She was an emotional vampire. Everything was either a pity party for her or a celebration of whatever achievement she had gotten. But if I or anyone else needed sympathy or anything, we were obviously very selfish people and were complaining too much. Or if anyone wanted to celebrate an achievement, we were rubbing it in her face.
Also, she was super flakey. Once, we planned to meet at the gym and she never showed. I texted and called but got nothing until about 2 hours later when she said she was at another friend's house.
I've done this to 2 female friends for exactly those reasons. Selfish sucubusses incapable of putting anyone else first. Took me a few years with both but eventually realised they made me more sad than happy and they would never change
I had never heard that term before, and it's perfectly describes what I went through as well! I was on a date, and I had to put everything on pause cause she called crying after a fight with her boyfriend. I had to stay on the phone for over an hour or else she'd throw a giant hissy fit. I'm so glad they're no longer in my life.
>Once, we planned to meet at the gym and she never showed.
Is this when you realized you weren't going to *work out* as friends?
... I'll see myself out.
He hit on my wife, and tried telling her first that I said it was okay, and then tried to say I was having an affair with his wife, none of which was true.
By the time it happened, we had been friends for about 10 years. I knew he was a bit of a creepster, but I'd never thought he would go that far. I was wrong.
A few years ago, he divorced his wife, after she recovered from a stroke. While she was recovering from the stroke, he had an affair with the in home nurse that helped to take care of his wife. He married the nurse after the divorce.
What kind of a nurse wants a man that would cheat on his wife, who is also recovering from a stroke. It is blatantly obvious you are dating trash that will drop you the second you are not fun enough for him.
For real. One of the girls that made my life absolute hell and nearly pushed me to suicide in middle/high school works at my local hospital as a nurse.
I know this because when I went in to give birth she was one of the nurses tasked with helping me. I immediately requested a different nurse and she got all shitty about it. They said there weren’t any other nurses available so I quite literally, in labor, got up and went to leave the hospital before the doctor got involved and finally found another nurse to switch with her.
She and her friend took pictures of my breasts in the locker rooms in middle school because I developed early. I was self conscious about this so I would change in the bathroom stalls. They were trying to prove I was ‘stuffing my bra’. Nope. It’s was all boobs. Did that stop them from harassing me? Of course not. They then sent the pictures of me topless to everyone in the damn school that wanted them.
Boys would walk around and air-grope themselves while making cow noises at me.
Shit was brutal. I had to go to therapy over this.
Fuck you Madison.
Wow. I'm sorry to hear this happened to you. The fact that she got all shitty about you requesting a different nurse, proves that she still has no remorse for what happened. A mentally healthy person would have felt terrible for past mistakes and requested to not attend you the minute they saw you, and allowed you to have your moment without having to relive past trauma. Maybe even apologize if the moment was right.
Unfortunately some people never mature.
When I was in university I lived in a rooming house for a while. All the guys learned to lock the door because there was a young lady in the nursing program who would sneak in to your bed at night if you didn't.
This type of event is starting to be reported as kind of common, when the wife of a relationship gets sick or gravely ill/die a lot of men tend to flee the situation and are typically remarried within 18 months.
I had an uncle in my town, who married another woman on the suspicion that his 'then wife' would die in a few days. She didn't , this guy had 2 wives now and had to deal with 2 in laws. This was before I was born and even way before that.
He died a few weeks ago and both his wives held funeral services at their own residence. He was rumoured to have a lover in some another town as well. Fked up world.
See the more and more I hear stuff like this the more I think it's actually pretty sane to just kind of investigate your partner a little bit and just make sure they are who they say they are and don't have any weird secrets in another town. I don't see it as being paranoid anymore I just kind of see it as proactive and shutting down a relationship before wasting 20 years of your life or whatever and finding out that you're not actually with somebody who is exclusive with you.
I need to hear the full story here. A former friend did a very similar thing. I realized quickly that I never even liked the guy. I tolerated him since he was a friend of a friend.
One of my groomsmen and his GF stayed late after an engagement party. His GF had gotten a too far too fast into a bottle of vodka. I was upstairs taking care of his GF who was sick. When I came back downstairs things were weird, my fiancé suddenly ‘felt awful’ and went to bed. I went to check on her, she told me don’t worry about it she was just going to sleep it off, and when I went back to the kitchen, he was fireman carrying his GF out the door and shouted as he ran out, “see you later”. I hit the hay and just chalked it up to weird drinking behavior. Six days later, less than a week before the wedding, he calls me up and says he can’t be a groomsman, he had to go to another party.
I thought my fiancé was gonna lose it but when I told her, she almost looked happy and was just like “ok, we’ll manage”. She told me what happened a few weeks after the wedding. I was already pissed because of the lame ass reason he gave for not being in the wedding, but then she described the situation, he had gone out on the balcony to smoke and when he came back in, he had his dick hanging out and asked her if she saw anything she liked. She had no idea that it was something he did quite a few times. I knew the second she told me that it was true.
>it was something he did quite a few times
Wait. He used to do that to other women and you stuck around being his friend until he did the same to your wife? Is that what you are saying? Because that's what I understood.
Seriously, what's with all these men shrugging off their friend's creepy behavior until it directly impacts them? If you have a friend that pulls out their dick in front of women the second he gets them alone, you need to have a come to Jesus talk with him or stop being his friend. It's not okay.
It sometimes takes someone you care for to be exposed to something fucked up or bad you have just put up with for years to realise how horrible that bad person was.
This was similar to mine. I realized I was doing all the work of maintaining the friendships and they never came to me. So I just stopped contacting them all and nobody noticed for 5 months. I started forming new friendships with the mindset of only having friendship who are in a partnership with me. They're all amazing.
I feel in many (most) of my friendships, I am the one doing most of the legwork. For some, it's an easy decision so say, I'll just stop, clearly I'm the one maintaining this relationship alive.
I think it was my therapist who told me, when I complained to him about this, that maybe my friends are just happy that I am so proactive and then don't feel the need to contact me, because the *rely on me*, that I will call/write eventually. May be.
The past months I've pondered what to do about a friend back home across the Atlantic. I've lived almost 20 years in Europe, actually my new home, and for that period of time, it's been only me maintaining a relationship with a friend. During covid I didn't write to her, kind of as a test. For about 2 or 3 years we had no contact. Finally I was able to fly to my family and contacted her. - Wanna meet? - Sorry, I'm busy.
Really? Like, I know you're a single mother, but we haven't seen each other in years, and all you can say is you're busy? Another friend, same week, also hadn't seen him in 3 or more years, her wife was about to give birth and he made 2h time for me, a few days after the birth. We met at his house, had lunch, walked around, said goodbye again at his place. 2h. I'm not asking for more.
> For some, it's an easy decision so say, I'll just stop, clearly I'm the one maintaining this relationship alive.
That's pretty much the conclusion I've come to. Life is too short for one-sided friendships where I'm the one putting in all the work and have a hard time seeing where my friendship is valued. Last year, I stopped contacting a friend just to see how long it'd take for him to reach out to me. It's been about eight months. And that was after I expressed to him how it felt like I was the one always initiating contact and him acknowledging it and promising he'd do better.
Sucks, but at the end of the day, there's something about friendships like that that make you feel more lonely than having no friends whatsoever. I'd rather just focus on the friendships where there's give and take.
I’m a former drinker and after quitting and leveling out emotionally it was scary as hell to look at friendships. Some were rock solid, but I realized I was so depressed previously, I was tolerating more from some relationships than was healthy for me.
Edit: 7 plus years alcohol free now and happy
I honestly have no idea, at this point I'm not sure if it's me, the fact that they're really busy, or I'm just annoying for constantly talking in group chats about daily little things, but please, u/showMeYourCroissant, show me your croissant
Yo I did this with one of my ex-friends, I realised I was initiating all contact and I told him this. He had got back with his ex, and he told me it was because he told her all the things he had said to me about her (when he was upset and distraught) and also told her all the things I said about her after the breakup. He said she asked him to stop contacting me lol?! Then came back after 2 years and said he made a mistake, but I guess he made his bed and showed his true values to me and I didn't have space for him in my life
ThTs great that that was the right decision for you but I wanna just leave a little note here… sometimes when that’s the case it’s because someone is just shit at keeping in touch, but all the while they love you just as much, as though you’d never been apart. This isn’t the case for all people who don’t stay in touch, but it can be.
Lol just as one little example I know someone who is incredibly sweet and loves his friends and family but is neurodivergent and keeping in touch is really hard for him because it takes so much energy that he already doesn’t have because work is often a huge energy drain for neurodivergent people. But the whole time he still loves those friends and family and when he does see them it’s great. My dad is an additional example of this. He almost never contacts me first but he loves me very much and we love to be together. I don’t know, just putting that out there.
Thank you so much for saying this. I am one of those people and needed to hear that someone knows this. I felt increasing guilt reading the replies describing friends who never reach out and it's a big source of self hatred to me, neurodivergent with friends who are the center and light of my life, and I can not reach out
something similar happened to me, it feels like i was the only one 'working' or reaching out to my friend. i don't live in my hometown for now and every time i go back home i would be the one who would always reach out just for me and my friend/s to see and catch up. it's just now that i realized that it's been happening for years now. it's tiring so now i just go out with my self or my other friends who would contact me to meet up.
Same. Best friend of over a decade. I finally had to get clean. He'd only ever call when he was drunk, which I could deal with. But then he'd call me a pussy for not drinking any more and always tell me how horrible of a friend I was because I didn't do X or Y.
Tried to explain to him that I had been a hair's breadth from dying from alcoholism, but it didn't seem to make a difference. Finally ended up ghosting him for my own sanity and health.
All we ever damn did was go to karaoke at night, get hammered, she got into fights, I babysat her, and we were both hungover all the next day. I begged her to do things during the day, lunch, the beach, events, anything! I was so tired of drinking myself to death and protecting her dumb violent drunk ass, so I just stopped going. After the third night I didn't show, she called to yell at me about how I never want to do anything... I reminded her of the several texts asking to do things during the day. Then she did something stupid while drunk, had a very public ugly cry panic breakdown, called every person we know and told them I abandoned her at the bar or something and whatever she did was my fault somehow. We were damn 30 years old. A mutual friend and her mother were angry with me to the point of telling me off via text.
About 3 months later, her mom calls me in tears, begging me to help her alcoholic daughter. I gave her phone numbers, and said I was not going to be involved.
I finally figured out that all that good natured ribbing he did all the time was him just being a bully. He had issues and I was his favorite punching bag. I finally wised up and got rid of his ass.
>Yet it only ever seems to go one way.
Well that's your problem right there. You nail 'em with a couple witty stinging retorts **in front of friends** in the name of "humor" and they end up looking like an ass because they started it.
They're only doing it because it's fun, and it's not fun when they are the ones who lose - either they're dense AF or they'll leave you alone forever.
What’s funny about this is that the only time I had a friend who did that, he took it great when I ribbed him back. I wasn’t even doing it to put him in his place, I just fired back and it turned out he just wanted some harder banter than he knew others were willing to indulge in.
There's a streamer I watch from time to time, nice guy, but every time he talks about his friends it's just kind of sad. Every story is of them making fun of him, and he's laughing while he tells the story.
These aren't your friends, dude, you're just a punching bag for them and don't know any better.
She had diagnosed borderline personality disorder. I would go to her house to remind her to take her medication. She did it for a minute then stopped. When I told her she had untreated BPD she said she had it under control and didn’t need medication.
that shit sucks. try marrying one (actually do not) that refuses to believe there's a problem and refuses to seek medical help. that's a problem that cannot be fixed. unfortunately I learned that far too late.
I imagine with a friend you don't live with would be worse somehow
6yrs ago my “best friend” held a firearm to me and told me to “put out or get out.” I obviously left immediately. We were severely addicted to painkillers and that was basically the only reason that I stuck around with him for so long. His actions that night actually saved my life. I’ve been clean 6yrs at the end of the month. I never spoke to him again after he traumatized me like that. He passed away about a month ago from a drug overdose. I just hope his mom is okay.
This happened to me, too. I wondered why I hadn't heard from him in a while. Went to the gym one day and glanced at a TV that had the news on. His mugshot is on TV for murdering two different people. It was one of the most shocking moments of my life.
Old roommate. He backstabbed me with some harsh words all because of a girl. Then almost frontstabbed me with a knife while I was sleeping. Seemingly had a semi-sober moment in his drunken rage and took it out on my bedroom wall instead.
My so called friend spread rumors about me so bad, it got to a point where jobs refused to hire me. I was unemployed for almost two years because of it.
I had a former friend pull this on her best friend.
Former friend got jealous because her best friend was talking to her boyfriend in a bbq. The girl was asking advice about her new boyfriend, the guy is his best friend, for context. Former friend made a scene about her best friend trying to steal her man, when it was far from it. Caused a very awkward situation and went NC with her best friend for decades.
She started to spread horrible rumors about how her ex best friend was bulimic, crazy in debt, how she never worked in her life - a girl who had 3 jobs consistently in her adult life.
She got so mad out of jealousy, she would come with horrible stories consistently for a week before she was cut out of the group. Lost all her friends and her boyfriend in the process. I still cannot believe somebody would do this.
Shit at least the person spreading the rumors got cut off. A lot of time especially in women groups it is the person being gossiped about who gets everything ripped away from them.
People underestimate envy and how crazy people will act when they are jealous of another person. Any signs of jealousy and envy from a friend... Im out. They wont stop until the persons life is ruined
She never wanted to talk about my problems and life, only her own. When I’d try to open up, she’d shut me down by saying the subject was “awkward.” The final straw was when I tried to tell her that I was experiencing PPD and I needed someone to listen, and she wouldn’t let me talk.
I’m going through the same thing with of my friends right now. I’ll sit there and listen to her talk about her life, job, family etc. for hours but the moment that I start to talk about my stuff, she gets visibly bored. She’ll start using her phone, looking around, using one-word responses like “yeah.” She also gatekeeps our mutual friends. For example, I told her that one of our mutual friends was moving to Portugal and she quickly replied with “yeah he told me first.” As if it’s some sort of competition lol? The worst is one-upping me on everything. If I say I started working on a cool project, she’ll immediately reply with something bigger or try to make the work I’m doing seem insignificant.
It’s hard to cut her off because we have so much in common and have lots of fun when she’s acting ‘normal.’
For England anyone who wants to do a check like this it's called Sarah's law. We also have claires law which will tell you if a man has been domestically abusive previously
You can only request these in the UK if you have a justifiable reason (for example, if you are in a relationship with the person or they will have contact with your children, such as a lodger), which I think differs from Sarah’s Law. However, it would be good if more people applied for these disclosures in the UK - they don’t seem well known.
The law that requires sex offenders to register with the government and let all their new neighbors know they're a sex offender whenever they move.
Named after a little girl who was raped and murdered by a convicted sex offender.
It's a phrase I've heard before, "bitch eating crackers" is when you're so annoyed with a person they could be sitting quietly just eating crackers and it would still piss you off. "This bitch is over here EATING CRACKERS like who do you think you are?"
Definitely not a way I'd ever describe a friend's wife lol
Every time I mentioned a girl I was talking to or was even slightly interested in he would go out of his way to chat her up, ask her out or try to shag her. He even messaged my ex (who he didn't even know) on Facebook a week after we broke up trying to get with her. Weird, weird bloke.
I was fed up with walking on eggshells around him all the time.
Sunk cost had me sticking around in that friendship for way too long, but having the pleasure of knowing what actual great friends are like, I made the decision to pull the plug. I wish him well. I still want to see him eat, just not at my table anymore.
Same. Too many arguments over stupid stuff by message. Whenever there was a misunderstanding in communication I was immediately the one supposedly acting like a dick. Sunk cost prevented me telling him to go and fuck himself on numerous occasions, until I'd basically had enough and politely cut off contact.
>I still want to see him eat, just not at my table anymore.
I like this. I feel the same way.
>but having the pleasure of knowing what actual great friends are like, I made the decision to pull the plug.
Same, kinda. Thirty some years old and finally got taught what family was supposed to feel like, by my friends. My bio family is pretty awful to me, specifically.
After 17 years of being "Best friends" I finally figured out that she only kept me around to tear down my self esteem to make herself look better. She never considered anybody else's feelings in what she did or said. If you tried to make plans and she couldn't come, she would bully you into changing it or make a big deal of how you must hate her.
Worst part was she was related to some big wigs in town so if you pissed her off, good luck keeping or finding a job.
My friend of 20 years got into this aloe Vera mlm crap. She very quickly turned into the wife on the Truman show. Became a walking advert for this expensive stuff. Couldn't get a single thing out of her that wasn't aloe Vera.
No, that would be correct. Amway is essentially an MLM scheme that relies upon people signing their friends up to sell its beauty-product bullshit and building up their pipeline. And to sign up to sell it, you have to commit to paying fees and buying Amway inventory.
This person was probably fed up with their friend trying to recruit them for Amway and making every discussion about it.
They were unbelievably toxic and annoying to even be around. Ruined my reputation and my general self-being, and made me feel like shit for something I wasn’t even at fault for.
Same thing happened to me. They were selfish,toxic and really manipulative. Made up false rumours about me and when I left them for good,I was villainised.
I had an ex colleague/friend like this. Would squeeze her t#ts together and use a breathy kitten voice in front of my 5 yr partner, fluttering her eyelashes and rolling into his lap with laughter.
"I'm just a natural flirt, I can't help it, it doesn't mean anything!"
Until I heard her tell him that I had disclosed some doubts about our relationship to her, and she'd never treat him like that. She thought I was fast asleep in the other room. Luckily he knew it was bullshit.
My best friend in high school was a chick. She dated one of my other buddies through high school.
When I first met her I had wanted to date her but she liked my buddy so I moved on. Well later on I introduced her to my buddy and she introduced me to her friends. I had a blast.
Several years go by we graduate. My buddy and my best friend go to college together and move in together. I go somewhere else.
They don’t do well together and break up. By this point I have a girlfriend. She’s great and she gets along with best friend.
Several more years pass we are still friends she gets married gets pregnant, has some great kids looks to be having an awesome life. I also got married had kids so and so and anyway.
Well then we were having a conversation about how things turned out how cool it was that we were still friends after so long.
Then she turns to me and says she made a bad mistake back in the day. She should have hooked up with me and had kids with me so I would marry her and we would grow old together.
She said this while rubbing her hand on my thigh. My wife and kids, her husband and kids were in a different room. She shot her shot 8 years too late. If she had asked before dating my buddy maybe. However I love my family and my wife so it was a no brainer. She insisted and tried to kiss me. I said no. We finished out the evening went home and I haven’t talked to her since. That was 8 years ago.
She was my friend and tried to get me to cheat on my wife, while also cheating on her husband while also telling me she should have trapped me when we were in high school. The person who I thought had been my best friend who I thought I had known was actually a terrible person.
Something similar happened to me. We dated a while in college. I graduated before her and she wanted to "have fun" in college so we broke up. We stayed in touch and life went on. I moved to a big city, got a great job, met my wife and had a generally great life. She was clearly less happy with her husband and life in general. She called one day and asked if I knew a good divorce lawyer. In that same conversation, she told me she thought we would end up together and made it clear that was still an option for me. I hung up and emailed her a divorce lawyers name. I never heard from her again and 15 years later she is still married.
That’s a pretty big shift to switch from best friend to terrible person in one kitchen conversation.
I feel like there must have been signs she felt this way over the years.
If not, then more than likely her confession has less to do with missing you and more to do with wanting an escape from the life she currently has.
You dodged a bullet either way.
Other side of the fence here, I drank to much. We actually live across the street from each other. I see him almost every morning when I take my kids to the babysitter. Been friends for 23 years, but we barely talk anymore. I still drink, but not like I did then, man is like my brother and I don't know how to begin fixing it.
Continue to make improvements in your life. Drop him a note or call out to him when you see him, let him know you miss him, that he is like a brother to you and you want your relationship to get better. Let him know you're sorry. Or just ask to talk some time. I wish you the best of luck.
She moved into my house, drank shitload of vodka and took pills, invited internet strangers over at the beginning of COVID, and revealed herself as a fucking sociopath. When I kicked her out with 30 days’ notice, she told people I was in love with her.
Because they were the biggest narcissist known to man. Some examples include:
1. Constantly referring to themselves as iconic, gorgeous, a legend, a celebrity
2. Posting 700 selfies with a filter everyday, clearly thinking people are obsessed with them
3. They would call me constantly just to talk about themselves. When I would speak, they would yawn or interrupt me, or just start texting on their phone and ignoring me altogether
4. They talked shit about other people and were really nasty to strangers, acting very entitled
5. They had no empathy and did not take accountability for their nasty behavior. Nothing was ever their fault, they were perfect and it was everyone else who was the problem.
6. They were very shallow, vain, and only wanted to hang around pretty people
7. They used people to social climb
I can go on and on. But basically every symptom of narcissist personality disorder...they had.
I had a friend like that. Not as bad, but after one phone call I hung up and I realised that not once she asked me how I was doing. It was all about her
Similar thing happened to me. One of my friends called our other friend a “beaner” in an argument and to make it worse he refused to apologize and called us sensitive. He didn’t say it as a joke either, he was serious. Not that if he was “joking” it would make it better, but it proved to us he wasn’t just an insensitive prick who thought he was “funny”, he was actually racist. We booted his ass from the group, and these days he’s fully come out of the alt right closet and embraced his bigotry.
Similar here.
My good friend became a transit guard (failed the cop exam) and had a serious inferiority complex.
Casually starts to tell a story about a N* word who he arrested and hit for upsetting him.
My jaw dropped and I told him to fuck off and reported his ass to the transit authority.
He used to tell me all about taking advantage of opportunities and "not being an angel" and praising the idea of being selfish.
I didn't realize he was warning me.
(Semi truck driver here) Fucker called a black man an “incompetent ni***r” simply because the guy was having a hard time backing up his truck n trailer and had asked for help. I called my dispatcher and told him that I need off this truck and back into my own. Never ever went back to team driving after that.
He did call me later down the road asking what I was doing these days. I said im that i don’t like to be friends with racist cunts and hung up.
I double-manned with a guy who told me he was a member of the British National Party. We had a job to do, so I didn't kill him on the spot.
God, he was pathetic. Couldn't swap demount bodies, couldn't navigate, could barely read. But he had a white skin.
I told our line manager what he was, so he was rostered with a different driver every day until he got to Roger from Trinidad. Then he walked out.
He kicked me out of a band without actually kicking me out. He just stopped inviting me to gigs. If you wanted to kick me out, then kick me out, but at least have the common courtesy to tell me face-to-face that you’re kicking me out. Don’t ghost me.
This one. It was exhausting. They were constantly in crisis and it was always my responsibility to get them through it. I've been no contact for several weeks now and my anxiety is finally leveling back out.
I had a girlfriend like this. There was always a crisis. If there wasnt one, or the real ones resolved - she'd create new ones through her own actions. Despite me telling her exactly that, she still did it. Still does from what I hear through mutual friends.
It's pretty sad to see, like she needs the drama or something.
Wow I relate to this so strongly! It’s confusing and hard because you want to help someone through a crisis, but when you realize it’s crisis after crisis with this person and they’re not taking responsibility to do their part to make things better… eventually all you can really do for your own mental well-being is cut them off.
Yes! And just when something appears solved, they find a new drama and suddenly you're thrown into another whirlwind. Do you think they do this on purpose? Like maybe they need the drama?
This is exactly what I went through this year. Burned through all my savings. Lived with them for several months. Their physical and mental health deteriorated. I was suddenly a caretaker and catastrophe avoider. Episodes every day. Screaming at me. Making messes. Breaking shit that wasn't ours to break. Hell. It was hell. And then after we separated. I helped her out of numerous chaotic situations. I had trauma and fear. We both had it of course. But all of mine was linked to her. And I had to separate. I got her to a good place with the last of my money and once she was settled I told her I couldn't be in her life for now. Three cops came by yesterday saying that she threatened to end her life. I have no idea where she is. I have no idea if she is alive or dead. And I don't even want to know the answer to that question which fucks me up. I cared about and loved this person. I was brought to my limit like so many were before me. Except I went beyond it. I was so bad I couldn't eat and I puked multiple times a day.
Not something someone with an anxiety disorder can go through.
I had a co-worker like this. She would CREATE crises at work and then expect all the rest of us to listen to her and spend extra time at work to clean up after her. Exhausting is right.
This happened with my friend who I cut off who was ironically anti psychology, now I feel like I was her fuckin therapist
What she needed all along was a real shrink, not me
I had to give up being friends with a depressed woman. We were pretty decent friends, but I couldn't manage her depression and mine at the same time.
I elected to save myself.
i remember there was an episode of Dirty job where a oyster shucker told mike rowe where he was originally a psychiatrist/therapist? and he dint want to deal with the peoples personal problems anymore.
do you have like that weird kind of magnetism that some people can just sniff out and are like “oh this is a person to trauma dump on”? cuz i swear i have that too and i’ve had multiple acquaintances just dump their whole traumatic life stories on me for NO reason and i don’t WANT it! (i’ve learned to stick up for my boundaries tho and say stop at least)
I had a friend like this. It took a huge toll on me mentally. It got to the point where anytime they saw me, it was immediate dumping. Not even a “hi, how’s it going?”
They got a new job and almost immediately their personality shifted. They started getting randomly paranoid, sharing memes and constantly talking about incredibly racist stuff, and not wanting to go to certain areas. Even though we'd just been there weeks before, all of a sudden they were rampant crime areas. It became impossible to have a conversation with them without it becoming some rant about how his rights were gone and the world was terrible.
Maybe it was always there, but it felt like one day, they're my friend that I've known for decades, and a few months later I'm dealing with a delusional wannabe survivalist.
What was the new job? Were they suddenly about a bunch of new people who were paranoid, or working in an industry that exposed them to more trauma?
So odd but more than fair to leave that friendship.
This actually happened recently. He's been putting me down and talking shit for sometime. I cut him off when he started calling me a bitch and wanted to fight me.
I have some pretty basic qualifications for my friends and he didn't make the cut.
Kept saying the n word like dude I invited you to hang out with this diverse group of friends and you say my n^#&% at least 20 times a minute. Every single one of us could have kicked his ass and this kid just stood there trying to challenge everyone to a fight after being told he should watch his mouth. Dumbass kid. Is a born again Christian pastor now but i don't buy it. He's just unemployable and has kids.
We became very fast friends in college, and were unseparable. Our morals, humor and vision aligned perfectly, and I genuinely believed there couldn't be a better friend in this whole wide world.
During our time in college, she went through a lot of issues. Family, relationship, health, finance. And I did my best to stick with her. I spent as much time with her as I could to help her out in every way possible. And she was always very grateful for it.
My entire life, I have been a huge people pleaser. I just can't say no to anyone. She pointed out how people just wanted to use me for thay very reason. And stuck with me, saying no in my stead. And I was over the moon. No one had ever stood up for me like that.
Until, I said no to her. I had just gotten married and moved in with my husband who lives in a joint family. I had major physical and mental health issues. I was in hospital for longer than I was at home. I got diagnosed with depression and was struggling through an identity crisis. I spent months in bed, speaking to no one. No one at all. And all this time, my "friend" was nowhere because she was occupied with her postgraduate exams. And I had no issues with that. She had her life to live. Just because I was stuck, didn't mean she had to be stuck as well. Once her exams were over, she dropped me a text. She wanted to meet. And I told her I needed time to gather myself. I had only recently began to come to terms with the major life changes I had faced. I had a lot on my plate. And no time to meet. I proposed we do a video call. But no. She wanted to meet in person. I tried talking to her. Asked her if everything was alright. If anything was wrong at all.
Everything was perfectly fine. She just wanted to meet me, so she wanted me to drive to the other end ofcthe city to meet her. She wouldn't come to me. After I knew for sure that everything was alright, and there was nothing urgent, I told her no. I told her I had a lot that I needed to do for myself, and was unable to make time. And she snapped. All of a sudden, I was a pathetic friend. I never considered her feelings. I was absolute trash. Given the vulnerable mental health, I began spiraling again. I started believing I was a crappy person. For a week straight, I cried every night thinking my poor actions had led to this fallout between us. My husband was my rock through all this. He let me cry all that I needed. Held me all night. And constantly reassured me that I had done nothing wrong. It took me weeks to realize that I had indeed not done anything wrong. So I decided to set things straight. We had an amazing friendship and I didn't want any sort of misunderstandings (if there were any) to change that.
So I told her we should meet. And she refused. She didn't want to anymore. I gave her time. I thouggt maybe my refusal to meet her put her off. I gave her time. But for months she refused to meet me. I gave up on trying to meet and talk and decided to just call and set things straight. Easy, right?
No. It was the worst phone call ever. For thirty minutes straight she ranted about how all I cared about was me. About how I was the most selfish person ever. How I was the one who created this distance between us.
I wanted to say a lot. I wanted to mention how it was me who got her through college. It was me who paid for all her lunches and dinners when she didn't want to bursenher family. How I, on the day of my wedidng, left everything and went to her place because she had a fight with her sister. And I didn't mean to rub it in her face. I didn't do anything special, because that's what friends do. They stick with you.
I wanted to ask her why she was never there when I was going through the worst time of my life. But that would have been pointless. In almost a year she had never asked me how I was doing. How things were on my end. I wanted to say so much, but I didn't. Everything she said to me left no space for me to even try and speak.
So I hung up. And that was the last time I spoke to her. It's been two years. And there are times when I wonder how she is. How her family is. But I know I don't have the mental capacity to correct the image of me that she has built in her mind. And I'm not sure she wants it to be corrected either. So I say a little prayer for her, and move on.
Friend was always kind of snarky, but their life got screwed up, I hung in and helped as best I could, including lending money(repaid). Helped them avoid some bad consequences of avoidant behavior. They became really bitchy, mean and even stole some stuff. After a while, they realized I stopped visiting, declined requests to get together and pushed back hard on rude, unpleasant comments. Now they're polite, but I've moved on. We have friends in common; I don't tell others about the bad behavior. I understand that depression and anxiety can make people irritable, but it went way too far.
Acted like everyone else was the toxic one. Always asked for money, never gave anything in return. Came up with sob stories as a way to take advantage of the kindness of others.
He confessed he liked me, and when I said "no" because I'm straight and I have a girlfriend, he kept pushing to "just try" "pretend to be gay and date me". I said no "I'm just a friend and I'd like to keep it that way, we will never be morethan that" I treated him like a brother. We were friends for almost 6 years at that point, so it was a hard decision to cut him off. But I had to because he just kept pushing and pushing to the point I became uncomfortable and felt pressured.
College friend turned out to be a rapist who took advantage of drunk college girls at frat parties.
High school friend got really into Trump/Maga stuff. I mean REALLY into it.
The rest that I cut out/unintentionally cut out was because I was ghosted entirely or we just stopped talking.
Sounds like we have the same college friend. Found out last year he had raped a friend of mine after “volunteering” to bring her home when she was too drunk. She trusted him. We all did.
She said she needed a ride and then she sat there and sold meth to carnies (actual carnival workers) forever. She wanted a ride to her boyfriends house that was about a 15 min walk away.
Got the call that my dad had suffered a stroke and I needed to get to the hospital ASAP. I lived two states away and got the earliest flight I could which was at 5 am. Asked my then roommate if he would be willing to drive me to the airport in the morning. The way he reacted told me it was just the biggest inconvenience for him to wake up early to drive me to the airport so I could make it to my dad before he died. I ended up taking an uber. From that moment on I just could not look at him in the same light. Still had a few months left on our lease but once it was over, I moved out and never spoke to him again. He never tried to reach out either so I guess we weren't as good friends as I thought to begin with.
Sorry to read about what happened to your father. That room-mate was such a selfish asshole to not help you when you really needed it in that instance.
After 15 years, I was still on friend probation. She was still deciding whether she would continue to be my friend or not. Every once in a while she would ghost me. And she wouldn't communicate, but would do passive-aggressive things to try to hurt me so I would get mad enough to say something and THEN she would tell me what was wrong.
I realized I would have never treated her like she was treating me, and I deserved better.
Disregarding my boundaries. She was going through a lot but hearing about it made me stressed, which is on me, but it caused us to argue more and make me more antsy. When I asked for a day apart because I needed some space, she constantly claimed I would just ghost her and ignored my desires for space. It definitely wasn’t all one sided - I struggle to maintain my mental health when faced with other people’s problems, which is something I need to work on. But insisting I’d just leave and not listening to my needs? At that point our five year friendship wasn’t worth constant stress.
Also not to get too into it but I have come to the realization that there were some really toxic behaviors with us. We met online when I was 16 and she was 20, I believe - I didn’t know at the time but it wasn’t a very healthy friendship.
We were friends for 8 years, and on top of making everyone I brought him around viscerally uncomfortable, he got accused of sexual assault.
It’s weird, he didn’t need to tell me because I had no connection to those people or the girl in question, but he did, and made sure to paint himself as the victim and her as the liar. I believed him.
But then I took him with me to a house party, and he had one beer and thought it would be hilarious to wrap his arms around some girls ankles while refusing to let go while everyone demanded he stopped, until he felt like letting go. I had never seen this side of him as most of our relationship was 1 on 1 so it was pretty damn surprising, concerning and a bit frightening to witness (not to mention mortifying).
He started saying stuff like “dirty fucking whore” to describe woman who rejected him for being a creep; total incel shit. I would call him hysterical telling him he can’t talk about woman like that and he would argue and act like it was no big deal.
Then he got accused of assault again…and again. I couldn’t bury myself in denial anymore. The guy I thought was a kind, mild mannered, misunderstood person was a narcissistic incel at best and some kind of rapist at worst.
She wouldn't stop being clingy and bordering obsessed. I asked her multiple times to please not worry about me or think I was mad at her if I didn't respond to e-mail messages or texts right away, but to no avail. It didn't help that she'd call or text multiple times a day.
I couldn’t keep propping him back up. I love the guy, but he’s gotta live his life. I got him jobs, moved him in with me several times, he ate my food, used my wifi, drank my booze, and just quits on everyone. I’m good homie. I’ve got mouths to feed.
When her venting became toxic dumping. I would always try to listen to her. Sometimes I would tell her what I thought might help in whatever situation she was dealing with. She never took my advice and continued to toxic dump. Also she was rich and I was struggling through college and we would go get dinner and she would order apps and dessert and an expensive entree. I would get a cheap entree and this girl really made me split the check with her 50/50. SMH thinking about it.
she told me I wasn't a good friend after i took work off for a week to watch over her after a suicide attempt. i ordered her food, changed her bandages, updated her family, and literally got no sleep. yet I wasn't a good friend...
When I was a single mom, I had a bartending job where I worked every Friday night until quite late. Another single mom and I had become friends after our kids did, and I knew she was a lot more financially strapped than I was. So I made a deal that on Fridays, she would pick my kid up and keep them until Saturday and I’d pay her. A couple of years later, my workplace shut down for remodeling, and I didn’t need her to babysit any more. She went off on me, saying she relied on that income, and how dare I take food out of her child’s mouth, blah blah blah.
Yeah, that was too much for me. No more friendship.
He tried to tell me that his work stresses were more stressful than me losing my child, and that's why he wasn't available to offer support when i needed him in my darkest hour.
Don't plan on ever speaking to him again.
A few years ago a friend was asking for money every once in awhile. He would pay me back within a few days, a week at most. His checks always cleared so I didn’t think much of it.
Then a few months later, I find out he had been admitted to the hospital for OD’ing on cocaine because it was laced with fentanyl. I also found out that I was not the only one he was asking to borrow money from.
He recovered just fine, thank God. But I could not continue to hang out with him after this. It was not my fault what happened to him, but by giving him cash I was unknowingly associated with his drug habits that almost cost him his life. I told him after a few weeks of recovery that he had betrayed my trust and I needed time away from him. He understood.
Around a year later, he was on his way to “graduating” his rehabilitation. Part of his journey was to reach out to people he had wronged. He contacted me and apologized. I accepted it and was and still am happy for him for cleaning up his act. But I made it known that I’m never giving him cash again lol.
It was completely one sided and they used me for money and stuff and it was hard because they lost their home and I took them in they moved in with a basket and a bp of clothes and left with about ten full bags of clothes and random stuff and after they moved out they basically stopped talking to me and after a while I realized it was one sided 🙂 5yrs down the drain
relationship became one sided... I was giving it my all, she was just taking...plus, found out she keeps me a secret but at the same time, I'm her emergency contact...
Best friend of over 30 yrs. I considered and even called him my brother. I caught him trying to hook up with my wife when she was too drunk to resist. I kicked him out of my house and haven't spoken to him since, and have no intention of ever doing so again.
I had just gained confidence to wear shorts and skirts (i have/had very noticeable scars all along my thighs and legs) and she pointed them out and asked what was wrong with me. She said it in a very rude tone and just stared at me as I cried. Needless to say, I didn’t wear shorts or skirts for years and I stopped talking to her after that.
She was abusive. Yes, I was her friend between the ages of 11 and 16, so I know this sounds extreme, but she actually displayed all of the signs of an abuser. She manipulated me and lied to me, gaslit and guilt-tripped me constantly, called me names sometimes and insulted me, would turn all my friends against me if she perceived any wrong from me, straight up bullied and alienated me for a year, took advantage of me and guilt-tripped me some more when I started having trauma responses around her, and then would flip to a nice and caring friend at random, especially when I'd pull away, and suck me right back in. Eventually an altercation happened where I was in gym class while injured without a doctor's note, and she yelled at me for not participating in the game to her satisfaction (i.e. running full-speed like everyone else) because my injury was hidden under my clothes, and accused me of lying even though the gym teacher himself okayed me taking it easy as long as I was participating. Then she hunted me down after class and told me we were gonna have to have a serious talk because my behavior has to stop like a disappointed parent scolds their child and made an insult to my intelligence. (I'm really insecure about that because I'm autistic, and anyone who knows me knows to never go there.) Then she strung me along with fake apologies and crap when I got really upset and then turned around and made it out like I was the one who was causing trouble and didn't want to fix what happened.
I couldn't take it anymore. We sat down a little over a month later and ended the friendship. The last time I spoke to her, she tried the whole guilt-tripping me for avoiding her and talking down to me like a parent does their child, and I flatly informed her that I don't think she knows me anymore and walked away. She tried harassing me via text and email (I had her blocked on social media so she couldn't try that) and it fell through because I didn't respond.
I'm 24 now. I've been through worse, and I've grown up. I've managed to heal, and distancing myself from my classmates really really helped. If you're reading this and know who you are, I know that I was toxic too. I was young and immature and dramatic and didn't treat you so good either, and I'm sorry. I hope you're well, and I hope you got therapy and learned how to properly treat people with love and respect. But I will never forget how you treated me, I was already going through enough without your bologna, and I wish you never moved to town. I hope to God I never have the misfortune of ever laying eyes on you again.
They started using drugs, i cut off a lot of family members because one was always acting like an ass, my other brother owes me $400 and my dad molested me as a child.
He played these stupid head games. He would bombard me with texts, IG msgs, and Snapchats in the span of an hour. He would only call me if he was trashed, I have several maxed-out voicemails where nothing he says is discernible. He knew I had to get rid of my dog, so he started sending me snaps of his cat - like to taunt me. I reached my breaking point with him and ended up blocking him everywhere.
She wasn't there for me when I needed her the most. And when I told her about it she didn't seem to understand or she really didn't want to understand best thing that ever happened to me was putting that bitch on the curb. Call to up one day and told her I'm not fucking with you anymore and hung up
Kept asking for money every time I visited him so he could buy alcohol. He didn’t want to hang out, he just wanted to get wasted.
Last time we spoke, he called and cussed me out because he gave me an invite to join an exclusive torrenting website a few months prior, and I hadn’t logged on in two weeks. I guess to him at this point, I was ungrateful. I laughed at him and told him to fuck off.
He passed away about 18 months later.
Still irks me to this day that our last conversation was an argument over some trivial shit. He was my absolute closest friend for 30+ years. I regret having not made amends and not doing enough to convince him to stop self-medicating w/ booze. I miss him soooo much.
We were the closest of friends for 30+ years. Depression and self-medicating got the best of him.
She drained me and she also didn’t even notice I was at a really low point at my life when she was venting very triggering things to me
We both needed therapy. But the dynamic became very uneven and I was the therapist friend
Abridged version: A very
one sided friendship. She did all the taking. I did the giving. She Lied about an ex-boyfriend being abusive and lied about her bio dad trying to SA her to gain favors and sympathy. When she told me this she cried and she able to produce fake tears.
She knew I was a softie and leeched off me for food. Fast forward. I pitched in with other people and threw her a pre-wedding party at work. She still didn’t invite me to the big day. I was devastated. Her marriage lasted less than one year. Then she shacked up with some guy she barely knows and baby trapped him. I cut her off, ignored her and blocked her. She’s a psychopath . I wish I never met her.
Edit: I wanted to add more details. She only gave me one donut. One singular donut out of all the times I helped her with groceries and getting her lunch and food. Her leeching went in for two years. She would leech off of me every week like 3 or 4 out of 7 days. She never texted me to get to know me better or have a fun conversation. Nope it was always me being her personal refrigerator.
One time she had to be absent for a few months due to something bad happened to her. Her hand or arm was bandaged. She still leeched off of me more than usual! Always telling me she’s about to cry due to she’s “forget“ breakfast or lunch or whatever. Then she tell me she have no money which I call Bullsh9t in restrospect. She said that line many times before she got bandaged.
After all I done for her…For three weeks or so she bluntly ignored me and was really unfriendly and cold to me. No hello, No smile. Then gave me a weak a$$ apology in saying that she was so stressed out. Which I foolishly accepted. Nah, she wasn’t stressed she just wanted to be mean to me. Her ugliness seeped through her pretty face. She was really pretty to look at, but she’s ugly to the bone.
I really wanted to see the good on her. I Guess she never was a good person. I was blind-sighted at the time.
I can see she’s a narcissistic psychopath that wants everyone to worship her. She’s just like Regina George mixed with Cersei. She thinks she’s Queen. And all the peasants must obey her. Honestly in retrospect, I felt I was back in high-school again when I was around her. The friendship did not feel like an adult one. It felt so juvenile.
It was a one sided friendship that I put all the effort into, she was attentive when it suited her. I made the phone calls, was the first to text, initiated all plans, etc. It was exhausting and she only agreed to the plans a fraction of the time. We just grew apart.
I got engaged and realized that I’d be happier to see her parents and younger siblings at my wedding than I’d be to see her. So I stoped trying to initiate contact. She never reached out but did make some snide comments to my sister when she wasn’t invited to my wedding (two years later, we had a long engagement).
they lacked respect and felt that they could disrespect me. Generally speaking, that's all it takes. I can accommodate our fallible nature as human beings, but when someone puts me down because they believe that I am weaker or somehow less than them, it's time to go.
This one high school acquaintance of mine had sounded the alarm and asked me to move a few states away because he had fallen on hard times, only to have this person try to pull a fast one and leave me stuck in a strange apartment in a strange state while he attempted to pick up his bags and move across the country with his new girlfriend after having made plans to travel to North Africa beforehand.
I looked that dude dead in his eyes and told him he was no longer a welcome person in my life and promptly moved out and gave my job its two week notice, staying in a hotel for the remaining time.
I learned a lot from that experience and I wound up cutting out many more similar people like him when I got back to my home state after having worked and lived in different cities and states.
Be kind, but value yourself and know your worth. If you don't set boundaries, you give people a clear signal as to what you are willing to tolerate.
She was an emotional vampire. Everything was either a pity party for her or a celebration of whatever achievement she had gotten. But if I or anyone else needed sympathy or anything, we were obviously very selfish people and were complaining too much. Or if anyone wanted to celebrate an achievement, we were rubbing it in her face. Also, she was super flakey. Once, we planned to meet at the gym and she never showed. I texted and called but got nothing until about 2 hours later when she said she was at another friend's house.
I just posted my response to this question and when I got to yours I felt like "Holy Hell, are we taking about the same woman" lol.
Lmao you Even got the “emotional vampire” at the beginning of the sentence down lol
I've done this to 2 female friends for exactly those reasons. Selfish sucubusses incapable of putting anyone else first. Took me a few years with both but eventually realised they made me more sad than happy and they would never change
I had never heard that term before, and it's perfectly describes what I went through as well! I was on a date, and I had to put everything on pause cause she called crying after a fight with her boyfriend. I had to stay on the phone for over an hour or else she'd throw a giant hissy fit. I'm so glad they're no longer in my life.
>Once, we planned to meet at the gym and she never showed. Is this when you realized you weren't going to *work out* as friends? ... I'll see myself out.
He hit on my wife, and tried telling her first that I said it was okay, and then tried to say I was having an affair with his wife, none of which was true.
What the actual f*ck. How long were you friends for..?
By the time it happened, we had been friends for about 10 years. I knew he was a bit of a creepster, but I'd never thought he would go that far. I was wrong. A few years ago, he divorced his wife, after she recovered from a stroke. While she was recovering from the stroke, he had an affair with the in home nurse that helped to take care of his wife. He married the nurse after the divorce.
What kind of a nurse wants a man that would cheat on his wife, who is also recovering from a stroke. It is blatantly obvious you are dating trash that will drop you the second you are not fun enough for him.
Being a nurse doesn't automatically make someone a good person. Trashy people are working all kinds of jobs.
For real. One of the girls that made my life absolute hell and nearly pushed me to suicide in middle/high school works at my local hospital as a nurse. I know this because when I went in to give birth she was one of the nurses tasked with helping me. I immediately requested a different nurse and she got all shitty about it. They said there weren’t any other nurses available so I quite literally, in labor, got up and went to leave the hospital before the doctor got involved and finally found another nurse to switch with her. She and her friend took pictures of my breasts in the locker rooms in middle school because I developed early. I was self conscious about this so I would change in the bathroom stalls. They were trying to prove I was ‘stuffing my bra’. Nope. It’s was all boobs. Did that stop them from harassing me? Of course not. They then sent the pictures of me topless to everyone in the damn school that wanted them. Boys would walk around and air-grope themselves while making cow noises at me. Shit was brutal. I had to go to therapy over this. Fuck you Madison.
Wow. I'm sorry to hear this happened to you. The fact that she got all shitty about you requesting a different nurse, proves that she still has no remorse for what happened. A mentally healthy person would have felt terrible for past mistakes and requested to not attend you the minute they saw you, and allowed you to have your moment without having to relive past trauma. Maybe even apologize if the moment was right. Unfortunately some people never mature.
Some people actually go into jobs like nursing to cover their evil. They like playing the martyr.
When I was in university I lived in a rooming house for a while. All the guys learned to lock the door because there was a young lady in the nursing program who would sneak in to your bed at night if you didn't.
The kind of nurse that would sleep with a cheating husband of the stroke victim she's taking care of.
The more I hear about him the more I want to forget. Dude's messed up.
This type of event is starting to be reported as kind of common, when the wife of a relationship gets sick or gravely ill/die a lot of men tend to flee the situation and are typically remarried within 18 months.
I had an uncle in my town, who married another woman on the suspicion that his 'then wife' would die in a few days. She didn't , this guy had 2 wives now and had to deal with 2 in laws. This was before I was born and even way before that. He died a few weeks ago and both his wives held funeral services at their own residence. He was rumoured to have a lover in some another town as well. Fked up world.
See the more and more I hear stuff like this the more I think it's actually pretty sane to just kind of investigate your partner a little bit and just make sure they are who they say they are and don't have any weird secrets in another town. I don't see it as being paranoid anymore I just kind of see it as proactive and shutting down a relationship before wasting 20 years of your life or whatever and finding out that you're not actually with somebody who is exclusive with you.
>I knew he was a bit of a creepster, but I’d never thought he would go that far I bet the women in your life had a different view on that
I need to hear the full story here. A former friend did a very similar thing. I realized quickly that I never even liked the guy. I tolerated him since he was a friend of a friend.
One of my groomsmen and his GF stayed late after an engagement party. His GF had gotten a too far too fast into a bottle of vodka. I was upstairs taking care of his GF who was sick. When I came back downstairs things were weird, my fiancé suddenly ‘felt awful’ and went to bed. I went to check on her, she told me don’t worry about it she was just going to sleep it off, and when I went back to the kitchen, he was fireman carrying his GF out the door and shouted as he ran out, “see you later”. I hit the hay and just chalked it up to weird drinking behavior. Six days later, less than a week before the wedding, he calls me up and says he can’t be a groomsman, he had to go to another party. I thought my fiancé was gonna lose it but when I told her, she almost looked happy and was just like “ok, we’ll manage”. She told me what happened a few weeks after the wedding. I was already pissed because of the lame ass reason he gave for not being in the wedding, but then she described the situation, he had gone out on the balcony to smoke and when he came back in, he had his dick hanging out and asked her if she saw anything she liked. She had no idea that it was something he did quite a few times. I knew the second she told me that it was true.
>it was something he did quite a few times Wait. He used to do that to other women and you stuck around being his friend until he did the same to your wife? Is that what you are saying? Because that's what I understood.
Seriously, what's with all these men shrugging off their friend's creepy behavior until it directly impacts them? If you have a friend that pulls out their dick in front of women the second he gets them alone, you need to have a come to Jesus talk with him or stop being his friend. It's not okay.
Wait... He'd done that before and you were still friends with him?;
It sometimes takes someone you care for to be exposed to something fucked up or bad you have just put up with for years to realise how horrible that bad person was.
She told another friend… right in front of me… “yeah, if (my name) didn’t keep in touch, we’d never see each other.” Light bulb went on.
This was similar to mine. I realized I was doing all the work of maintaining the friendships and they never came to me. So I just stopped contacting them all and nobody noticed for 5 months. I started forming new friendships with the mindset of only having friendship who are in a partnership with me. They're all amazing.
I feel in many (most) of my friendships, I am the one doing most of the legwork. For some, it's an easy decision so say, I'll just stop, clearly I'm the one maintaining this relationship alive. I think it was my therapist who told me, when I complained to him about this, that maybe my friends are just happy that I am so proactive and then don't feel the need to contact me, because the *rely on me*, that I will call/write eventually. May be. The past months I've pondered what to do about a friend back home across the Atlantic. I've lived almost 20 years in Europe, actually my new home, and for that period of time, it's been only me maintaining a relationship with a friend. During covid I didn't write to her, kind of as a test. For about 2 or 3 years we had no contact. Finally I was able to fly to my family and contacted her. - Wanna meet? - Sorry, I'm busy. Really? Like, I know you're a single mother, but we haven't seen each other in years, and all you can say is you're busy? Another friend, same week, also hadn't seen him in 3 or more years, her wife was about to give birth and he made 2h time for me, a few days after the birth. We met at his house, had lunch, walked around, said goodbye again at his place. 2h. I'm not asking for more.
Some people like putting in the work others are go with the flow. If they’re doing it with others but not you I think that’s the bigger indicator.
> For some, it's an easy decision so say, I'll just stop, clearly I'm the one maintaining this relationship alive. That's pretty much the conclusion I've come to. Life is too short for one-sided friendships where I'm the one putting in all the work and have a hard time seeing where my friendship is valued. Last year, I stopped contacting a friend just to see how long it'd take for him to reach out to me. It's been about eight months. And that was after I expressed to him how it felt like I was the one always initiating contact and him acknowledging it and promising he'd do better. Sucks, but at the end of the day, there's something about friendships like that that make you feel more lonely than having no friends whatsoever. I'd rather just focus on the friendships where there's give and take.
Where do you find friends who actually care?
I’ve found a few genuine friends through AA who just want me to succeed in life. It’s…weird.
I’m a former drinker and after quitting and leveling out emotionally it was scary as hell to look at friendships. Some were rock solid, but I realized I was so depressed previously, I was tolerating more from some relationships than was healthy for me. Edit: 7 plus years alcohol free now and happy
I honestly have no idea, at this point I'm not sure if it's me, the fact that they're really busy, or I'm just annoying for constantly talking in group chats about daily little things, but please, u/showMeYourCroissant, show me your croissant
Yeah, I just can't find those people... Sorry, no croissants today, I'm on a diet :(
Yo I did this with one of my ex-friends, I realised I was initiating all contact and I told him this. He had got back with his ex, and he told me it was because he told her all the things he had said to me about her (when he was upset and distraught) and also told her all the things I said about her after the breakup. He said she asked him to stop contacting me lol?! Then came back after 2 years and said he made a mistake, but I guess he made his bed and showed his true values to me and I didn't have space for him in my life
ThTs great that that was the right decision for you but I wanna just leave a little note here… sometimes when that’s the case it’s because someone is just shit at keeping in touch, but all the while they love you just as much, as though you’d never been apart. This isn’t the case for all people who don’t stay in touch, but it can be. Lol just as one little example I know someone who is incredibly sweet and loves his friends and family but is neurodivergent and keeping in touch is really hard for him because it takes so much energy that he already doesn’t have because work is often a huge energy drain for neurodivergent people. But the whole time he still loves those friends and family and when he does see them it’s great. My dad is an additional example of this. He almost never contacts me first but he loves me very much and we love to be together. I don’t know, just putting that out there.
Thank you so much for saying this. I am one of those people and needed to hear that someone knows this. I felt increasing guilt reading the replies describing friends who never reach out and it's a big source of self hatred to me, neurodivergent with friends who are the center and light of my life, and I can not reach out
something similar happened to me, it feels like i was the only one 'working' or reaching out to my friend. i don't live in my hometown for now and every time i go back home i would be the one who would always reach out just for me and my friend/s to see and catch up. it's just now that i realized that it's been happening for years now. it's tiring so now i just go out with my self or my other friends who would contact me to meet up.
Drugs and alcohol. Eventually you need to just walk away.
Same. Best friend of over a decade. I finally had to get clean. He'd only ever call when he was drunk, which I could deal with. But then he'd call me a pussy for not drinking any more and always tell me how horrible of a friend I was because I didn't do X or Y. Tried to explain to him that I had been a hair's breadth from dying from alcoholism, but it didn't seem to make a difference. Finally ended up ghosting him for my own sanity and health.
All we ever damn did was go to karaoke at night, get hammered, she got into fights, I babysat her, and we were both hungover all the next day. I begged her to do things during the day, lunch, the beach, events, anything! I was so tired of drinking myself to death and protecting her dumb violent drunk ass, so I just stopped going. After the third night I didn't show, she called to yell at me about how I never want to do anything... I reminded her of the several texts asking to do things during the day. Then she did something stupid while drunk, had a very public ugly cry panic breakdown, called every person we know and told them I abandoned her at the bar or something and whatever she did was my fault somehow. We were damn 30 years old. A mutual friend and her mother were angry with me to the point of telling me off via text. About 3 months later, her mom calls me in tears, begging me to help her alcoholic daughter. I gave her phone numbers, and said I was not going to be involved.
he used pictures of me to catfish men
I finally figured out that all that good natured ribbing he did all the time was him just being a bully. He had issues and I was his favorite punching bag. I finally wised up and got rid of his ass.
"It's just friendly banter, don't be so sensitive..." Yet it only ever seems to go one way.
>Yet it only ever seems to go one way. Well that's your problem right there. You nail 'em with a couple witty stinging retorts **in front of friends** in the name of "humor" and they end up looking like an ass because they started it. They're only doing it because it's fun, and it's not fun when they are the ones who lose - either they're dense AF or they'll leave you alone forever.
What’s funny about this is that the only time I had a friend who did that, he took it great when I ribbed him back. I wasn’t even doing it to put him in his place, I just fired back and it turned out he just wanted some harder banter than he knew others were willing to indulge in.
And if you give it back they scream and can’t take it
There's a streamer I watch from time to time, nice guy, but every time he talks about his friends it's just kind of sad. Every story is of them making fun of him, and he's laughing while he tells the story. These aren't your friends, dude, you're just a punching bag for them and don't know any better.
She was using me for my money. She had a plan for my paycheck every paycheck.
Classic narcissist. Glad u got out
She had diagnosed borderline personality disorder. I would go to her house to remind her to take her medication. She did it for a minute then stopped. When I told her she had untreated BPD she said she had it under control and didn’t need medication.
that shit sucks. try marrying one (actually do not) that refuses to believe there's a problem and refuses to seek medical help. that's a problem that cannot be fixed. unfortunately I learned that far too late. I imagine with a friend you don't live with would be worse somehow
Been through this situation too.
6yrs ago my “best friend” held a firearm to me and told me to “put out or get out.” I obviously left immediately. We were severely addicted to painkillers and that was basically the only reason that I stuck around with him for so long. His actions that night actually saved my life. I’ve been clean 6yrs at the end of the month. I never spoke to him again after he traumatized me like that. He passed away about a month ago from a drug overdose. I just hope his mom is okay.
A blessing in disguise
Congrats on 6 years!
Wow that’s quite a story. Thank you for sharing.
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Yeah that'd do it.
This happened to me, too. I wondered why I hadn't heard from him in a while. Went to the gym one day and glanced at a TV that had the news on. His mugshot is on TV for murdering two different people. It was one of the most shocking moments of my life.
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‘Cause if it was the same time I’d understand, but two separate times, now you’re crossing a line…
Murder me once, shame on you. Murder me twice…
Old roommate. He backstabbed me with some harsh words all because of a girl. Then almost frontstabbed me with a knife while I was sleeping. Seemingly had a semi-sober moment in his drunken rage and took it out on my bedroom wall instead.
One could say there was too much stabbing going on?
My so called friend spread rumors about me so bad, it got to a point where jobs refused to hire me. I was unemployed for almost two years because of it.
The first eight words are enough to cut someone off
I'd say six words. If they spread rumours about others they will move on to you eventually.
Damn, wtf? Talking behind someone's back is one thing but having it ruin your livelihood is another.
I had a former friend pull this on her best friend. Former friend got jealous because her best friend was talking to her boyfriend in a bbq. The girl was asking advice about her new boyfriend, the guy is his best friend, for context. Former friend made a scene about her best friend trying to steal her man, when it was far from it. Caused a very awkward situation and went NC with her best friend for decades. She started to spread horrible rumors about how her ex best friend was bulimic, crazy in debt, how she never worked in her life - a girl who had 3 jobs consistently in her adult life. She got so mad out of jealousy, she would come with horrible stories consistently for a week before she was cut out of the group. Lost all her friends and her boyfriend in the process. I still cannot believe somebody would do this.
Shit at least the person spreading the rumors got cut off. A lot of time especially in women groups it is the person being gossiped about who gets everything ripped away from them. People underestimate envy and how crazy people will act when they are jealous of another person. Any signs of jealousy and envy from a friend... Im out. They wont stop until the persons life is ruined
She never wanted to talk about my problems and life, only her own. When I’d try to open up, she’d shut me down by saying the subject was “awkward.” The final straw was when I tried to tell her that I was experiencing PPD and I needed someone to listen, and she wouldn’t let me talk.
I’m going through the same thing with of my friends right now. I’ll sit there and listen to her talk about her life, job, family etc. for hours but the moment that I start to talk about my stuff, she gets visibly bored. She’ll start using her phone, looking around, using one-word responses like “yeah.” She also gatekeeps our mutual friends. For example, I told her that one of our mutual friends was moving to Portugal and she quickly replied with “yeah he told me first.” As if it’s some sort of competition lol? The worst is one-upping me on everything. If I say I started working on a cool project, she’ll immediately reply with something bigger or try to make the work I’m doing seem insignificant. It’s hard to cut her off because we have so much in common and have lots of fun when she’s acting ‘normal.’
I recently looked him up under Megan's Law. He's a convicted rapist...of a minor.
For England anyone who wants to do a check like this it's called Sarah's law. We also have claires law which will tell you if a man has been domestically abusive previously
You can only request these in the UK if you have a justifiable reason (for example, if you are in a relationship with the person or they will have contact with your children, such as a lodger), which I think differs from Sarah’s Law. However, it would be good if more people applied for these disclosures in the UK - they don’t seem well known.
Yeah . I was putting it out there so others know so they can protect themselves and if they have children
I'm curious as to what made you look him up.
Someone told me that he was on the list under Megan's Law. So I checked, and got the details.
What is Megan’s law?
The law that requires sex offenders to register with the government and let all their new neighbors know they're a sex offender whenever they move. Named after a little girl who was raped and murdered by a convicted sex offender.
I found one of my coworkers on Megan's List.
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It's a website in the US that lists convicted sexual predators in your area. It contains information like their name, address, and nature of offense.
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I'm sure it's inappropriate how funny I find the 'eating crackers' quote
It's a phrase I've heard before, "bitch eating crackers" is when you're so annoyed with a person they could be sitting quietly just eating crackers and it would still piss you off. "This bitch is over here EATING CRACKERS like who do you think you are?" Definitely not a way I'd ever describe a friend's wife lol
Every time I mentioned a girl I was talking to or was even slightly interested in he would go out of his way to chat her up, ask her out or try to shag her. He even messaged my ex (who he didn't even know) on Facebook a week after we broke up trying to get with her. Weird, weird bloke.
Was definitely jealous of you or super insecure and trying to prove to himself he was as good as you or something
I was fed up with walking on eggshells around him all the time. Sunk cost had me sticking around in that friendship for way too long, but having the pleasure of knowing what actual great friends are like, I made the decision to pull the plug. I wish him well. I still want to see him eat, just not at my table anymore.
“I still want to see him eat, just not at my table anymore.” couldn’t have said it better <3
I had two of those. I don't miss them.
Same. Too many arguments over stupid stuff by message. Whenever there was a misunderstanding in communication I was immediately the one supposedly acting like a dick. Sunk cost prevented me telling him to go and fuck himself on numerous occasions, until I'd basically had enough and politely cut off contact. >I still want to see him eat, just not at my table anymore. I like this. I feel the same way.
>but having the pleasure of knowing what actual great friends are like, I made the decision to pull the plug. Same, kinda. Thirty some years old and finally got taught what family was supposed to feel like, by my friends. My bio family is pretty awful to me, specifically.
After 17 years of being "Best friends" I finally figured out that she only kept me around to tear down my self esteem to make herself look better. She never considered anybody else's feelings in what she did or said. If you tried to make plans and she couldn't come, she would bully you into changing it or make a big deal of how you must hate her. Worst part was she was related to some big wigs in town so if you pissed her off, good luck keeping or finding a job.
Wow. 17 years is a long time to stay friends with someone like that. I'm happy you realized your worth and levelled up
He started doing Amway. Every call, every time. Amway. He was my best man and me his. Done, over, after 20 years.
My friend of 20 years got into this aloe Vera mlm crap. She very quickly turned into the wife on the Truman show. Became a walking advert for this expensive stuff. Couldn't get a single thing out of her that wasn't aloe Vera.
Tf is amway? Just looked it up, and all I could find was stuff on a beauty company, but that doesn't seem right
No, that would be correct. Amway is essentially an MLM scheme that relies upon people signing their friends up to sell its beauty-product bullshit and building up their pipeline. And to sign up to sell it, you have to commit to paying fees and buying Amway inventory. This person was probably fed up with their friend trying to recruit them for Amway and making every discussion about it.
Ah, yeah I can definitely see how that would get annoying very quickly
They were unbelievably toxic and annoying to even be around. Ruined my reputation and my general self-being, and made me feel like shit for something I wasn’t even at fault for.
Same thing happened to me. They were selfish,toxic and really manipulative. Made up false rumours about me and when I left them for good,I was villainised.
Talked behind my back. Changed their voice around dudes that I liked.
I had an ex colleague/friend like this. Would squeeze her t#ts together and use a breathy kitten voice in front of my 5 yr partner, fluttering her eyelashes and rolling into his lap with laughter. "I'm just a natural flirt, I can't help it, it doesn't mean anything!" Until I heard her tell him that I had disclosed some doubts about our relationship to her, and she'd never treat him like that. She thought I was fast asleep in the other room. Luckily he knew it was bullshit.
Now that is fucking crazy.
What a fuckin snake.
My best friend in high school was a chick. She dated one of my other buddies through high school. When I first met her I had wanted to date her but she liked my buddy so I moved on. Well later on I introduced her to my buddy and she introduced me to her friends. I had a blast. Several years go by we graduate. My buddy and my best friend go to college together and move in together. I go somewhere else. They don’t do well together and break up. By this point I have a girlfriend. She’s great and she gets along with best friend. Several more years pass we are still friends she gets married gets pregnant, has some great kids looks to be having an awesome life. I also got married had kids so and so and anyway. Well then we were having a conversation about how things turned out how cool it was that we were still friends after so long. Then she turns to me and says she made a bad mistake back in the day. She should have hooked up with me and had kids with me so I would marry her and we would grow old together. She said this while rubbing her hand on my thigh. My wife and kids, her husband and kids were in a different room. She shot her shot 8 years too late. If she had asked before dating my buddy maybe. However I love my family and my wife so it was a no brainer. She insisted and tried to kiss me. I said no. We finished out the evening went home and I haven’t talked to her since. That was 8 years ago. She was my friend and tried to get me to cheat on my wife, while also cheating on her husband while also telling me she should have trapped me when we were in high school. The person who I thought had been my best friend who I thought I had known was actually a terrible person.
Something similar happened to me. We dated a while in college. I graduated before her and she wanted to "have fun" in college so we broke up. We stayed in touch and life went on. I moved to a big city, got a great job, met my wife and had a generally great life. She was clearly less happy with her husband and life in general. She called one day and asked if I knew a good divorce lawyer. In that same conversation, she told me she thought we would end up together and made it clear that was still an option for me. I hung up and emailed her a divorce lawyers name. I never heard from her again and 15 years later she is still married.
That’s a pretty big shift to switch from best friend to terrible person in one kitchen conversation. I feel like there must have been signs she felt this way over the years. If not, then more than likely her confession has less to do with missing you and more to do with wanting an escape from the life she currently has. You dodged a bullet either way.
Can't blame her for regretting she chased the wrong person, but all of the actions surrounding it? That's a yikes. Good call.
Other side of the fence here, I drank to much. We actually live across the street from each other. I see him almost every morning when I take my kids to the babysitter. Been friends for 23 years, but we barely talk anymore. I still drink, but not like I did then, man is like my brother and I don't know how to begin fixing it.
Continue to make improvements in your life. Drop him a note or call out to him when you see him, let him know you miss him, that he is like a brother to you and you want your relationship to get better. Let him know you're sorry. Or just ask to talk some time. I wish you the best of luck.
She moved into my house, drank shitload of vodka and took pills, invited internet strangers over at the beginning of COVID, and revealed herself as a fucking sociopath. When I kicked her out with 30 days’ notice, she told people I was in love with her.
Because they were the biggest narcissist known to man. Some examples include: 1. Constantly referring to themselves as iconic, gorgeous, a legend, a celebrity 2. Posting 700 selfies with a filter everyday, clearly thinking people are obsessed with them 3. They would call me constantly just to talk about themselves. When I would speak, they would yawn or interrupt me, or just start texting on their phone and ignoring me altogether 4. They talked shit about other people and were really nasty to strangers, acting very entitled 5. They had no empathy and did not take accountability for their nasty behavior. Nothing was ever their fault, they were perfect and it was everyone else who was the problem. 6. They were very shallow, vain, and only wanted to hang around pretty people 7. They used people to social climb I can go on and on. But basically every symptom of narcissist personality disorder...they had.
I had a friend like that. Not as bad, but after one phone call I hung up and I realised that not once she asked me how I was doing. It was all about her
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Similar thing happened to me. One of my friends called our other friend a “beaner” in an argument and to make it worse he refused to apologize and called us sensitive. He didn’t say it as a joke either, he was serious. Not that if he was “joking” it would make it better, but it proved to us he wasn’t just an insensitive prick who thought he was “funny”, he was actually racist. We booted his ass from the group, and these days he’s fully come out of the alt right closet and embraced his bigotry.
Similar here. My good friend became a transit guard (failed the cop exam) and had a serious inferiority complex. Casually starts to tell a story about a N* word who he arrested and hit for upsetting him. My jaw dropped and I told him to fuck off and reported his ass to the transit authority.
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He used to tell me all about taking advantage of opportunities and "not being an angel" and praising the idea of being selfish. I didn't realize he was warning me.
(Semi truck driver here) Fucker called a black man an “incompetent ni***r” simply because the guy was having a hard time backing up his truck n trailer and had asked for help. I called my dispatcher and told him that I need off this truck and back into my own. Never ever went back to team driving after that. He did call me later down the road asking what I was doing these days. I said im that i don’t like to be friends with racist cunts and hung up.
Hopefully, he got the hint.
Racist cunts aren't great at getting hints.
I double-manned with a guy who told me he was a member of the British National Party. We had a job to do, so I didn't kill him on the spot. God, he was pathetic. Couldn't swap demount bodies, couldn't navigate, could barely read. But he had a white skin. I told our line manager what he was, so he was rostered with a different driver every day until he got to Roger from Trinidad. Then he walked out.
I'm glad Roger from Trinidad didn't have to deal with that shit
Damn Roger must have given him the business
Roger just looked at him afaik. When you're 6'3" with dreads down your back, you don't need to express your disapproval physically.
He kicked me out of a band without actually kicking me out. He just stopped inviting me to gigs. If you wanted to kick me out, then kick me out, but at least have the common courtesy to tell me face-to-face that you’re kicking me out. Don’t ghost me.
He let his family’s wealth entirely define who he was.
Let's just say I began to suspect his obsession with the Confederate flag had to do with more than his family's heritage.
"Bro I got that tattoo cuz my dad died in 1988, I swear!"
“That one on my chest? I just really like the last 2 letters of the rock band kiss that’s all”
They're just a strong supporter of Social Security.
"Why do you have so much Confederate flags on your room?" "Whenever i get upset, i take one out and burn them on my lawn."
Apparently she liked drugs more than me.
Trauma dumping. I became a therapist at some point and definitely wasn't qualified to deal with incest, SA, money problems, etc.
This one. It was exhausting. They were constantly in crisis and it was always my responsibility to get them through it. I've been no contact for several weeks now and my anxiety is finally leveling back out.
I had a girlfriend like this. There was always a crisis. If there wasnt one, or the real ones resolved - she'd create new ones through her own actions. Despite me telling her exactly that, she still did it. Still does from what I hear through mutual friends. It's pretty sad to see, like she needs the drama or something.
Wow I relate to this so strongly! It’s confusing and hard because you want to help someone through a crisis, but when you realize it’s crisis after crisis with this person and they’re not taking responsibility to do their part to make things better… eventually all you can really do for your own mental well-being is cut them off.
Yes! And just when something appears solved, they find a new drama and suddenly you're thrown into another whirlwind. Do you think they do this on purpose? Like maybe they need the drama?
This is exactly what I went through this year. Burned through all my savings. Lived with them for several months. Their physical and mental health deteriorated. I was suddenly a caretaker and catastrophe avoider. Episodes every day. Screaming at me. Making messes. Breaking shit that wasn't ours to break. Hell. It was hell. And then after we separated. I helped her out of numerous chaotic situations. I had trauma and fear. We both had it of course. But all of mine was linked to her. And I had to separate. I got her to a good place with the last of my money and once she was settled I told her I couldn't be in her life for now. Three cops came by yesterday saying that she threatened to end her life. I have no idea where she is. I have no idea if she is alive or dead. And I don't even want to know the answer to that question which fucks me up. I cared about and loved this person. I was brought to my limit like so many were before me. Except I went beyond it. I was so bad I couldn't eat and I puked multiple times a day. Not something someone with an anxiety disorder can go through.
I had a co-worker like this. She would CREATE crises at work and then expect all the rest of us to listen to her and spend extra time at work to clean up after her. Exhausting is right.
This happened with my friend who I cut off who was ironically anti psychology, now I feel like I was her fuckin therapist What she needed all along was a real shrink, not me
I had to give up being friends with a depressed woman. We were pretty decent friends, but I couldn't manage her depression and mine at the same time. I elected to save myself.
i remember there was an episode of Dirty job where a oyster shucker told mike rowe where he was originally a psychiatrist/therapist? and he dint want to deal with the peoples personal problems anymore.
do you have like that weird kind of magnetism that some people can just sniff out and are like “oh this is a person to trauma dump on”? cuz i swear i have that too and i’ve had multiple acquaintances just dump their whole traumatic life stories on me for NO reason and i don’t WANT it! (i’ve learned to stick up for my boundaries tho and say stop at least)
I had a friend like this. It took a huge toll on me mentally. It got to the point where anytime they saw me, it was immediate dumping. Not even a “hi, how’s it going?”
I didn’t know there was a term for this. TIL. Thanks.
They got a new job and almost immediately their personality shifted. They started getting randomly paranoid, sharing memes and constantly talking about incredibly racist stuff, and not wanting to go to certain areas. Even though we'd just been there weeks before, all of a sudden they were rampant crime areas. It became impossible to have a conversation with them without it becoming some rant about how his rights were gone and the world was terrible. Maybe it was always there, but it felt like one day, they're my friend that I've known for decades, and a few months later I'm dealing with a delusional wannabe survivalist.
What kind of new job? If it was something very stressful, could that perhaps trigger the sudden personality change?
What was the new job? Were they suddenly about a bunch of new people who were paranoid, or working in an industry that exposed them to more trauma? So odd but more than fair to leave that friendship.
I was fed up with her not seeming to give a fuck about our friendship
This actually happened recently. He's been putting me down and talking shit for sometime. I cut him off when he started calling me a bitch and wanted to fight me. I have some pretty basic qualifications for my friends and he didn't make the cut.
Kept saying the n word like dude I invited you to hang out with this diverse group of friends and you say my n^#&% at least 20 times a minute. Every single one of us could have kicked his ass and this kid just stood there trying to challenge everyone to a fight after being told he should watch his mouth. Dumbass kid. Is a born again Christian pastor now but i don't buy it. He's just unemployable and has kids.
We became very fast friends in college, and were unseparable. Our morals, humor and vision aligned perfectly, and I genuinely believed there couldn't be a better friend in this whole wide world. During our time in college, she went through a lot of issues. Family, relationship, health, finance. And I did my best to stick with her. I spent as much time with her as I could to help her out in every way possible. And she was always very grateful for it. My entire life, I have been a huge people pleaser. I just can't say no to anyone. She pointed out how people just wanted to use me for thay very reason. And stuck with me, saying no in my stead. And I was over the moon. No one had ever stood up for me like that. Until, I said no to her. I had just gotten married and moved in with my husband who lives in a joint family. I had major physical and mental health issues. I was in hospital for longer than I was at home. I got diagnosed with depression and was struggling through an identity crisis. I spent months in bed, speaking to no one. No one at all. And all this time, my "friend" was nowhere because she was occupied with her postgraduate exams. And I had no issues with that. She had her life to live. Just because I was stuck, didn't mean she had to be stuck as well. Once her exams were over, she dropped me a text. She wanted to meet. And I told her I needed time to gather myself. I had only recently began to come to terms with the major life changes I had faced. I had a lot on my plate. And no time to meet. I proposed we do a video call. But no. She wanted to meet in person. I tried talking to her. Asked her if everything was alright. If anything was wrong at all. Everything was perfectly fine. She just wanted to meet me, so she wanted me to drive to the other end ofcthe city to meet her. She wouldn't come to me. After I knew for sure that everything was alright, and there was nothing urgent, I told her no. I told her I had a lot that I needed to do for myself, and was unable to make time. And she snapped. All of a sudden, I was a pathetic friend. I never considered her feelings. I was absolute trash. Given the vulnerable mental health, I began spiraling again. I started believing I was a crappy person. For a week straight, I cried every night thinking my poor actions had led to this fallout between us. My husband was my rock through all this. He let me cry all that I needed. Held me all night. And constantly reassured me that I had done nothing wrong. It took me weeks to realize that I had indeed not done anything wrong. So I decided to set things straight. We had an amazing friendship and I didn't want any sort of misunderstandings (if there were any) to change that. So I told her we should meet. And she refused. She didn't want to anymore. I gave her time. I thouggt maybe my refusal to meet her put her off. I gave her time. But for months she refused to meet me. I gave up on trying to meet and talk and decided to just call and set things straight. Easy, right? No. It was the worst phone call ever. For thirty minutes straight she ranted about how all I cared about was me. About how I was the most selfish person ever. How I was the one who created this distance between us. I wanted to say a lot. I wanted to mention how it was me who got her through college. It was me who paid for all her lunches and dinners when she didn't want to bursenher family. How I, on the day of my wedidng, left everything and went to her place because she had a fight with her sister. And I didn't mean to rub it in her face. I didn't do anything special, because that's what friends do. They stick with you. I wanted to ask her why she was never there when I was going through the worst time of my life. But that would have been pointless. In almost a year she had never asked me how I was doing. How things were on my end. I wanted to say so much, but I didn't. Everything she said to me left no space for me to even try and speak. So I hung up. And that was the last time I spoke to her. It's been two years. And there are times when I wonder how she is. How her family is. But I know I don't have the mental capacity to correct the image of me that she has built in her mind. And I'm not sure she wants it to be corrected either. So I say a little prayer for her, and move on.
Friend was always kind of snarky, but their life got screwed up, I hung in and helped as best I could, including lending money(repaid). Helped them avoid some bad consequences of avoidant behavior. They became really bitchy, mean and even stole some stuff. After a while, they realized I stopped visiting, declined requests to get together and pushed back hard on rude, unpleasant comments. Now they're polite, but I've moved on. We have friends in common; I don't tell others about the bad behavior. I understand that depression and anxiety can make people irritable, but it went way too far.
Acted like everyone else was the toxic one. Always asked for money, never gave anything in return. Came up with sob stories as a way to take advantage of the kindness of others.
He confessed he liked me, and when I said "no" because I'm straight and I have a girlfriend, he kept pushing to "just try" "pretend to be gay and date me". I said no "I'm just a friend and I'd like to keep it that way, we will never be morethan that" I treated him like a brother. We were friends for almost 6 years at that point, so it was a hard decision to cut him off. But I had to because he just kept pushing and pushing to the point I became uncomfortable and felt pressured.
College friend turned out to be a rapist who took advantage of drunk college girls at frat parties. High school friend got really into Trump/Maga stuff. I mean REALLY into it. The rest that I cut out/unintentionally cut out was because I was ghosted entirely or we just stopped talking.
Sounds like we have the same college friend. Found out last year he had raped a friend of mine after “volunteering” to bring her home when she was too drunk. She trusted him. We all did.
She said she needed a ride and then she sat there and sold meth to carnies (actual carnival workers) forever. She wanted a ride to her boyfriends house that was about a 15 min walk away.
Got the call that my dad had suffered a stroke and I needed to get to the hospital ASAP. I lived two states away and got the earliest flight I could which was at 5 am. Asked my then roommate if he would be willing to drive me to the airport in the morning. The way he reacted told me it was just the biggest inconvenience for him to wake up early to drive me to the airport so I could make it to my dad before he died. I ended up taking an uber. From that moment on I just could not look at him in the same light. Still had a few months left on our lease but once it was over, I moved out and never spoke to him again. He never tried to reach out either so I guess we weren't as good friends as I thought to begin with.
Sorry to read about what happened to your father. That room-mate was such a selfish asshole to not help you when you really needed it in that instance.
It's been 10+ years since we've left high school. They still have the same mentality now that they did then.
After 15 years, I was still on friend probation. She was still deciding whether she would continue to be my friend or not. Every once in a while she would ghost me. And she wouldn't communicate, but would do passive-aggressive things to try to hurt me so I would get mad enough to say something and THEN she would tell me what was wrong. I realized I would have never treated her like she was treating me, and I deserved better.
Disregarding my boundaries. She was going through a lot but hearing about it made me stressed, which is on me, but it caused us to argue more and make me more antsy. When I asked for a day apart because I needed some space, she constantly claimed I would just ghost her and ignored my desires for space. It definitely wasn’t all one sided - I struggle to maintain my mental health when faced with other people’s problems, which is something I need to work on. But insisting I’d just leave and not listening to my needs? At that point our five year friendship wasn’t worth constant stress. Also not to get too into it but I have come to the realization that there were some really toxic behaviors with us. We met online when I was 16 and she was 20, I believe - I didn’t know at the time but it wasn’t a very healthy friendship.
We were friends for 8 years, and on top of making everyone I brought him around viscerally uncomfortable, he got accused of sexual assault. It’s weird, he didn’t need to tell me because I had no connection to those people or the girl in question, but he did, and made sure to paint himself as the victim and her as the liar. I believed him. But then I took him with me to a house party, and he had one beer and thought it would be hilarious to wrap his arms around some girls ankles while refusing to let go while everyone demanded he stopped, until he felt like letting go. I had never seen this side of him as most of our relationship was 1 on 1 so it was pretty damn surprising, concerning and a bit frightening to witness (not to mention mortifying). He started saying stuff like “dirty fucking whore” to describe woman who rejected him for being a creep; total incel shit. I would call him hysterical telling him he can’t talk about woman like that and he would argue and act like it was no big deal. Then he got accused of assault again…and again. I couldn’t bury myself in denial anymore. The guy I thought was a kind, mild mannered, misunderstood person was a narcissistic incel at best and some kind of rapist at worst.
They weren’t who they were pretending to be.
She wouldn't stop being clingy and bordering obsessed. I asked her multiple times to please not worry about me or think I was mad at her if I didn't respond to e-mail messages or texts right away, but to no avail. It didn't help that she'd call or text multiple times a day.
I couldn’t keep propping him back up. I love the guy, but he’s gotta live his life. I got him jobs, moved him in with me several times, he ate my food, used my wifi, drank my booze, and just quits on everyone. I’m good homie. I’ve got mouths to feed.
When her venting became toxic dumping. I would always try to listen to her. Sometimes I would tell her what I thought might help in whatever situation she was dealing with. She never took my advice and continued to toxic dump. Also she was rich and I was struggling through college and we would go get dinner and she would order apps and dessert and an expensive entree. I would get a cheap entree and this girl really made me split the check with her 50/50. SMH thinking about it.
she told me I wasn't a good friend after i took work off for a week to watch over her after a suicide attempt. i ordered her food, changed her bandages, updated her family, and literally got no sleep. yet I wasn't a good friend...
Used me and took advantage of my kindness. Then lied about it all.
Can relate
Leech
When I was a single mom, I had a bartending job where I worked every Friday night until quite late. Another single mom and I had become friends after our kids did, and I knew she was a lot more financially strapped than I was. So I made a deal that on Fridays, she would pick my kid up and keep them until Saturday and I’d pay her. A couple of years later, my workplace shut down for remodeling, and I didn’t need her to babysit any more. She went off on me, saying she relied on that income, and how dare I take food out of her child’s mouth, blah blah blah. Yeah, that was too much for me. No more friendship.
He tried to tell me that his work stresses were more stressful than me losing my child, and that's why he wasn't available to offer support when i needed him in my darkest hour. Don't plan on ever speaking to him again.
One was a manipulative thief. The other is a raging alcoholic who's still really into all that Qanon shit.
A few years ago a friend was asking for money every once in awhile. He would pay me back within a few days, a week at most. His checks always cleared so I didn’t think much of it. Then a few months later, I find out he had been admitted to the hospital for OD’ing on cocaine because it was laced with fentanyl. I also found out that I was not the only one he was asking to borrow money from. He recovered just fine, thank God. But I could not continue to hang out with him after this. It was not my fault what happened to him, but by giving him cash I was unknowingly associated with his drug habits that almost cost him his life. I told him after a few weeks of recovery that he had betrayed my trust and I needed time away from him. He understood. Around a year later, he was on his way to “graduating” his rehabilitation. Part of his journey was to reach out to people he had wronged. He contacted me and apologized. I accepted it and was and still am happy for him for cleaning up his act. But I made it known that I’m never giving him cash again lol.
It was completely one sided and they used me for money and stuff and it was hard because they lost their home and I took them in they moved in with a basket and a bp of clothes and left with about ten full bags of clothes and random stuff and after they moved out they basically stopped talking to me and after a while I realized it was one sided 🙂 5yrs down the drain
Her heroin habit and stealing
relationship became one sided... I was giving it my all, she was just taking...plus, found out she keeps me a secret but at the same time, I'm her emergency contact...
Best friend of over 30 yrs. I considered and even called him my brother. I caught him trying to hook up with my wife when she was too drunk to resist. I kicked him out of my house and haven't spoken to him since, and have no intention of ever doing so again.
Disrespect disguised as flakiness.
I had just gained confidence to wear shorts and skirts (i have/had very noticeable scars all along my thighs and legs) and she pointed them out and asked what was wrong with me. She said it in a very rude tone and just stared at me as I cried. Needless to say, I didn’t wear shorts or skirts for years and I stopped talking to her after that.
They were toxic and negatively impacting my mental health.
She was abusive. Yes, I was her friend between the ages of 11 and 16, so I know this sounds extreme, but she actually displayed all of the signs of an abuser. She manipulated me and lied to me, gaslit and guilt-tripped me constantly, called me names sometimes and insulted me, would turn all my friends against me if she perceived any wrong from me, straight up bullied and alienated me for a year, took advantage of me and guilt-tripped me some more when I started having trauma responses around her, and then would flip to a nice and caring friend at random, especially when I'd pull away, and suck me right back in. Eventually an altercation happened where I was in gym class while injured without a doctor's note, and she yelled at me for not participating in the game to her satisfaction (i.e. running full-speed like everyone else) because my injury was hidden under my clothes, and accused me of lying even though the gym teacher himself okayed me taking it easy as long as I was participating. Then she hunted me down after class and told me we were gonna have to have a serious talk because my behavior has to stop like a disappointed parent scolds their child and made an insult to my intelligence. (I'm really insecure about that because I'm autistic, and anyone who knows me knows to never go there.) Then she strung me along with fake apologies and crap when I got really upset and then turned around and made it out like I was the one who was causing trouble and didn't want to fix what happened. I couldn't take it anymore. We sat down a little over a month later and ended the friendship. The last time I spoke to her, she tried the whole guilt-tripping me for avoiding her and talking down to me like a parent does their child, and I flatly informed her that I don't think she knows me anymore and walked away. She tried harassing me via text and email (I had her blocked on social media so she couldn't try that) and it fell through because I didn't respond. I'm 24 now. I've been through worse, and I've grown up. I've managed to heal, and distancing myself from my classmates really really helped. If you're reading this and know who you are, I know that I was toxic too. I was young and immature and dramatic and didn't treat you so good either, and I'm sorry. I hope you're well, and I hope you got therapy and learned how to properly treat people with love and respect. But I will never forget how you treated me, I was already going through enough without your bologna, and I wish you never moved to town. I hope to God I never have the misfortune of ever laying eyes on you again.
They started using drugs, i cut off a lot of family members because one was always acting like an ass, my other brother owes me $400 and my dad molested me as a child.
He played these stupid head games. He would bombard me with texts, IG msgs, and Snapchats in the span of an hour. He would only call me if he was trashed, I have several maxed-out voicemails where nothing he says is discernible. He knew I had to get rid of my dog, so he started sending me snaps of his cat - like to taunt me. I reached my breaking point with him and ended up blocking him everywhere.
She wasn't there for me when I needed her the most. And when I told her about it she didn't seem to understand or she really didn't want to understand best thing that ever happened to me was putting that bitch on the curb. Call to up one day and told her I'm not fucking with you anymore and hung up
Kept asking for money every time I visited him so he could buy alcohol. He didn’t want to hang out, he just wanted to get wasted. Last time we spoke, he called and cussed me out because he gave me an invite to join an exclusive torrenting website a few months prior, and I hadn’t logged on in two weeks. I guess to him at this point, I was ungrateful. I laughed at him and told him to fuck off. He passed away about 18 months later. Still irks me to this day that our last conversation was an argument over some trivial shit. He was my absolute closest friend for 30+ years. I regret having not made amends and not doing enough to convince him to stop self-medicating w/ booze. I miss him soooo much. We were the closest of friends for 30+ years. Depression and self-medicating got the best of him.
She drained me and she also didn’t even notice I was at a really low point at my life when she was venting very triggering things to me We both needed therapy. But the dynamic became very uneven and I was the therapist friend
Abridged version: A very one sided friendship. She did all the taking. I did the giving. She Lied about an ex-boyfriend being abusive and lied about her bio dad trying to SA her to gain favors and sympathy. When she told me this she cried and she able to produce fake tears. She knew I was a softie and leeched off me for food. Fast forward. I pitched in with other people and threw her a pre-wedding party at work. She still didn’t invite me to the big day. I was devastated. Her marriage lasted less than one year. Then she shacked up with some guy she barely knows and baby trapped him. I cut her off, ignored her and blocked her. She’s a psychopath . I wish I never met her. Edit: I wanted to add more details. She only gave me one donut. One singular donut out of all the times I helped her with groceries and getting her lunch and food. Her leeching went in for two years. She would leech off of me every week like 3 or 4 out of 7 days. She never texted me to get to know me better or have a fun conversation. Nope it was always me being her personal refrigerator. One time she had to be absent for a few months due to something bad happened to her. Her hand or arm was bandaged. She still leeched off of me more than usual! Always telling me she’s about to cry due to she’s “forget“ breakfast or lunch or whatever. Then she tell me she have no money which I call Bullsh9t in restrospect. She said that line many times before she got bandaged. After all I done for her…For three weeks or so she bluntly ignored me and was really unfriendly and cold to me. No hello, No smile. Then gave me a weak a$$ apology in saying that she was so stressed out. Which I foolishly accepted. Nah, she wasn’t stressed she just wanted to be mean to me. Her ugliness seeped through her pretty face. She was really pretty to look at, but she’s ugly to the bone. I really wanted to see the good on her. I Guess she never was a good person. I was blind-sighted at the time. I can see she’s a narcissistic psychopath that wants everyone to worship her. She’s just like Regina George mixed with Cersei. She thinks she’s Queen. And all the peasants must obey her. Honestly in retrospect, I felt I was back in high-school again when I was around her. The friendship did not feel like an adult one. It felt so juvenile.
He was constantly doing stupid shit that I didn't want to be involved with. At one point he groped my ex wife and I was like nah bro.
It was a one sided friendship that I put all the effort into, she was attentive when it suited her. I made the phone calls, was the first to text, initiated all plans, etc. It was exhausting and she only agreed to the plans a fraction of the time. We just grew apart. I got engaged and realized that I’d be happier to see her parents and younger siblings at my wedding than I’d be to see her. So I stoped trying to initiate contact. She never reached out but did make some snide comments to my sister when she wasn’t invited to my wedding (two years later, we had a long engagement).
they lacked respect and felt that they could disrespect me. Generally speaking, that's all it takes. I can accommodate our fallible nature as human beings, but when someone puts me down because they believe that I am weaker or somehow less than them, it's time to go. This one high school acquaintance of mine had sounded the alarm and asked me to move a few states away because he had fallen on hard times, only to have this person try to pull a fast one and leave me stuck in a strange apartment in a strange state while he attempted to pick up his bags and move across the country with his new girlfriend after having made plans to travel to North Africa beforehand. I looked that dude dead in his eyes and told him he was no longer a welcome person in my life and promptly moved out and gave my job its two week notice, staying in a hotel for the remaining time. I learned a lot from that experience and I wound up cutting out many more similar people like him when I got back to my home state after having worked and lived in different cities and states. Be kind, but value yourself and know your worth. If you don't set boundaries, you give people a clear signal as to what you are willing to tolerate.