If you can’t trust the people closest to you, then who can you trust? Here, people share stories of being betrayed by someone close to them, and they’re pretty heartbreaking.
Thanks to everyone who contributed. If you would like to read more stories like these, be sure to check out the source link at the end of this article. Comments have been edited for clarity.
[]chimusicguy 22.4k points 8 months ago*
I was in a geek rock band in college. We played around Chicago almost weekly. We also had a side-job as a jazz band. We were pretty tight. We went to each others’ weddings, hung out outside of gigs, etc. After several years of this friendship, I was going through a divorce. I kept gigging with them.
One gig with the jazz group was rough. I wasn’t there emotionally. I didn’t miss a note, and had some pretty sweet solos, but I probably looked like I’d just been beaten and drugged. A few weeks later, I get a mass email saying, come to our next gig, with new bassist, Joe Schmo! I was devastated. Not one of them had said anything to me. No one had checked in, no one had cared enough to say, “You’re going through a rough time, maybe you want to take off for a bit.”
One of the guys is a fellow teacher nearby and I have to see him a few times a year. Breaks my heart again every time.
Edit: Thanks for all the comments! No way I can answer them all, but I appreciate that my event resonated with so many. And thank you for the gold.
A few short additions: There was no other straw leading up to this. We were happy and creatively awesome as a group. The lead singer had a slight Napoleon Complex when it came to some things, but nothing crazy. We all gelled really well all the time; the worst part was that I felt like these were my best friends.
Yes, I, too, saw School of Rock.
I’ve done well with my life. I miss them often. As someone said below, “you may have many girlfriends over your life, but you may only get one good band.”
The guitarist (closest one to me and fellow teacher) called me a few weeks later and admitted it was supposed to be his job to tell me. That conversation is a blur, though. I haven’t said a word to him since. That was seven years ago.
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[]SameOldShirt 14.7k points 8 months ago*
I had a great friend that I knew since 4th grade. When we both got out of the military we decided to get an apartment and were room mates for about 8 months.
I was working 2 jobs, so I was not around a lot. One day our apartment manager caught me in the hallway and asked me if I had the rent. At the time I was giving my room mate the rent and he said he was paying it. Turns out he had not paid the previous 2 months and had pocketed my cash. I ended up paying for 4 months of rent for both of us, got evicted, and lost my security deposit.
Edit: You people are funny (Sorry about assuming your species). I was only 22 at the time and a little naive about things. Where I live if you sign a lease both parties are 100% responsible for the rent, its a college town you cannot rent without that in your lease. I paid him cash because I didn’t have a checking account. I had a spending problem and not having a credit card or check book stopped me from getting into debt, it worked but was hugely inconvenient. I was also working two jobs, so I did not have a lot of free time during the day, I was home late at night or sundays. I didn’t worry about my bro ripping me off, we were good friends, I was a Devil Dog, he was a Devil Dolphin, we had each others backs. Lesson learned. Thanks for the gold!!
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[+][deleted] 8 months ago* (623 children)
[]Pun-Chi 14.4k points 8 months ago
I was in a band with some friends in high school. I wrote all the songs we played. They kicked me out and said they didn’t like my music anymore and wanted to go another direction. I later found out they had booked a show and played my songs they said they hated. I felt pretty crummy after hearing that.
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[]CatsEye99 13.9k points 8 months ago*
A couple of years ago I got really really sick and moved back to my parents’ house for a couple months. My roommate asked me if some friends of ours (his very long-time friends) could stay in my room for a few days because they were temporarily homeless. They had like 4 kids and the kids had to stay somewhere else. It was Christmastime and these people were pretty poor and weren’t going to be able to afford presents for the kids. My parents were actually going to give them a couple hundred bucks to help with presents. I came back to the house a week or two after they came and stayed only to discover they had stolen my MacBook, another laptop, a kindle, a set of gaming headphones, and my external hard drive (like 15 years worth of pictures stored on there). They also stole my roommate’s college ring. I’m still mad and it’s going on three years later. You don’t steal from friends. Especially ones who are saving your homeless necks.
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[+][deleted] 8 months ago* (306 children)
[]RediGator 13.6k points 8 months ago*
So, several years ago my grandmother died. Driving home from her house (she lived very close to us) we ran into one of my best friends driving the other way. He had known her and had eaten Sunday dinner at her place on several occasions, so we stopped to let him know that she had passed and when/where the funeral would be.
While we were at her funeral, he and a couple of other guys broke into our apartment and stole all of our shit. Then, a couple of nights later, they tried to break into her apartment too but a neighbor saw them and scared them off.
This guy had been near the top of my best friends list and we’d known each other for about 12 years (I was 18 at the time).
Edit: Since people keep asking, no, he wasn’t a drug addict at the time. He may have gotten into drugs later (not sure, haven’t spoken to him since), but he only smoked weed at the time.
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[]Pothperhaps 12.7k points 8 months ago
Back in November I took in a friend whose bf kicked her out. She lived with me completly free of charge up until this month because she was unable to get a job. Well at the start of the month she got a job finnally and of course we agreed she’d start paying the same rent and bills as everyone else in the house. That was all set and fine until she decided she wanted to get a tattoo with her first pay. I said thats fine but make sure we have rent money first and tattoo afterwards. You would have thought I told her her first months rent was the soul of her first born. She went apeshit. Screaming about how I’m a horrid cunt whose never done anything for her and she shouldnt have to pay becuase it isn’t fair becuase she wants to use her money for her things. She screamed and swore until my neighbors came over becuase they were worried. This all coming from the girl that I had given everything to. Food. Clothes. A home. I shared my fucking bed with her for christ sake but the second I told her she was expected to contribute to the house, I was suddenly the worst human being to ever take a breath. So she left last night after making that huge scene, called me every name in the book and had her next victim pick her up. Poor guy. Soon enough she’ll do the same thing to him. Shes done this more times than I can count. She makes a sob story about getting kicked out of her last place, moves in, doesnt contribute and is generally a lazy slob until the person shes leeching off of wises up and kicks her out or does like I did and just simply said shed need to pay rent and shell book it to the next house where she can keep playing poor me. I thought itd be different becuase we were such close friends but no. I will be regretting letting her into my life for a very long time. Sorry for the novel. This just happened yesterday and I’m still so pissed off.
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[]Mordroy 12.3k points 8 months ago*
Dated my best friend for about three years. About a year and a half in, her mom passed away and she took it really hard. For several months, I was there for her everyday helping her cope. It was difficult but we got through it together. A year later my dad died from a sudden heart attack. She broke up with me after two weeks because “you’re just not fun to be around anymore.”
edit: my highest comment is about he lowest point in my life, cool I guess?
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[]JuliusCaesarAMA 11.7k points 8 months ago
I was on the floor of the Senate after years of successful military campaigns, expanding the size and strength of my republic, and instituting mass reform for my people. Unfortunately, the upper class Senators weren’t too down with that, and unfortunately, the Senators whom I had worked closely with for such a long time stabbed me 23 times at the base of the Curia of Pompey.
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[]Zacoftheaxes 9649 points 8 months ago
My roommate tried to convince my girlfriend that I was secretly a rapist and a pedophile, got his girlfriend and some others and held an “intervention” where she couldn’t leave until she said she was going to do something about me.
Luckily, my girlfriend decided to talk to me, realized it was all bullshit, and is still by my side today. My roommate dropped out of college and still hasn’t finished their degree.
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[+][deleted] 8 months ago* (282 children)
[][deleted] 8060 points 8 months ago
I used to have 2 very good friends when I was ~19 years old. We always hung out and smoked weed together.
One day, the two of them teamed up on me and said “We think you are only friends with us so you can smoke our weed. If you want to prove that you are really our friend, you should pay for all the weed we smoke for the next two months.”
Each of us, including me, had always fairly contributed to our purchases, so this was completely unwarranted. Also it’s completely ridiculous to ask your friend to prove his friendship by paying things for you.
So yeah I told them to fuck off and blocked them on all social media, never saw them again.
Two years later, I met one of the two at a concert. He told me that he wasn’t friends with the other guy anymore because he realised what a manipulative asshole that guy was. He explained to me that the guy had talked him into ganging up on me back then and I forgave him, so we became friends again.
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[]ClowningMachine 8048 points 8 months ago
Was friends with a guy since middle school. We were inseparable. I helped him with his depression, got him to move out of his parents house, supported him when he was emotionally wrecked, etc.
But the moment I lost my job and became depressed, he wasn’t there for me. Stopped talking to me, hanging out with me, answering my messages. Asked him why he was ignoring me and he said I was being too sad.
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[]brzcory 7883 points 8 months ago*
Living with 5 very close friends in a 2br apartment. Lease is in 2 of their names (they’re a couple). The rest of us pay them rent, they pay the landlord.
Dude of the couple is a slob. Gets worse once he actually finds a steady job driving a forklift in a plant. He gets some money, buys a TV and playstation. Ends up skipping work and staying at home to play video games. She doesn’t like this turn. They break up, she leaves.
Close friend since highscool is sad, but he’s got a gaming addiction to help him cope.
Little did we know, after he lost his job on week #2 (no-call no-shows for MW3 coming out apparently don’t fly in automotive plants), he just stole our rent money for 3 months. Disappeared in the night after robbing our rooms. Week later we get a letter from the landlord “This is your third and final notice, you have 7 days to vacate.”
So, the rest of us all go our own ways. I find a new apartment and everything ends up okay.
Turns out he robbed us, then pawned the car that his dad had given him (to ‘help him get back on his feet’), went to the casino, blew all of it, and had his aunt pick him up.
Happened like 10 years ago, but he’s still the one person in the world who I would up and punch him if I saw him walking down the street. Everyone has tried to help this guy, through money or time or goods. He’s always almostgonna get out of the hole he’s dug himself.
And then he shits all over it.
Fuck you Jamie.
Edit: It has been brought to my attention that MW3 hasn’t been out for 10 years. Please excuse a non-gamer for not knowing the difference between COD, COD2, COD3, COD4MW, CODWAW, MW2, CODBO, MW3, CODBO2, CODG, CODAW, CODBO3, CODIW. I also rounded from 8 to 10 on how long ago it was. Using the corrected information and a google search, it was MW2, and Nov 9th sounds like the right time of year.
But still, fuck the Jamie’s of this world.
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[]Parallax92 7863 points 8 months ago*
My ex cheated on me with my bass player, two very close friends, and most likely a few others.
On the flip side, this means that all of the people she cheated with also betrayed me.
EDIT: Thanks for all the laughs guys ahaha
Fuck you both, L and R 🙂
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[]tryingtofitin-dammit 7462 points 8 months ago
“I met someone and she opened my eyes,” said my husband three weeks after our son was born. I’m still bleeding from that stab wound.
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[]CoolCatFan 6681 points 8 months ago*
I stabbed my friend in the back.
One day in grade seven, I was sick so I stayed home from school. Since I wasn’t deathly Ill, I played Runescape (A game my whole friend group was playing at the time). When I logged on I saw my friend Jordan online.
Jordan and I were talking about how Dylan has the coolest items in Runescape (Dylans other friend was a member, so Dylan had good items). Jordan askes if I knew Dylans password and I said no but we’re best friends so I can guess. I tried logging into his account and I got his password correct eventually.
We took most of the important things from his account. Money, Items and Armor. When Dylan logged on, He was very upset. He eventually found out what we did and he really didn’t care that much after a while. However I always have felt bad about it. Not because what I did was too horrible, but because he is the nicest guy and I betrayed him.
Dylan and I are still best friends to this day (we are both teachers) and we hang out every Sunday and play chess.
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[]Inorai 6657 points 8 months ago*
Best friend of many years tried to break up me and my then- boyfriend by fabricating evidence he was cheating on me. Never figured out if it was her being possessive of me or if she wanted to date him.
Edit – it has become apparent this wording was misleading and I apparently distressed some people. Then- boyfriend because we’ve since gotten engaged, not because we’ve since broken up. Thank you to all the kind people out there congratulating 🙂
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[+][deleted] 8 months ago* (244 children)
[]DaveDavidsen 5882 points 8 months ago*
Dated a girl all through high school but when school ended we started drifting apart because real life was coming at us fast and it’s just the way things were. We didn’t officially break up, but we became a lot less close than we had been. Then one night my phone rings at like 2:30am and it’s my best friend calling. I figure he needs a ride home from a party or something so I answer to see what’s up and…it’s her. Well, it was him calling. But I hear her in the background laughing, at which point he starts laughing too. I’m thoroughly confused and pretty much start yelling into the phone “What the fuck?! What the fuck is going on?!” and then I hear the unmistakeable sound of naked skin slapping naked skin with her moaning like crazy.
Yeah, she cheated on me with my best friend and called me in the middle of the sex as a joke so I could hear them going at it via speakerphone.
Relationship instantly over, friendship instantly over. That was 16 years ago. Haven’t spoken a word to either of them since and the few times I’ve seen him (I believe she moved away, thank god) I just breeze right past him as if he doesn’t exist. I’ve had trust problems with people ever since that night though. It would be one thing to have a relationship end, or a friendship fall apart, but to have both of them, the two people I trusted most, that had been by my side for years, do that to me? Done.
Edit, to clear up some confusion: This was back in 2001 so butt dialing wasn’t as common because everyone had like flip phones then so you couldn’t accidentally hit any numbers because if the phone was in your pocket then there was no chance of you hitting the keypad. As for it being a joke, or they were faking it…who knows. I never bothered to find out, and when it’s 2:30am and you’re only hearing things via a phone…you make your own conclusions. I do know that we never spoke again after that so I kind of figured, had it been a joke, one of the two of them would’ve spoken up at some point and been like “hey man, funny joke we pulled the other night…” or something but that never happened. I just got treated to what I described above and then it was instant end of relationship and friendship.
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[]girllock 5191 points 8 months ago
“I’m so sorry honey, I don’t know who could be spreading those rumors. They’re sick and they don’t know you at all.”
Rumors had been spread that I, an awkward nerdy girl who’d never done more than hold hands, was not only sleeping with the whooole school, male and female, but also that I was pregnant! Yay! News to me, right??
My best friends swore they’d defend me and when they found out who it was they’d make them regret it.
Then I went down to the lowest floor of the high school (foreshadowing much?) and walked up behind my best friend and noticed she was talking about… Me? About what a slut I am? That she’d never be friends with me? The girl she was talking to started frantically signaling to cut off her convo but GUEEESS WHAT too late.
I switched schools halfway through that year and never looked back.
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[]10minutes_late 5000 points 8 months ago
My best friend, my fiance. We were together six years, lived together most of it. Lived apart for the last because we went to school in cities two hours apart. We had an argument the day after thanksgiving so I made a surprise drive to visit her that night. Caught her red handed cheating on me. She swore up and down it was a misunderstanding, and since I loved her, I believed every word. We spoke briefly for the next month because of finals, but afterwards she invited me over. I drove two hours to see her, and when I get there the cops show up minutes later and hand me a restraining order. I found out, months later why she did: she didn’t want me to find out she was already getting married to the guy she was cheating on me with. Fucked me up for years.
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[]einalem0102 4583 points 8 months ago
My little sister literally stabbed my back with a pencil when we were young, does that count?
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[]fuzzybloomers 4526 points 8 months ago
My best friend in college just stopped talking to me one day. Wouldn’t respond to any texts or anything. It hurt, but I let it go. A year or so later I read in the paper that an old friend of ours had died, so I texted her to let her know. She responded with ‘you have the wrong number’. Maybe that was the truth, but I couldn’t help but think that it wasn’t and for some reason this hurt more than her breaking things off with me.
Years later she apologized out of the blue on Facebook which is nice I guess. But who the fuck does that?
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[]furryoverlord 3712 points 8 months ago*
Met a girl about 3 years back that quickly became one of my best friends. There were all the warning signs that she was a terrible person, but I ignored them: everyone she’d been friends with before had apparently betrayed her, she was sleeping with an engaged guy, and somehow knew a ton of gossip other people in our social circle were apparently spreading about me.
She was big into theatre, and about a year into knowing me was putting on a show for a local festival. She asked me to be her set designer, which I’d never done before, but it was an easy job and I figured “why not?” some of the actresses were cute.
But the demands started getting bigger and bigger. Instead of just picking up tables and chairs I had to build some kind of massive collapsible frame with imported fabric. The deadlines were tight and we fought (bitterly) whenever I protested. I wound up putting down $600 dollars on all the materials, but the festival brought in that much money in cash very quickly once the show went up. I asked her for my money back and she said she was waiting on the check for online sales.
So fast forward three weeks after the show and I still didn’t have my money back. I called her a few times and her response was to tell every mutual friend we had that I was a sexist, abusive pig who was harassing her and threatening her. She implied that she wanted to sue me and get the police involved, so I called her bluff and said she should. She then wrote me a bad check and tried to accuse me of trying to “cash it twice” and kept threatening to sue me. So, being stereotypically Jewish, I got one of my parents’ many lawyer friends to help draft a letter and said I’d be fine to go to a small claims court. At this point it was less about the money and more about hating this fucking bitch.
About two months later she gave me $500 in cash and I decided to let it go. Some things I’ve learned since: 1) every person she ever said “betrayed her” lent her money only to have her go scorched earth on them 2) She made several thousand dollars on that play and didn’t pay back any of the other people she owed (most of whom were just $20-30) and 3) unsurprisingly, she’d been badmouthing me to everyone even before this happened setting me up as the kind of guy that would pull something like this.
I’ve never gotten that close to someone again. She was the closest friend I’ve ever had and in some ways I still miss that intimacy. I’m eternally grateful our relationship was purely platonic as it could have been so, so much worse otherwise. For the record, her play was a steaming pile of shit and was reviewed by several small time blogs as “basically the worst thing ever”. She’s the only person I’ve met that I think I would truly not care if I heard she was dying slowly of cancer, but I genuinely want her life to be devoid of any real suffering so the universe won’t give her any justification for being such a massive cunt.
TLDR: Bitch took my money. Theater kids be fucked.
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[]steve1879 3625 points 8 months ago
My friend of nearly 25 years happily ended our friendship over a few thousand bucks he owed me.
Hey Bill, if you are reading this, go sit on an AIDS needle.
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[]MontanaKittenSighs 3385 points 8 months ago*
It’s finally time for me to share this.
I was 18 years old, one month away from graduating high school, and my mother was on her death bed. She had Hep C and her liver that had been transplanted a couple years prior was failing. I had been driven up to the hospital 4 hours away after being taken out of school for the day. It was the phone call we had all prepared for: “your mother has taken a turn and we want you up here.”
My best friend at the time, a flamboyant gay boy (who we shall call Brian), drove my car up to the hospital per my father’s and my request. This boy was very loved by my family. My mother wanted to throw him a birthday party after he said he’d never had one before. She bought him birthday cake, expensive cologne from her trip to Las Vegas, you name it. She treated him like a son, but only because I called him “friend.” He cooked dinner for us sometimes, and my mother trusted him enough to employ her at her bridal shop that she owned. So, he worked there as a cashier and general back room guy, just like my dad.
Well, my mother passed on about a week after I got up to see her. She could no longer speak, she was in a drug-induced coma, and I still have some minor triggers about the experience. The day she died, they were taking her off oxygen, and they asked each of us if we wanted to be with her. My father said yes and held her in his arms as she passed, I said no and waited in the next room, Brian said yes and watched my mother die.
A month passed, and it was summer. I was at the bridal shop a lot because my dad couldn’t quite handle it alone. Looking back, neither of us could handle it at all. And Brian knew that… We found out, thanks to a returning customer and a receipt they brought back, he had stolen upwards of $10,000 from my mother’s business by using her screen name and password in our computer system. We brought the police in and everything, but the police said they couldn’t prove it “beyond reasonable doubt,” so they had to drop the case cold. Everyone else knew he did it, and I did too, because that’s when the razor blades and “laundry detergent” (cocaine) on his window sill finally made sense.
Brian stole tens of thousands of dollars from my mother after watching her die. Fuck you, Brian, your life will be hell when you die and meet my mother again.
Edit: Y’aaaaaaall, the support is amazing. You guys are amazing. I think all I ever wanted was for a bunch of people to hear this story and say, “Yeah, fuck that dude!” I’ve held onto this story for almost 9 years now, and it’s eaten me up. I feel a lot better about it now, and I want to thank you all for reading, commenting, and gilding this. The jokes are really helping, too. Thanks, you beautiful bastards!
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[+][deleted] 8 months ago* (128 children)
[]domestic_dog 2743 points 8 months ago*
A group of my friends from high school had talked for a long while about going to Japan. Around age 24 or so all of us finally had jobs and money, so three of us finalized the plans. Then another friend joined in, and then yet another.
Just before we booked the flights one of them called me up and said “the four of us don’t want you to come on this trip. We have different interests. The others can’t even bring themselves to call you and tell you, but I figure this way is better”
I talked to some of my new colleagues about how awesome it would be to go to Japan and ended up going with them on the original dates that were planned – a great trip, too. Of my high school friends, the only one I have any contact with, and the only one who kept any of my respect, is the one who called me and fessed up.
edit: RIP my inbox etc. My HS friends wanted to do a lot of video game type stuff – hang out in arcades in Akihabara, that kind of thing. I wanted to check out the fashion district in Shibuya and buy some Japanese jeans e.g. Iron Heart, Sugar Cane, maybe a Buzz Rickson flight jacket. You’d think that a day at the arcades and a day of clothes shopping could fit into a ten-day trip, but there you go. At least that’s the not-quite-an-explanation I got out of them.
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[][deleted] 1953 points 8 months ago
Got kicked out of my house and my best friend, we’ll call him Karl, invited me to live with him and his girlfriend for the summer before I went back to college. Before I met anyone, he told me I was going to want to date his friend, Liz. Then forbade me from dating Liz with no explanation other than “she’s basically my little sister”. I then met Liz and really liked Liz.
Karl then tried to set me up with his friend Amy. Amy and I got along okay, went on a couple dates before I found out she was dating another guy on the side. Was no skin off my back, since it was a casual set up in the first place. And that gave me an opening to start seeing more of Liz.
I started dating Liz and Karl got grouchy with me, telling me I wasn’t good enough for her, and all sorts of overprotective macho nonsense, but we mostly just moved on until I moved out and went to school in another city.
Liz visited me a couple times, and eventually Karl and Liz went to visit a friend of ours who lives nearish me. I was like “oh sweet, I’ll come too and It’ll be a big ol’ friends reunion!” And Karl tells me that’s a no go because a guy who lives with them hated me for no reason that was ever given, and apparently none of my other buddies would stand up for me. That hurt, but Liz said she would visit me after.
So fine, that happens. Liz comes to visit. And she has a tale to tell. Turns out, Karl and his girlfriend had been having relationship issues, and I had been invited to live with them as a buffer. I moved out and things got worse, they were now on a “Break”. The reason Karl forbade me from dating Liz? Liz was his back up girl and I was cock-blocking his prospective target. The reason my buddies didn’t have my back? Karl told everyone I cheated on Amy, and Karl was using that trip to try and get in Liz’s pants despite her and I dating.
Sooo…TL;DR: Supposed best friend saves me from a jam, not as a friend, but to use me as a pawn in a weird manipulation attempt that didn’t work out in his favour but cost me a whole friendgroup. Still got the girl, though.