True friends are always there when we need them, except... when they aren't and when they aren't, there is nothing that is worse. Check out this stories of friendships gone bad in the worst ways
(Content edited for clarity).
Cat Thief
“I got a cat in college. My roommate and I both agreed she was my cat, and I would be keeping her after we moved out, but she was also a house pet. When I moved to a new apartment the next year, I thought I could sneak the cat in, but I was caught and threatened with eviction. My mother offered to hold onto her for a year, but I ended up having my old roommate take her in, with the understanding he would give her back at the end of the year.
Well, big surprise, he refused to give her back. We didn’t speak for a while, and our mutual friends said that it was crappy and a jerk move to keep her. They wanted me just to drop it because it was annoying for them that the two of us wouldn’t hang out. They’re still all good friends but I still secretly hold a bit of a grudge against them for choosing convenience over doing right by me and remember it every time I have to trust them.
In the end, it worked out though. Since he had the cat, she became fat, chronically sick and much less social with humans. I have since gotten a dog who is a once in a lifetime pet, a true companion. Plus now he’s divorced, and his ex-wife took their dog which I find apropos, and I secretly get a lot of pleasure from it.”
A Motivator In The End
“I was friends with a guy at work before he got promoted to assistant manager. I had three years experience; he had one. I thought we would be fine after the promotion because we were friends and I didn’t want the AM job and had just gotten a second job so I could wean myself off the first (it was a crappy college food service job, and I was looking at gaining experience for a more promising career). As soon as he was officially promoted he couldn’t have a civil conversation with me about the job without snapping or turning the job into a big contest. He immediately developed a seniority complex because I had more experience and he couldn’t keep up sometimes. (I was the only female with more experience than him. He showed none of this behavior to the other men that worked with us.) I intentionally went out of my way to try not to make it worse, but we eventually stopped talking completely. The last straw was him drastically cutting my hours then giving me some crappy reason about me being too negative (he and the other AMs were notorious for throwing things and yelling at customers when they were in a bad mood, but apparently I wasn’t allowed to have one bad day). I put in my notice the same week. I lost a friend, but it also pushed me to quit a dead end job (a change that was far overdue).”
A Unexplained Rift?
“So my friend, while pregnant, said she wanted me in the delivery room with her – even though I live a four-hour drive away. I was honored and told her I’d save up my vacation so I could take a whole bunch of time off (so I could be ready whenever her doctor said she’d pop soon). About a month before she was due she told me that since I lived so far away she was going to pick someone else. I told her that it was no problem with me and that if she changed her mind, I could be there for her. She delivered the baby and my boyfriend (her husband’s best friend) and I get invited to the baby shower a few weeks later.
Now, we’ve been friends for a few years, and we were close before I had to move away for work so I’m excited about the baby shower. I buy $250 worth of stuff off of her registry and I book a hotel room for the weekend. We arrive at the shower, (my boyfriend goes to their basement to visit with his buddy). There is almost no one there yet so I’m thinking awesome, we can catch up for a bit before everyone gets there. Nope, her mom greets me, takes the presents for the present table and tells me to sit in the living room. My ‘friend’ doesn’t even say hi to me. I think to myself that she’s probably stressed out being a new mom and all so I let it go, figuring she’ll say hi to me eventually. The house fills with people (the only ones I know are the new mama and her mom). The baby gets passed around and I get to hold her for about a minute before grandma swoops over and takes her from me. The baby was sleeping, so I’m a little annoyed at this but, hey, it’s not my kid so if they don’t want me holding her, no problem. Now I’ve tried to talk to the other ladies around me and I’m getting the cold shoulder from everyone. I’m starting to get a little upset at this point but again, it’s not my party so I’m reigning it in and trying to act cool.
It’s time for present opening and my ‘friend’ gets to my present, says ‘oh, this is from (me)…’ but doesn’t make any eye contact and opens my stuff as quickly and as emotionless as if she had just had a full face of botox and just shoves it all aside to get to the next present, which she opens like a kid on Christmas morning.
At this point I get up and go into the basement to get my boyfriend, because I really want to leave. My ‘friend’s’ husband greets me super enthusiastically and gives me a hug and thanks me for driving the 4 hours to get here and basically says everything I was hoping my friend would say. We end up staying until most of the people at the shower have left because my boyfriend was really enjoying hanging out with his buddy.
My ‘friend’ comes down into the basement and yells at her husband saying that he’s just being lazy and now she has to clean everything up herself (even though her mom and some of her guests are upstairs cleaning as she says all of this). She still hasn’t said a word to me. She then turns to my boyfriend and thanks him for coming and spending time with her husband. Then she turns around and goes upstairs again.
Her husband at this point is embarrassed, and we say that we should get going, and he walks us to the front door. I hug him and thank him for being so welcoming and awesome and we leave.
I unfriended her on Facebook, and for about six months she would send me friend requests (which I ignored). I am still friends with her husband, who ended up being one of my now husband’s groomsmen. We did invite her to the wedding, but she declined and then showed up halfway through the reception in her work clothes to tell her husband to come home. Classy lady that one.”
A Friend Worse Than An Enemy
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“My best friend of 10 years fed into my ex-girlfriend of seven years insecurities and told her he would be a better boyfriend to her than I ever was and that I was becoming a selfish person and only cared about myself. He did that instead of coming to me and letting me know she was feeling unstable. He then convinced her to move in with him and his family. We have a 3-year-old child together, and now I’m raising him on my own with help from my mother. I loved this woman with all of my being and losing her was crushing, especially considering the circumstances. It’s been almost seven months, and I’m doing better now. It still gets me down from time to time, but it was a learning experience that showed me the person I’m supposed to become. Not only for myself, but mainly for my son. Hold your loved ones close and always let them know how much you truly care about them because life can come at you fast. I know there was more I could’ve done to prevent this situation. I just never thought I would be betrayed by the closest friend in my life who I even considered my brother. Nor did I thought I would lose my love due to someone so close that I would never suspect.”
From Friend To Mortal Enemy
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“My old best friend was always kind of a pretentious hippy that talked the talk but didn’t walk the peace and love walk. We both came from crappy substance-addicted parents and had younger siblings. We always talked about getting our places to move the kids in with us and get them out of those bad environments. Well, fast forward a bit, and we moved in together. Her brothers were both quite young still, and it would have been a lot harder to get them legally in our custody, but my sister was old enough to come on her own without my addict mom making too much of a fuss. So my sister moved in with us.
Now, I will be the first to admit my sister is not the easiest person to get along with. She has terrible social skills from her upbringing. But I thought with enough love and time we could fix that. I assumed the same would happen with her brothers as well. We’ll see her, and my sister didn’t get along, and that’s fine, I get it. But instead of talking out a solution; one day my sister goes to smoke a J outside our apartment, me and my bf at the time walk past her on our way out to run to the corner store. While we’re walking back, I hear yelling from inside the building. My sister is locked out of the apartment. I try my key, but it is stopped by the police latch thing. I call to my roommate and ask her to open the door. She refuses and tells us she wants us ‘out of her house.’
Now the lease was in her name, but only because I’d never thought it would matter. We all paid rent, we all loved each other, arguments aside. And she just refused to let us in. She said she was calling the cops on us for breaking and entering if we didn’t go away this second. It was completely nuts to me. We ended up kicking the front door in, packing our stuff and leaving within a week or two. Fastest I’ve ever seen a best friend turn into mortal enemies.”
The Stakes Were Small, Apparently
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“My friend has been doing audio-recording for a guy who assaulted me (for his band). She knows what happened and how he is.
But, she told me a few weeks ago that she thought he was a nice guy. I asked her to keep her opinion to herself. She wouldn’t drop it. Just kept saying how he was cool and she has no reason to dislike him, and she knows what he did to me, but he’s been nothing but nice to her and she doesn’t have much of a stake in our friendship to hate someone over my issues with them.
I then found out that she made up a whole story about my ex-boyfriend dumping her on the street while she was blackout wasted, leading to her getting arrested.
I was furious and said some things about it. I’m not really in contact with him, but it started to occur to me that that didn’t sound like his character. So I decided to ask him about it.
It turns out she lied! My ex-boyfriend doesn’t even know her and never drove her home from a party. I confronted her about it, and she admitted to fabricating the story because someone told her they thought that’s what happened and she made up the details. She’s now mad at me for talking to my ex and getting the real story.
It especially sucks because she’s the closest female friend I’ve made in a few years and it’s always been hard for me to find relatable female friends. Now I don’t have one anymore, and I feel lonely, and to know she never felt like she had a ‘stake’ in our friendship enough to care. That hurt.”
Only The Selfish
“After having a miscarriage, my close ‘friend’ made it about herself and kept sending me horrible messages while I was in the hospital about how lousy of a person I was because I didn’t come to her daughter’s birthday party, despite knowing the circumstances of where I was and what had happened.
I never spoke to her again after that.”
A Maid Of Honor Ghosts The Wedding
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“At my wedding, the maid of honor (my then best friend) was MIA the entire day and almost lost our rings. She was always walking off talking on her cell phone with her boyfriend who couldn’t make it to the wedding and was stuck one state over. To top it off, I asked her to come to the hotel at 6 a.m. for makeup and hair. She arrived at 9:45 a.m. with her hair and makeup already done. It was infuriating. When I confronted her about it after the wedding, she threw it in my face and said I embarrassed her because she was missing from pictures because she walked off to talk on the phone! It’s been seven years since the wedding, and we haven’t spoken since. Good riddance.”
The Worst Kind Of Selfish
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“I stood by a close friend through a drama-filled few years in her life. Seriously, some ‘above and beyond’ helping out. Just as things were going well for her, I received word my grandmother was dying – my favorite relative, the person who was always there for me in some tough times growing up, my rock. I managed to get the flights booked, but it didn’t look good, and family warned me I might not get home in time. My friend knew all of this. She called my cell while I was at the airport waiting to board, to yell at me over not having done a favor she’d asked for, the right way before I’d left. I was sitting there on the phone sobbing, and she told me not to be so selfish.”
Leaving A Friend In Shambles
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“I had a ‘friend’ that left me homeless. We both moved to another state for university. Previously she had spread rumors and segregated me from all my friends – called me an attention seeker for having heart surgery at 17 years old (3.5cm hole in atrial walls which would have resulted in heart failure if not fixed – but yeah not serious at all). My family convinced me that I should give her a second chance as we were both going to be alone in this new place. How wrong they were.
I had issues with my current rental and went to court which promptly gave me a chance to end my lease. At the time things were going ok. We both decided ‘Hey, why don’t we save some money and share?’ I found another girl to share with and found a place. Things were looking good. Two days before my lease ended I get a message from my friend saying that she couldn’t afford the move, her parents didn’t think it was a good idea, the rooms were too small and a backhanded ‘sorry’ knowing I now had nowhere to go. I ended up having to fly back to my mothers for around four weeks (missing school) before I found another place to live. I was devastated and extremely stressed.
The greatest irony is that she ended up moving in with the other girl anyway (behind my back) and they ended up getting into all sorts of substances – she failed her course and ended up having to go back to our home state. She also managed to segregate herself from all her old friends by calling one of them a ‘slug,’ because she didn’t like her. Been blocked for almost two years now and even though I’ve lost most of my friends, I’m glad that I’m graduating this year and am only heading upwards.”
A Coward To The End
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“Towards the end of high school, my health went down for a while. I ended up needing a lot of x-rays and blood work and discovered I have an auto-immune disorder. They’re not sure as of yet, but I was being treated for Lupus during a flare up, and it helped, but they believe it is possibly Beçhets Syndrome. I also have the genetic marker for Ankylosing Spondylosis, so we’ll see how that goes.
While trying to find out what the issue was, they went through a lot of scary tests to make sure they weren’t missing anything. (Think blood cancer, organ failures, etc.). During which time, my ‘best friend’ told me that it was all ‘too negative’ for her to deal with, and she quit talking to me after I confided in her what was going on.
She had her own agenda, and I didn’t fit the bill of the person she was pretending to be at the time. Months later, I tried to patch things up. We went out to lunch once, and when I moved cities shortly after and broke my phone and lost numbers, I conveniently never heard from her again.
Good riddance!”
Blaming The Wrong People
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“My friends called me out to meet them at the park, so I said to wait 10 minutes, and il be there. As soon as I got there, I called, and they said they left already, and I should meet them at the store three or four blocks away. I was extremely angry and contemplating going home, but I wanted to see my friends that night, so I put my anger aside and started walking towards the store. Next thing I know, a white car stops in front of me, two dudes hop out, one points a weapon at me, tells me to give him everything. Even after willingly handing him my phone, wallet, backpack, and watch, he punches me in the face four times, and then they drive off. I lost everything I worked my tail off to earn that night and lost all my respect for the friend who decided to leave without me.”
A Sudden Turn Of Events
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“My best friend for 14 years planned a fun day with me, ‘Let’s go to the mall, get pizza, people watch! Sleep in and text me whenever you’re up!’ The next day, when I got up and said I was ready, she answered back ‘It’s a little late for it now, isn’t it?’ She wouldn’t speak to me for a week, at which point I dragged it out of her that she was worried I might potentially bring up my abusive home life. We were both in very similar abusive situations, and I thought we’d always done a pretty good job of supporting each other through it, but as it turns out, she blamed me for not doing enough to leave mine. She stuck around just long enough to tell me that, then immediately logged off and blocked me everywhere.
We never spoke again.”
She Ended The Friendship And It Hurt
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“I was going to study abroad for a year. While I was worried what kind of effect this was going to have on my friendships, I never expected it to happen to my friend. Our friendship was like a cliche fluff movie. She was my next door neighbor growing up, and we were born only 17 days apart. We did everything together. She was my first friend. She was my first kiss. She was like a daughter for my mother and to me she mattered more than anyone else at some point.
We grew apart when we both went to secondary school and started to meet new people. But she still was this constant in my life. I kept asking her to meet up, but she was always too busy. Then, the week before I was going to leave the country for a year, I texted her again. I told her I had to meet her one last time. I still had a birthday present for her. She texted back saying that she didn’t see the point since we ‘never saw each other anyway.’ I tried to make it work, but she refused. I was already afraid I was going to lose some of my friends leaving. I never expected it to be her.”
Getting Bullied But Moving On
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“My best friend (14 years of friendship) and my group of friends started a rumor about me having HIV that spread to the entire school. I informed one of my teachers about it, who did NOTHING. I was harassed and spoken ill of throughout school, in group text messages, was coerced into leaving a club that I was well suited for, all my other friends not in the group knew but decided not to do much about it and continued being friends with the people who started the rumor.
Fast forward months later when a staff member finally heard the rumor and talked to the dean about it, I went into the office and told them that it had been going on for months and that I was letting it go. I WAS PISSED, but did not want to get people involved, all I did was drop those friends and never speak to them again. Some of them were suspended for a few days. I did see a counselor to try and work through it, but she ended up telling me it was my fault that the rumor started, what a witch. She told me to write my best friend a letter about it and give it to her IF AND WHEN I was ready. Oh well. I moved on; I grew up, they’re sad and pathetic. I’m happy with my life and NOPE, no HIV. This was in high school like two years ago.”