We've all been there. An old friend from high school shoots you a message and asks how you've been. They comment on how your kids are growing up or a recent accomplishment. You feel happy to hear from them only to get the dreaded “I wanted to share this exciting opportunity with you" and realize too late it was an MLM trap.
Some closer friends get cut off for far more though. If you had someone in your life who isn't supportive, tried to undercut you, or harm people, you wouldn't want to stick around. One Reddit user wanted to hear others' experiences with this.
Redditor KingBean_ asked the community:
“What's the moment you realized your close friend was an a-hole?"
There were some intense stories from other users who encountered major friend letdowns.
Ghost friends...
“The moment I couldn't be available whenever they needed, they lashed out and disappeared off the map, only to reappear recently because they wanted to crash at my place. No way.”
“or, yeah, just disappear for months and then text you "Hey! what's up? Miss you!" and then you realize they actually just need something from you...maybe that's not as close of a friend as I thought, I'm realizing.”
Some tricky toxicity.
“When he propositioned my girlfriend to have sex with him under the guise of making sure she was being faithful to me.”
“So if she accepts, he gets free sex. If she rejects, he's the "hero" for testing her virtue. Brilliant plan. What could possibly go wrong?”
“what he had tried to do made him no better than a rapist.”
“He tried to abduct a lost, drunk woman from a bar. We were getting ready to leave a crowded bar one night and my friend went to use the restroom. When he came back he was supporting a woman who was so drunk she could barely walk.”
“He said that she had lost her friends and we should take her back to our hotel room. I told him that we should help her find her friends and asked her for her name. My friend looked pissed and said that we should just go.”
“She managed to slur that her name was Amy. I then went to the DJ and asked him to announce to the bar that Amy had lost her friends, needed their help, and to come find her at the bar. During this my friend tried to walk Amy out of the bar, but security stopped him at the door.”
“Luckily Amy's fiends immediately came to the bar to get her and got her away from my friend. Afterwards my friend was pissed, because ‘I had ruined his good time.’”
“I told him that he was disgusting, that taking that girl back to our hotel would have been abduction, and that what he had tried to do made him no better than a rapist. I stopped hanging out with him after that.“
“Now he's got a girl he barely knows pregnant...”
“Everytime he broke up with a girl he would go on and on about how crazy she was. Everytime he got a new gf he would force every member of the friend group to be friends with her, which was really awkward because we knew how the story would end. Didn't help that he had a history of cheating.”
“He also liked to talk about who ever wasn't in the room. Once he started getting passive aggressive with my wife I blew up at him. Now he's got a girl he barely knows pregnant and they're both unemployed. F**k em.”
Power trip much?
“When he complained and got a server at Texas Roadhouse ‘fired’ over a $2 shortage...and was laughing and bragging about it. Like, it made him feel good / important that he cost someone their job.”
“As a side note, we are no longer friends and, about 2 weeks later, we (me, my wife, and daughter) had the same server at the same Texas Roadhouse.”
Taking responsibility is part of being an adult...
“When I realized I was her last close friend left. Shortly thereafter I started to open my eyes and understand why that was the case. A lot of it was that she is a master at justifying her own bad decisions. Nothing is ever a big deal to her.”
“When her electricity got shut off, it was because ‘stuff happens.’ When she got fired from her fourth job in a year, it was ‘ok, I'm going to cruise on unemployment and give myself time to focus on art.’ When she forgot someone's birthday, it was because birthdays triggered her anxiety.”
“And when she was served with divorce papers after refusing to attend marriage counseling, she insisted she had done everything in her power to save her marriage. She is never wrong in her eyes and is the only adult I've seen consistently regress in life because of it. In the end, a 12 year friendship devolved into an absolute nightmare for me.”
If your dog doesn’t like them, there’s your sign...
“I told him I liked a girl and he told me he liked her, too. No big deal, except he then pretended to ask her if she liked me just so that he could lie and say 'yeah bro she doesn't like you.'"
“He also sabotaged someone guy's relationship so that he could date his girlfriend, only to dump her a week later. A mutual friend casually said it was because the guy was a d!ck, and so he deserved to have his relationship sabotaged."
“He's also been telling me that random people 'really don't like me' even though I have literally never interacted with them, have hardly seen them, and mostly keep to myself. Even if it was true, how would he know? Why would these people who apparently hate me be talking about a guy that they've hardly ever met?"
“It's interesting because when I first brought him to my house, my dog kept growling at him. I brushed it off at the time."
Girl bye!
Bai Girl Bye GIF by Originals
Giphy
“he told me that she'd been thinking about it and there was no way the baby I was carrying could be by my partner, I must be lying to cover up sleeping with another man. She said she'd added up all the dates and it just didn't work. Then when I asked her to stop talking about it (because it wasn't true!) She told me I didn't have enough friends to cut contact with her. Wrong. See ya."
“I distinctly remember her bragging about how she lied..”
“Had a friend in college who would occasionally lie to get off work or make up a reason to seem more interesting is and then. I didn't think that much of it until I distinctly remember her bragging about how she lied to someone just because she could and how funny she found it that the person believed her and was making fun of them for it (when it was a ‘believable lie’) and I was sort of baffled that she thought her lying made the other person dumb and didn't just make her immoral or scheming. Due to this and other things we didn't remain friends for very long.”
“I found out my dad was dying and I have barely heard from her since.”
“When I spent years listening to her problems giving advice lending money when she needed it (I did get it back) and just generally being there for her then I broke down on her once when I found out my dad was dying and I have barely heard from her since.”
Friendship, like any relationship, has its ups and downs but it's important cut toxic people in your life. Friends celebrat each other's accomplishments, and also hold each other accountable when they've down something wrong. This is how we grow. Cheers to the positive friendships in life!
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***WARNING: THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS SENSITIVE MATERIAL. PROCEED WITH CAUTION!***
I can't think of anything hilarious at the moment. Make us LOL.
Lady
Shocked Oh No GIF by Yêu LuGiphy"I have this friend, love him to bits, but his wife has a tendency of just constantly showing everyone pictures of their son at every social event. At the start it was understandable, but now I'm just like 'Lady, it's been two years; they're not going to find him.'"
UnoriginalUse
at 9am...
"Not the most morbid but I love Anthony Jeselnik’s story about his neighbor who has Alzheimer’s. 'One of my next door neighbors is a 90 year old man suffering from Alzheimer’s. And every single morning at 9am he knocks on my door and asks me if I have seen his wife.'"
"'Which means that every single morning at 9am I have to explain to a 90 year old man suffering from Alzheimer’s that his wife has been dead for quite some time. Now I’ve thought about moving. I have thought about just not answering my door in the morning. But to be honest, it’s worth it… just to see the smile on his face.”
dreagan021
Comedy?
"Why can't orphans play baseball? They don't know where home is."
GW2RNGR
"Why can't orphans play tennis? They get confused when they hear love."
JayDub506
People who make comedy are evil. LOL.
The Darkness
That 70S Show Reaction GIF by LaffGiphy"Dark humor is like food; not everyone gets it."
storm_the_castle
God Laughs?
"A Holocaust survivor dies and goes to heaven, where she meets God. To break the tension she tells God a joke about the Holocaust, but God doesn’t laugh. The lady shrugs and says 'I guess you had to be there.'"
“'I guess you had to be there' is a common expression used when someone doesn’t laugh at a joke. It means that the comedy may not translate without the context of the situation."
"In this case the Holocaust survivor is saying it, meaning that during the Holocaust God was nowhere to be found. It’s not really a joke about the Holocaust, but the absurdity of belief in a benevolent God. Hilarious right?"
semimillennial
Oh Baby
"How many dead babies does it take to fix a light bulb? More than 3 cause my garage is still dark."
sirnibs3
I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Because I don't know what it says about us as people if we laugh. Oye.
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Curious to hear from strangers online, Redditor Liam_Tang asked:
"People who've divorced, aside from adultery, what were the irreconcilable differences that ended the marriage?"
You think you know a person when you walk down the aisle.
These Redditors were in for a rude awakening.
Pet Neglect
"My wife divorced her ex for many reasons, but the final straw was when she went out of town for a few days, and when she got back he had not fed or given water to the dog. The dog lived a long and happy life after that."
– StrangeCrimes
Obsessed With A Crush
"Not me, but I had an old coworker that divorced his wife for spending their entire savings on candy crush and games of the same type."
– Hexis40
Compatibility Musts
"ITT: Intimacy (sex/romance), beliefs (religion/spirituality/politics), kids, and I haven’t seen it yet but it’s coming: finances."
"The big four. You REALLY need to discuss these things in detail BEFORE getting married."
– rabbiskittles
Physical violence is a legit reason for people to peace out of a relationship.
The Flattening
"She threatened to hit me with a hammer."
– michaelrohansmith
Hitting The Bottle
"She became an abusive alcoholic. It was sad but I had to get out."
– diegojones4
Emotional pain is too damaging to recover from.
Truth Hurts
"She told me as we stood in front of the judge ending our 7 year marriage, 'I never loved you, I just wanted kids.'"
– Pinch_Dogs
Can't Fix Angry
"She was beautiful/smart but an angry angry person. I thought I could be sweet to her and 'fix' that. Heh. She kicked the crap out of me emotionally. Wife II has been a walk in the roses for 32 years now :)"
– lowlandr
A change of heart is worthless if comes too late.
"We Could've Had A Nice Marriage
"He could not understand that my wants and needs were as important as his wants and needs. We tried to make it work for 7 years. During that time, for things that were really important to me, I tried explaining logically, asking nicely, begging, crying, yelling, passive aggressiveness... cycled back through all of these options multiple times."
"(If I knew something was important to him, I would do that. For example, he was really into sports, so I went to all his events, even though that is not at all my thing.) When I finally threw up my hands and told him it was time to get a divorce, he suddenly panicked and said 'What can I do? Do you want me to do half the chores? I'll do it! Do you want me to get a job? I'll do it! Do you want me to buy you presents for your birthday? I'll do it!'"
"So, in other words, he could have been doing that all along, but just couldn't be bothered. That made me so angry. We could have had a nice marriage that we both enjoyed, but no, by the time he saw the light, that ship had sailed."
"We are both happily remarried now (to different people) and I joke that his new wife owes me a thank you note. It was his experience with me that taught him to listen to her and take her needs seriously."
– Bluebird-True
"What Can I Do?"
"My ex was exactly like this. I didn't marry him but when I told him let's break up, he went all like, what can I do? Let's get engaged, let's look at houses, etc. Basically all the pre-marriage topics that we should be discussing about after being together for 7 years."
"I got so angry and straight up told him it's too late... I don't need you anymore."
– gudetarako
As much as a couple wants to stay together, unforeseen circumstances can eventually tear people apart.
Very few people can maintain healthy long-distance relationships.
When a new job opportunity takes a significant other away, would you begrudge them for wanting a better position to earn more money? Or is it better for them to reluctantly turn down the opportunity so they could stay with you? Do either scenarios breed resentment?
These were questions I've often asked myself with past relationships, and my answers varied depending on the person I was with.
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