s. He did so many d***s that honestly he should’ve died hundreds of times. Several times I helped him clean up, pushed him into going to college, and getting a job other than selling d***s. Nothing ever stuck. Eventually he wound up getting a girl pregnant and having a kid. He cleaned up for a few months, but then after the kid was born it all went to s**t. He hd given his baby momma my number and I was constantly getting calls from her saying he had said he was with me but he was actually out doing d***s. I talked to him several times and told him he couldn’t put me in that position because I didn’t want to lie. Nothing changed. Ghosting hat trick.
D**n I need to pick better friends.
Image source: Lordsnow89, Kamaji Ogino
#20
He stole $700 from me and lied about it.
Image source: SirChancelot_0001, Allef Vinicius
#21
She was the most moody person I had ever met. Literally had to watch every word and try to keep her happy or she would legit pout like a child. Also could never be wrong, or make a mistake; it was always someone else’s fault. We worked side by side and her attitude at work was awful too. No one liked her cause she was so rude to them and I got tired of defending her when she just disrespected me too and my experience there. All I ever tried to do was help, but after a while it’s exhausting to be talked to like s**t. She also was late every day, would miss weeks at a time and just generally didn’t care that we relied on her to do her job, or we had to do it ourselves. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back, the complete and utter disrespect for anyone’s time or help.
Image source: No_Surprise42069, engin akyurt
#22
He joined the military, then within a few months he wifed up the first chick that paid him any attention. She didn’t want him in contact with any of his friends, so we didn’t talk for a while. Then he was deployed somewhere I don’t remember for like 6 months or so and we started talking over PlayStation a lot during that time. He went back home and found out she had another guy move into his house, had packed up all his s**t and told him to leave.
And then about 2 months later he was engaged again. And same story, she didn’t want him talking to his friends, blah blah blah. She also cheated on him, so he got divorced again. It was then that he finally realized he was jumping into marriages too quickly.
So he waited almost 6 whole months to get engaged again. We haven’t talked in about 11 years. I just didn’t have it in me to keep trying.
Image source: IWantYourNudesPlz, invadingkingdom
#23
I moved abroad for a year and changed as a person. Everyone else said it was for the best, I’m so much happier now than I was. She was the only person that said I changed for the worse.
Image source: libeikka, chickenbunny
#24
Dude wouldn’t accept that I refused to give into highschool norms. He went full into “be popular, fit in with the popular kids, your interests aren’t cool and that’s not OK,” and I was like “I don’t care about that, I have friends that like me for who I am and I’d rather be myself than fake,” and that was not OK to him and I had to be corrected. It didn’t help that he also didn’t want me being friends with my current best friend (I could be saved but he couldn’t and associating with him meant I wouldn’t be accepted by the cool kids, or something like that). It got to a point where I was like “dude I don’t want to be your friend anymore, get out of my life.” He’d try to say “no I’m just trying to help you, don’t throw our friendship and your future away over being a social outcast,” and I’m like “no I want to be weird, this is who I am, I’m not ashamed of my interests and expression, and if you can’t accept that then I don’t want to talk to you.” He kind of abandoned the entire friend group we were a part of since we all were “proud geeks,” and I know the falling out with his other close friend was pretty bad (we commiserated about his foolishness towards us).
He eventually apologized and we’re civil now (before it was “bad divorce” levels of tension), and I’m sure if we met each other at some reunion we’d be fine (I honestly had to dig into my memories to remember why we had a major falling out), but yeah the only thing that was socially hard about highschool was his nonsense (I actually won the most unforgettable popularity contest because people liked me so much).
Image source: pokematic, Kobe –
#25
Hung out with a dude all the time, and in a small, rural town, it was nice to meet a fellow alienated metal head. Over time, he became so fixated on a woman that it was simply unhealthy. Eventually, he summoned up the urge to ask her out, and they started dating.
As you can imagine, I got dropped like a bad habit as she nurtured his worst tendencies. Pretty soon, he was almost completely unrecognizable…he was a Trumper before Trump: a massive racist who just railed against anyone who wasn’t white. Then he started to drink a lot.
The irony is that they were together for about 5 years and then she dumped him. He now lives alone in a little shack out in a county and draws unemployment because he can’t drive from the large number of DUIs he earned. And, from what I can gather, he couldn’t keep a job for very long because pretty much anyone he talks to finds him abhorrent.
Image source: Blametheorangejuice, Frank van Hulst
#26
After ten years of friendship I treasured with a delightful man my father’s age, he made a sexual pass at me. It’s just… d**n. He was the only lasting friendship I’d had in my entire life. Now all ten years of that is gone, because I can never know he wasn’t looking at me that way from the start
Edit: since some troglodytes can somehow still read enough to whine about this, the pass was pulling me in for a hug and telling me he could feel my breasts against him :).
Image source: LadyCordeliaStuart, Getty Images
#27
We were kids (10 or so years old), but it was so important for him to make friends with the cool kids that he willingly signed up to be their jester/black sheep for 2 years until he was just “part of the group”. I know his mum constantly pushed him to get into the rich cool kids group but d**n, watching him let them treat him like s**t nonstop just broke me. Enjoy your life Ethan, hope it was worth losing your integrity and self worth.
Image source: floopdidoops, Nubelson Fernandes
#28
She gossiped about and judged me and others – it became intolerable.
Image source: Katmandu10, cottonbro studio
#29
His life kept shrinking smaller and smaller and smaller to the point that all he ever did was drive the same route to work and back and then sit at home, smoking cigarettes and watching television. Since I don’t watch television or smoke cigarettes, it got to the point where we just sit there and have nothing to say. It was really sad.
Image source: Mentalfloss1, Getty Images
#30
Competing over a love interest. More than once.
Image source: Wise-Start-9166, Brock Wegner
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