Some of our best friends can become our worst enemies when they cross lines that are supposed to be uncrossable. These people found out the hard way just how awful supposedly good friends can be.
(Content has been edited for clarity.)
A Thief For A Friend
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“A close friend from college days asked if he could live with my significant other and me ‘for a few days’ while looking for employment in the area.
Instead of a job search, he spent his days hanging around the house taking advantage of our hospitality.
He crossed the line when I came home early from work one day and caught him with his hands in my significant other’s bedroom drawers looking for things to steal.
That was it – out he went, then and there.”
She Thought She Could Move On From Her Past
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“I was violated by a guy in my circle of friends in high school. After graduation, I moved and cut contact with most of my friends and family because I had a toxic home life and little to no emotional or mental support.
About eight years later, I made my first close friend in a long time following a rough breakup. I felt like I was finally catching up with my peers, partying and going out and all. My new friend grew up in this city, so she had a lot of friends. We were tight, but I always had this feeling she looked down on me. One night, she went too far, and after I confronted her, she said, ‘you’re only my friend because I made you popular.’ Admittedly, I laughed at her initial comment, but what came next crossed the line.
Knowing my past, she said, ‘this is why you have no friends from high school.’ That broke me.”
More Sabotage Than Friendship, Really
“I had a friend who told me not to lose weight. Mind you, I was reaching dangerous territory. I had a baby, became depressed due to post-partum depression, and ate a lot to accommodate that. I stopped caring about my weight. Until one day, my doctor advised me to lose weight. So I started doing that.
My best friend at the time wasn’t happy about it and tried sabotaging my diet, saying I was the fat friend and then she managed to lose 20 pounds and spouted on Facebook about it. I decided to cut back on our relationship since she wasn’t supporting me, and I ended up losing 60 pounds within eight months. I started studying towards a new career and developed a lot more hobbies.
She was not happy about that. She cried over the phone about it, saying I was becoming anorexic. Then I realized that I was a messed up commodity for her selfish reasons. She took me to meet people and berated me in front of them in passive ways about my weight and I’m sitting here right now thinking of how much of an idiot I was.
She crossed the line, and I honestly cannot understand what makes a person think this way.”
He Ruined A 16 Year Friendship
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“I had trouble cutting ties with someone I’ve known for 16 years.
He was like a brother. We both ran away from home as teens and called each other first. When his parents kicked him out, my family took him in. I was his power of attorney during his deployment. He stood with me when I got married.
Then one night, when we were drinking together while my husband was at basic training, he tried to sleep with me. And let it be known that he’d always wanted more, and asked for more even when I said no.
Yeah.
That killed the friendship. He eventually got married, and his wife dislikes me. My ex-husband will punch him if he ever sees him again.”
He Found New Friends, Lost The Old Ones
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“I had a close friend who was never a laid back guy because he was VERY ambitious. I think he saw himself destined for greater things, which was never a problem. I have Aspergers, and I know that I am a bit different and strange sometimes as well. We went through thick and thin together and helped each other through rough times.
But then he decided to become a banker and he became increasingly distanced. Then, he became an employee of the German Central Bank, and that was when things went downhill.
I drove a couple of hundreds of miles on his birthday, hoping for a fun time. It was not. He had a party, and I felt out of place. From his old friends, only two were invited, and the rest were his new fancy banker friends. And then we caught him making apologies to them because we came in casual clothing, not in suits that cost half of a month’s salary. Because we were laid back and were making jokes. Because we told stories about our former adventures.
He explained to them that he grew out of that and that he ‘grew up,’ while we would still need time to ‘find our way.’
He felt embarrassed because of us; apparently, a nurse and a geologist were beneath his dignity. Next time we met, he acted like nothing happened, and was back to his old self. But after a relaxed time, he became a bit nervous and tried to get rid of us with all kinds of excuses. This was explained when one of his banker friends joined the scene. Apparently, they wanted to go out for an evening in town, but we were not good enough to stay around.
I asked him if he felt embarrassed for us. He looked away and said nothing. And that was the end of our friendship.”
Playing Terrible Mind Games
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“I had a friend throughout high school. He seemed like a pretty chill guy, a bit of a jerk, but so was I, so I just went with it. Between my junior and senior years, I went through major lifestyle changes, namely not being an idiot to everyone I met. He, however, did not. The thing that ended that friendship for me though was when he faked being suicidal and started abusing substances in an attempt to get one of our mutual friends (now my girlfriend) to date him. It was honestly one of the cruelest things I’ve seen a person do in an attempt to get with a girl. Somehow though that wasn’t enough, and he still borderline stalks her to this day. I wish I had drawn the line a little sooner. Live and learn I guess.”
She Just Disappeared, But When She Showed Back Up…
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“I had a friend who I was incredibly close with years ago. I was her witness at her wedding, and I am the godmother of her firstborn. I even saved her life by performing CPR until paramedics arrived, and paid for those hospital bills.
After she got pregnant with her second son, she removed me from her life. She deleted and blocked me on all social media, changed her number, and disappeared. She alienated me from our mutual friends and her family. I was worried something terrible had happened and had no way to find out if she was okay. I was in a dark place in my life after a major spinal injury, and her disappearing act nearly destroyed me. But I built my life back up and ended up in a successful career, met my now fiancé, and finished school.
She contacted me two years later, apologizing for abandoning me and asking if we could rekindle our friendship, as she missed me and regretted destroying the only healthy friendship she had. I agreed on the terms that it would take some time to rebuild the trust we once had.
I haven’t seen her face to face since. Every plan we made for coffee dates or coming to my housewarming, or my graduation, or anything, she would bail or flat out ghost me for several days. When she begged to be a bridesmaid in my wedding, I caved and changed our entire setup to accommodate that, but she couldn’t show up to try on dresses or text me back about what she thought of the one I decided on. So I dropped her from the wedding. Cue infrequent conversations with her.
That was until one night when she texted me asking if she could call me for some advice. It was midnight on a work night but I agreed, and she went on to tell me a wild and outrageous story about being emotionally and physically abused by not only her husband but several of his family members as well. I am not one to doubt things like this, so I talked her through it and helped her come up with an escape plan for herself and her children. I helped her find a lawyer and gave her information for local domestic abuse contacts. I made plans to get her and her sons to a safe place the next day and even called off work to do so.
She ghosted me again. I didn’t know her new address, but I was scared that something had happened if her supposedly abusive husband had found out.
A few days later she texted me as if nothing happened. Being afraid she was stuck, or acting out of fear, I tried to find it what was happening with the plans we had made and she pretended that we had never spoken. Her husband was states away on a business trip, verified through social media, so that wasn’t why. I investigated more and found out she lied about everything. Her life was fine, she wasn’t being abused, and I discovered that police reports against other family members were non-existent. She lied about every single bit of it to get my attention back on her.
And I don’t even understand why. She wouldn’t have to do anything like that to have my attention. If she just showed up to coffee dates, we could have still been friends.
I reached out to her family, let them know about what she had said, let them know I was not in a place to help her and told her I was unable to continue our friendship because of her erratic and selfish behavior. I cut all contact, and am now wary of being available to help anyone.”
Everything Was Great Until He Went Psycho
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“I was in an abusive relationship for two years, and in the meantime, I had a strange friendship with a guy who knew my boyfriend at the time. We’ll call him Charlie. Charlie would drive to my house and pick me up and we’d go to the park or something. My abusive boyfriend at the time was probably messing around with some other girl at the time, so he didn’t notice.
We were close friends. He would pick me up every day and we would drive and talk. I even remember one night my depression was getting the better of me and I just cried on his shoulder while he comforted me.
While he was nice, he was a bit odd. He would try to steal my phone and had the intention of not returning it. When I wasn’t available to go places with him, he would get clingy and talk down to me about my abusive boyfriend.
He crossed the line when he came into my house and started chasing me around the kitchen threatening to kidnap me. I got the idea that he wasn’t playing even though we were both smiling. I was extremely uncomfortable. My mom heard him say he was going to kidnap me and carry me out of the house, and went ‘Mama Bear’ on him and kicked him out of the house. I haven’t spoken to him since.”
Unreasonable Secrets To Keep
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“I had a close friend who was in a multi-year relationship with a great guy who treated her like gold.
Out of nowhere, she went on a date with another guy. She tried to explain it as ‘just keeping my options open,’ and as no big deal, and something I shouldn’t share with him.
It changed how I saw her. Jeopardizing her relationship was bad enough, but now she was telling me about it and telling me to keep it a secret?
I was happy that she transferred to another department, and we quickly lost contact.”
A Friend Of Convenience
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“We were friends during our freshman year of college. She was kind of lonely, and so was I. We were both new to the city and ended up having a ‘family’-like friendship. We hung out nearly every day, cooked food together, did assignments, binged Netflix and so on.
Then after a year or so, she started going out with this guy. I was happy for her and got that she didn’t have as much time as before. But then, weeks went by, months went by, and I soon realized that the only times she ever contacted me was when she needed something.
One time, after about four months, she called me out of the blue and asked me if I wanted to hang out. I was happy and told her ‘sure.’ Then she said, ‘Oh, good, because I can’t afford my rent and was wondering if we could talk about if I can start living with you or something.’ I was caught off guard, and being a person who has a hard time saying ‘no,’ I’m pretty sure she thought I was going to say yes. However, I was able to say ‘I don’t think that’s possible. We can still make dinner sometime though.’ Her response was something like, ‘Oh, okay. No problem. Yeah, I’m busy this week, so I can’t do dinner.’
Fast forward a year and the only time she’s contacted me was when she wanted help on an assignment. At this point, it is clear that I am something convenient for her. So every time she calls, I’m always up for dinner or Netflix if she wants, but I am not up for helping her. I would do anything for my friends, but it has to go both ways.”
Questionable Tactics
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“A friend came over, and I mentioned how little time my fiancé was spending with me and that it was affecting our relationship.
Later, I wasn’t feeling well and wanted to go to bed early and to be alone, so I told her that and went to bed. At 2 a.m., I realized my fiancé never came home and wasn’t in bed.
My friend waited for him outside our place and took it upon herself to pull him aside and talk to him for hours about our relationship and how I was ‘feeling,’ and she told him that I had ‘asked her to do this.’ He was bewildered but didn’t know what to do or what the truth was, so he just stayed there until he could get away from her.
When he finally came in and told me, I was livid. I was thinking, ‘I tell her in passing that I don’t spend enough time with him, so she blockades him from getting to me and leech all of that time for attention?’
We aren’t friends anymore. She crossed the line.”
The Internet Is Serious Business
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“My best friend of five years began belittling me over a group chat on a nightly basis. I was having a hard time in life, but he found humor in making me a public joke.
He crossed the line, but not when he told me that my issues were stupid and that if I was serious I should kill myself, not when he wrote a letter to my boss telling him to fire me, not when he threatened to call a lawyer on me and sue me because after I blocked him on Facebook.
One day his mother reached out to me on FB and asked me what happened. I told her I couldn’t handle him belittling me over a nightly chat. However, it wasn’t his mother who contacted me. He logged into her Facebook account and took a screenshot of what I said then told me that what I was doing was defamation of character because I was attempting to make him look bad in his mother’s eyes, but that wasn’t even the final straw.
He finally crossed the line when he posted my address and phone number on Craigslist saying I was ready for a hookup, and that the men should just come right in.
I went to the police and got a cease and desist.”
Habitual Line Crosser
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“We had been close friends for years and spoke every day. It was a nice platonic girl/guy friendship. I told him from the get-go that I was never interested in anything more than friendship (I’m engaged, as is he). He got wasted one night, sent me a pic of his junk, and I told him he crossed the line, and I was never interested in seeing anything of that nature. He apologized and things were fine until he sent another. I chewed him out for crossing a clear boundary that I had set out and told him if he couldn’t respect my wishes to not contact me again.”
A Promiscuous Friend
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“My college roommate was a serial dater, and I have nothing against that, but there was always an overlap between boyfriends, and she’d lie about when she broke up with one to hide the overlaps.
The final straw was when she invited her ex (claimed they were just friends) over for the weekend when her current boyfriend had visited the previous weekend. I heard her and her ex loudly hooking up the first night. I talked to her the next day, and she tried to claim the ex had gotten her trashed and she hadn’t wanted to hook up. I said great, let’s call the police on the scumbag. She immediately backtracked, ‘it wasn’t that bad, we are just friends.’
I stopped socializing with her after that. What’s funny is that she eventually got back with the ex, and claimed she had broken up with the boyfriend months before the ex came to visit for that secret hook-up weekend. She stopped talking to me when I called her out in public.”
Blaming The Drinking Is Never A Good Thing
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“I was dating a guy for about a month. I told my best friend all about him and how much I liked him. My friend and I had tickets to a music festival, and the guy decided last minute he was going to come because he liked some of the bands that were playing. We went to the festival, had a great time, and got an uber back to an Airbnb we had rented for the weekend. I walked in, and the guy I was dating went to our room to lay down. I went into the kitchen to get water, heard the guy yelling my name, and I walked in on my best friend straddling him. An uncomfortable confrontation ensued.
My immediate reaction of being shocked, I was instantly furious with the two of them. Also, they were both wearing clothes. I said something along the lines of, ‘I don’t know what is going on but I am not okay with this, and I’m not sure how either of you thinks it is okay either!’ She immediately got off of him, mumbled ‘I’m sorry,’ and retreated to her room and passed out. I started packing my stuff and said I was leaving because at that point I was so angry; I was done with both of them. The guy talked to me for almost an hour afterward, confused as to why I was mad at him and eventually when I calmed down, I realized he didn’t do anything wrong. She came into his room, unsolicited, and he called for me to come back the moment it got out of hand.
I didn’t talk to her for months. She contacted me and asked why I was being distant. I explained what happened. She didn’t remember it, or so she claimed. I know now she is someone I can’t trust.
As for the guy and me, we have been dating for ten months.”