Sometimes you just have to cut someone off!
All content has been edited for clarity.
Maybe Don’t Charge The Usher Extra?
“I was really good friends with this guy I met at my first job after college. He asked me to be an usher at his wedding. He told me the tux rental was $90. I sent him a check along with my measurements.
This was over 30 years ago and I had left my job to go to grad school full time. $90 was a lot of money for me at that time.
One day about a week before the wedding, we were talking and he started to go over the cost of things for the wedding.
He said the tux rental was $75.
I corrected him and said $90.
He said, ‘No, it was $75. I had the 5 groomsmen chip in $15 each so my dad didn’t have to pay for his.’
End of friendship.”
He Did Not, In Fact, Love Raymond
“I have burned lots of bridges over my life. Some I regret burning while others I do not.
One friend, ‘Raymond,’ made it easy for me to end a friendship of 8 years. Raymond, another friend, and I stopped at an ice cream shop in my parents’ 1962, push-button Plymouth Valiant. I left the keys in the car when I went to get my ice cream cone.
Raymond thought it would be funny to drive off with the car and leave me stranded.
When I came out of the ice cream place, the car was gone. I was incensed. I got even angrier when I later learned Raymond had actually intended to drive all the way back to the family home without me, thus making me walk five miles on a blazing hot summer day.
The only thing that stopped him from doing that was the mutual friend in the car who successfully expostulated.
The Plymouth Valiant returned after five minutes, but the friendship departed.”
Friends From Different Schools
“We went to a quiz competition one day. My friend, ‘Breanna’s,’ house was nearby. My other friend, ‘Allison,’ was also there with me. Breanna and I were friends as we were from the same school.
So we wanted to go to Breanna’s house during lunch break. But my friend Allison was yelling at me.
She demanded, ‘Why do you want to go there?!’
Allison was also my friend but from a different school. Actually my ex-school. We were quite good friends. But she was always like this. Jealous of my other friends. My mom and other friends told me she was toxic but I didn’t believe them.
I always listened to Allison and got emotional because she was melodramatic. Allison used to cry on simple things and I would give her the reaction she wanted. But that day I didn’t listen to her. I became angry at her. And went to my friend Breanna’s house anyway.
That ended our friendship. We don’t talk anymore.”
I’m Actually Shocked They Reconnected
“After about 10 years of being best friends, she was messing around with a guy I was seeing. She was doing the same thing to our other friend. She really worked to split me and the other friend up. She didn’t want us to tell each other since we both knew what she was doing. I broke the friendship off.
Around six years later, we reconnected. We reconnected with the third friend too.
Our second time all hanging out again together she said, ‘Hey she still doesn’t know, don’t tell her.’
Then the third friend told me she had said the same thing to her. We both dropped her as a friend.
She even stalked me for a bit for a while. I had to change my number.
Twelvish years later, she still regularly pops into my dreams but I don’t regret my decision. At all.
The breaking point was even six years later, she couldn’t even say, ‘Hey, I’m sorry.’
She still tried to hide it from each of us. As an adult, I can understand where a lot of her actions came from as I was really close to her and her family and saw she didn’t have the best upbringing.
So I can forgive, but I won’t forget.”
That’s A Bold Move
“I dumped a long-time friend when he insulted my wife, in front of me, in our home. He was lucky that I didn’t deck him too.”
This Person Is A Certified Psycho
“I walked into my home one day to find a lady, who I believed to be one of my best friends at the time, stealing my stuff!
I looked at the bag of items in her hand, back to her face, back to the bag, back to her face several times and each time I met her eyes, they grew more glassy with tears, as her cheeks flushed a deeper shade of crimson.
I yelled, ‘What the-‘
‘Oh no, I was just-‘
‘I know what you were doing. You’re not supposed to be here. Get out of here, you disgust me!’
‘I thought it would be okay.’
I screamed in her face, ‘Get out of here now!’
She tried to leave with the bag. I yanked it out of her hand and almost tore her arm out of the socket. She was gone. From my home. From my life.
Good riddance. A fifteen-year friendship flushed down the toilet.
With tears in my eyes and shaking hands, I emptied the bag and spilled the contents onto the table. I was shocked at what I found.
There wasn’t any jewelry or video games. There wasn’t music or movies or anything of value that could be resold.
Instead, on the table, there was a variety of doo-dads and worthless baubles from my life, valuable only to me; A framed photo of my childhood dog. A dried corsage from my first prom. A friendship bracelet made by a kid I babysat in high school. An empty bottle from a special occasion. My first lost tooth in a small treasure chest which my favorite teacher from Montessori class had pulled when it was loose. A puppet I played with as a kid given to me by the same teacher. A plastic necklace. Junk trinkets.
Strange and worthless possessions which meant nothing to anyone but me, but which would hurt me deeply to lose. I started taking an inventory and learned from mutual friends that they too, had found things missing from their homes. Nothing of value, except in nostalgia.
It soon became clear this woman was stealing pieces of our lives. Irreplaceable items we’d never get back.
We cut her out of our friendship circle and stopped talking to her. She was toxic.
The worst part, and the biggest loss, was the friendship that was stolen from me.
Sometimes I still miss her. Isn’t that crazy?”
This One Seems Fishy
“I had a best friend, we were so close like sisters. We went through so much together. We were bonded together through so many hardships and trials. I came to live with her for a while as I was going through a bitter breakup, but I didn’t realize it was also the beginning of the end with my best friend too.
My drinking at the time was really bad and I had made plans to go to rehab. Before I was due to go, we went out for dinner to a restaurant. I remember the meal was so quiet, we hardly spoke. It was strange because we had never ever been quiet like that. We were always talking, laughing, and telling stories. It was never quiet. It was so eerie, it felt like goodbye.
I went into rehab, I was in for 9 months. I didn’t hear from her at all. I phoned her one day and she announced to me she was getting married, she’d met someone and was marrying them within a few months. I was shocked. She wasn’t even seeing anyone before I went into rehab. It was decided by her and her husband I wouldn’t be invited to the wedding. Her husband didn’t want me there because of my problems and because I was in rehab. Getting the proper help I needed was the determining factor in why I wouldn’t be allowed to go to the wedding. I was devastated. I felt controlled and betrayed. I had to grieve, and let it go.
I saw her one last time. I had gotten out of rehab and went to pick up my stuff from her house. She was moving on to another country and wanted the stuff gone. She had turned so cold and harsh. I didn’t recognize her. She looked and seemed so different. Not the same person I knew. I said goodbye, I cried, and my heart broke, I just knew it was the last time I would see her. I felt it. It was a strange grief. Just like that, it was over.
One year after we parted company, I found out from a mutual friend she died. It was worse than I ever imagined. I was so devastated. I had forgiven her because I just wanted her to be happy. I knew that day picking up my stuff I wouldn’t see her again, I just didn’t realize it would mean death. I didn’t realize it meant the end on earth.
The one event that ended the friendship finally: her marriage.”
Someone Qualified Needed To Help Your Friend
“I ended a 5-year-long friendship because of her bipolar disorder.
I dealt with it for a while because I never saw it as a problem of mine. I was not her husband so I never thought I really had to deal with her disorder until I did.
It got to the point where every time we went out she would try to dictate what happened and because she was bipolar, her decisions were not very smart. She started acting like I was her boyfriend and I had to do the things she said.
Eventually, her parents kicked her out and I told her she could stay at my place for a bit until she got her own place. She ended up drinking the whole time and at one point, she broke into her parents’ house to steal money.
One night, we went out and she repeatedly called the police until they eventually arrested her. She told the police I would be her surety and I said definitely not!
Because I said no, she called my house yelling at me calling me a bad friend, and she tried to tell my parents I was an adult worker! I was so angry at the fact I allowed her to stay at my place to be nice and she had the audacity to yell at me for not trying to be her babysitter as if I had no life of my own!
That was my last straw and I never spoke to her again.”
How Do People Like This Exist?
“After my first husband passed, her husband asked me what I was doing with his shoes! I brushed it off as his clothes and shoes were staying in the same cupboard for all eternity as far as I was concerned. She asked for money constantly, never paying it back. The money added up to a lot. It’s still a good amount today and this was 20 years ago.
She hinted I pay for their family holiday because that was what her late mother would have wanted. When I called her at her work, she would try and get me off the phone as quickly as possible, never listening to what I had to say.
The last straw was when she convinced me to take out credit for her child’s cell phone so she could give the phone to him as a birthday present because she had no money. I struggled for months to get her to pay the small monthly amount for the phone. I moved to a completely new area and she never ever visited.
I just stopped taking her calls after a while, I don’t know why I was so gullible.”
Double Trouble
“Not just once. There was a guy I’ve been more or less friends with since I was 18 or so, for 22 years. He had a habit of taking his girlfriends for granted which caused them to dump him after they were fed up. Then he wallowed in self-pity for a while, drinking a lot, and hitting on everything vaguely female not climbed up to safety in the next tree on the count of two.
When my 40th birthday rolled around, I planned for around 30 people, including several people from work, friends, my mother, my brother, and a number of them rather attractive ladies. Coincidentally the guy had been dumped yet again a couple of weeks before that, so I took him off the invite list. Among the things I don’t need in my life is a whiny dude hitting on every female guest, and it doesn’t matter if I knew him for 20, 25, or 30 years. This is just not acceptable, especially not when everybody asks me what is wrong with the guy. Call me unfeeling, but it’s my birthday party, not a therapeutic event for someone who refuses to learn from his own mistakes.
Instead of just not inviting him, I made the effort of calling him to explain why. Quite unsurprisingly he started whining, calling me selfish, saying I would make everything worse, and generally trying to guilt-shame an invitation out of me. So I told him that this call marked the last time we would ever speak and that he flushed 22 years down the toilet.
Then there was somebody whom I’ve known since she was 13, through her older sister. We also were friends of sorts and remained so for almost 25 years when a certain pattern emerged: she would only call when she had computer problems. Not just that, but she also tried to dictate when I should come, including leaving work earlier to accommodate her plans, there was urging to do it faster when I was fiddling with whatever she and her husband had messed up without telling me what it was, no offer of even something to drink.
So one day my phone rang, her number on the display, and I picked up saying, ‘What sort of computer problem is it this time?’
After a moment of silence, she started acting offended, asking why I would say such a thing. I told her that it was May, neither New Year nor my birthday, and she wouldn’t call for either of those anyway since for some years she remembered my number only when the PC was messed up. More offended acting, which I cut short by telling her to remember I’ve known her for almost 25 years and knew quite well if and when she was faking outrage. I also said to never call me again for any reason.
Traditionally, I don’t really expect much of people, and I’m not prone to asking lots of things from my friends. I do expect them to not try to take advantage of me or attempt to guilt-shame me into doing something, though, either of which is considered a hostile act and sufficient grounds to call it off immediately. The same goes for guilt-shaming. This might be part of the reasons for my reputation as an unpredictable, walking low-tolerance zone for arseholery.”
This Is Messy
“Not a friendship but I ended a relationship with my stepmother. Five years ago, we had a wonderful Christmas in her home. It was my dad’s last Christmas and my granddaughter’s first Christmas. She was born very prematurely and was in the hospital for over two months. My husband and I were the only ones that visited.
Two weeks later, she called to ask if she could come over.
I replied, ‘Sure.’
She came over and asked if my husband could leave us alone to talk. She then pulled out an envelope she had written everyone’s name down that had been at Christmas and proceeded to tell me my stepsister had mentioned when she got home that $60 had disappeared from her purse. She then told me she had been up all night looking at this list and said she had a feeling it was my son or his girlfriend who took it and because it was her house and she felt responsible. She said my son and his girlfriend were no longer accepted in her house and she never wanted to see them again.
Before she left, she told me she hoped our relationship would be okay. I talked to my stepsister about it and she was so hurt her mother had done that and she would talk to her. She did and my stepmother was adamant no they would not be welcome in her home.
After years of helping her and my dad out, this is what she did. My dad was hurt by this and so was everyone else in our family. You have to understand she lives in a very small home not sure how anyone could go through a purse in front of everyone and at the same time take care of a baby. More holes in her story than Swiss cheese. My son was so hurt by this he bawled his eyes out in my arms. That’s when I knew I could not have a relationship with her.
Here’s some back story on what is accepted by her and what is not. Her son assaulted me repeatedly in our home for years and she knew about it.
During my treatment for co-dependency, I told my story to them, and at the end, she said, ‘I always had a feeling something was going on.’
My counselor asked, ‘You had a feeling something was going on and you did nothing to protect her?’
Obviously, she didn’t have a coherent response. My dad never wanted to see him again and never wanted him in his home. My stepbrother had been in treatment prior to this and had made sincere amends which I accepted. So I pleaded his case to still be allowed in the home to keep the family together.
So yeah offenders are acceptable in her home but something she makes up in her head over an off-the-cuff comment isn’t. Do I think she has a mental health problem or dementia? Probably.
In the last five years, she has hung up on my sister over some bad news and copied private letters from my brother, and passed them out like gossip. Awful behavior. I have stayed silent from her however everyone now knows what happened and what her son did to me. I don’t keep deep dark secrets at all. Secrets keep you sick. Thank you.”
Beef With A Baby
“We had known each other from college and eventually became good friends. Then, I got a job that took me overseas. And while working overseas, I met someone, whom I eventually married after the work project was over. We moved to the other side of the US.
My friend and I communicated with each once in a while. She said she missed me. The truth, I had so much going on that I didn’t miss her. Maybe I was selfish.
After about a year, my husband and I moved back to the East coast. I became pregnant and had a baby girl. I was in communication with a common friend who told me my other friend was mad at me.
I called her.
She was mad but we agreed to meet for lunch. Then she told me not to bring my baby, to come alone. She didn’t want to meet my baby, and it made me mad.
It was the last time I ever spoke to her.”
She Sounds Like A Real Winner
“We had been best friends for years. But in the end, I learned of another side of her I had never seen before.
A little history, I grew up with her husband. He’s a great guy and treats her the way most women would absolutely love to be treated. Absolutely dotes on her.
My husband came home from work one morning and asked me if they were getting divorced. I told him no, she hadn’t said anything like that. A person would surely know if their best friend was getting divorced. Well, he’d heard at work through a mutual friend that she was sleeping with another man.
I asked her about her and her husband. And then the other man. Turns out, there were a lot of other men in her life. She would lie to them about her husband, saying all sorts of horrible things about him, and continue a relationship with the other guy until he got too close to the truth, then she would dump him and move on to the next.
I told her if she wasn’t going to tell her husband, I would. I ended up having to tell him. No one deserves to live like that.
He ended up staying with her for their kids.
It turns out she had some sort of psychotic need for attention. She was diagnosed by a therapist. But after she lied to me and her husband as she did, I couldn’t go back. We’re civil now, even friends one might say. But I could never open myself back up to someone who thought doing that was okay. And she does. No remorse whatsoever.”
Probably Not The Best Time For A Coffee Date?
“I did recently end a 6-year friendship.
There were a lot of factors that went into this relationship dissolving, but there was one event that made me decide to completely give up on the relationship. Had it never happened, I might have tried to repair the relationship or at least patch things up until I moved out and we could get some space from each other. As it is, I have to live with him for 2 more months and it’s absolute torture.
So what happened? He abandoned me when I was suicidal. He promised to spend time with me, to help me get through the night until I could go to a clinic the next day. Then he left to have coffee with his boyfriend, without even asking if I was okay, would be okay, or telling me when he’d be back.
I managed to cry myself to sleep, and in the morning I was ready to put my faith in him a second time. He had promised the night before that ‘tomorrow will be all about you,’ and we would go to the clinic.
He didn’t flat out refuse to go, but he did tell me it would be a big inconvenience for him and he really didn’t want to go. He didn’t want to be uncomfortable for a couple of hours to see his friend through a crisis. So I left without saying another word to him, and I didn’t speak to him again for a couple of weeks. He didn’t seem to notice. I eventually started talking to him a bit here and there, but I just felt angry whenever I looked at him. It all blew up about two or three months later, but that’s another story.
I decided, after reflecting on our whole relationship, that I didn’t want to be friends with someone who could be so inconsiderate to someone who is in such intense pain and distress that they might need hospitalization. He talked me out of going to the hospital, and then up and left me. Look, say what you want about forgiveness, about other people making mistakes, about having expectations that are too high. Whatever. I consider parking it on the couch so your suicidal friend isn’t alone and keeping your promise to them the minimum standard. If you can’t manage that, then you can’t be my friend. Out ya go.”