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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Money and debt are my two biggest issues. Debt just keeps building if you don't get on it. I'm too afraid to call the student loan people. I'll do it tomorrow. Whoops...
MOST IMPORTANT!!!
Think About It Reaction GIF by IdentityGiphy"Mental health. It took me years to realize how much I've dissociated. It became how I deal with everything. There are so many unhealthy ways to live your life by ignoring mental health."
Check the skies...
"Terminal velocity."
"Birds crap at up to 26,000 feet, or 14000% higher than the CN tower. When was the last time someone got killed by falling avian feces? But no, seriously. I used to work on tall buildings and radio towers. I'm also afraid of heights, so while I was up there I'd work out out how fast various things would hit the ground to distract myself."
"Air resistance is a real witch, and rotational effects make it even slower. Pennies dropped off the tallest building west of the Mississippi, the one I was on top of, would barely break 22mph. Harking a loogie over was no worse to pedestrians than pigeons."
"It was only once I got into the tools I was using that there would be an injury. A 9/16 wrench dropped 900 feet might actually kill someone, if it hit them in the head just right. The 1-inch would kill someone most of the time. Needless to say all my tools were on loops, and undroppable."
- technos
"participate"
"Disassociation. Your brain is an incredibly powerful force and it can start working against your best interests so quickly while telling you that everything is fine."
"Thank you for this. I looked up dissociation in Google from this thread. I realize I have been struggling with both derealization and depersonalization in teens, and even now to some extent. I too think physical activities and activities I am really passionate about are the ones I "participate." I can say I have been a spectator to many years of my life and not feel my own experience. It is really strange, how do we come out of it??"
I'm scared to be honest...
"Mental and emotional abuse. Damn, I'm 36 and still trying to undo the damage done my whole childhood. The pain of beatings doesn't compare to how mental and emotional abuse screws with me every day in so many ways. And even stupid stuff. I go into fight or flight mode if my boss wants to talk to me. I constantly think my friends and my husband are mad at me or sick of me. I'm scared to be honest about my feelings sometimes because I don't want to be ridiculed."
Need Zzzz...
Stressed Episode 19 GIF by The SimpsonsGiphy"A severe lack of sleep. I have no longer been able to sleep at night for some odd reason, so my brain causes me to essentially pass out during the day."
Open your mouth...
Richard Kiel Smile GIF by James Bond 007Giphy"Take care of your TEETH. Unless you want to end up with a molar shattering one day and having to get a quadruple root canal."
Dear Doctor,
"Just got gallbladder surgery! I had a pain under my right ribs off and on. Then at one point it wouldn't go away and kept getting worse. Had an ultrasound and emergency surgery like two days later. I had a huge gallstone blocking my bile duct, and it would have ruptured. Yeah pain can come and go, but if it gets to the point where it is there all the time, go to the doctor!"
Love your skin...
"Strange skin growths. One of my wife's uncles was at a family gathering that was also attended by my BIL, an ER doc. The uncle mentioned that he'd had this odd growth on his leg for some time but hadn't bothered to do anything about it. Showed it to my BIL who adamantly advised him to get seen immediately. Uncle still took his time—too many other things to do or whatever. A year on an the man is just riddled with cancer. I don't think there's much to be done other than making him as comfortable as possible at this point."
Messages...
"Email. My kid almost lost the financial aid award because it's summer; I don't have to check my email. It was an intense hustle to get everything squared away and not lose that spot at college."
- awill237
"At the beginning of all the grad school classes I TA'd for I always ended the first day by asking, "Who here has a smartphone? Who has an email app on their phone? Who has their student email account synced with the app?"
"It was always all hands raised, all hands, two or three hands. I would make them set it up before they left. Checking your email in the morning and evening takes maybe 5 minutes on average unless you are a very important person in some organization who should really be checking more often!"
the long list...
list GIFGiphy"Headaches, skin cancer, tooth pain, kids, UTI which can turn into kidney infection, wound infection, bowel disease, debt, bad relationship."
The list is endless. So just start chipping away. Stay on top of it. Teeth and mind first. Stay calm.
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