People Reveal What Made Them Throw In The Towel On Their Relationship

Relationships end for all sorts of reasons - infidelity, selfishness, or people simply stop getting along. There's usually a 'last straw' moment, and it sticks with you.

cukatie2983 asked, [Serious] When did you know it was time to throw the towel in on a relationship or friendship?

Submissions have been edited for clarity, context, and profanity.

If "oh God now what" is your reaction to their call, it's time to end it.

When I saw their name pop up on my phone, and my immediate reaction was dread rather than excitement.

It's one thing to occasionally feel that a friend is being needy, it's another when literally every communication leads to you wondering, "oh, god, what is it this time?"

Takes a lot to recognize this.

When I realized I didn't like myself when I'm with them.

No one wants to be a friend out of convenience.

When I realized our friendship was at her convenience and if she didn't need emotional support she would prefer I didn't exist. I'm willing to bet good money that she hasn't thought about me once since we stopped talking, despite her constant claims of how "important" I was. I've learned some seriously important lessons about people from it all, though, so I guess it isn't all bad.

Friends don't project insecurity onto their friends.

I'm a lil chunky and have a friend that is also a lil chunky. I don't really care, but she is obviously a little bit bigger than me. Weird thing is, she insists constantly she is 30-50 pounds lighter than me, says she's half my pants size, etc. It's weird but I chalk it up to insecurity.

She would always make these weird, cloaked insults about my weight. Once I was talking about how I was shopping at forever 21 in the plus size section. A few minutes later, I complimented her skirt and she said "perks of being able to shop outside of the plus size section!"

It wasn't veiled enough for me anymore and I decided not to be friends with someone that used their insecurity as an excuse to be mean to me anymore.

Time flies.

When I went to text him a happy birthday and saw that the last communication between us was me texting him happy birthday a year ago

If you're starting to tear each other down, it's probably time to part ways.

I had a realization that even though there was nothing wrong with the relationship, there wasn't all that much right with it either. There was nothing that excited me. It was just a sort of low-level dissatisfaction with each other that was only getting worse, but never quickly enough to be able to point to an individual moment where we could justify sitting down and having The Talk. We just sort of assumed we were happy because we were happy once, and things hadn't really changed, so... stability, I guess? Yay?

Eventually, it just goes to the stage where we were picking each other apart grain by grain, so I sat him down and explained that we were better off apart. He didn't agree. It was a rough conversation, but it worked out for the best; shortly afterward he found someone that he was genuinely excited to be with, and they're still doing great.

The realization that just because he was a good person, it didn't mean he was a good person for me was a big turning point.

My biggest fear.

When I realized that while I considered us good friends, I was just being tolerated.

Being abandoned by friends can be devastating.

I have this group chat with my friends from high school and we talk every day in it. I've asked multiple times to hang out but they've been busy or no one replies. I tried to be optimistic and give them the benefit of the doubt, but for the past 2 months I've seen a majority of them hanging out on Snapchat stories and I've never been invited once. The last straw was me asking in advance if anyone wanted to go out to dinner and ice cream for my birthday and that I would pay for everyone. I know people saw it because it tells me, but no one said anything. So that's the story of how I spent my birthday alone this year.

Yikes.

I had a friend who was supposed to be the best man at my wedding but texted me the day of the rehearsal that he wasn't going to make it.

But it didn't end there. Some years later he put out a FB invitation to a BBQ at a park, this turned out to be his own wedding, which was a surprise. The following day he texted me "Guess we're even on missing each other's weddings now."

I told him to lose my phone number at that point.

The friend zone can get old.

When I had the moment of realization that I became the typical nice guy trope towards a friend. I realized it was unhealthy for me and wasn't fair to her, so I pulled away to work on bettering myself & not drag her down.

This is... crazy. I'd take revenge too.

In my late 20s, I got rid of a poisonous social group of people where a few members were harassing me with "pranks" like stealing my mail, slashing my tires, harassing my work, and just generally being aholes while pretending to be my friends. I was in denial for a while, thinking "these are not how adults act," and it was a string of coincidences until a few other members came to me with evidence and "Uh, I think you should know..."

I never knew why they did it. The gist I got, and it's piecemeal based on some of the legal stuff I had access to, but it started out as "harmless pranks" that just got out of hand. One of them said in a confession to avoid prosecution, "we just couldn't stand to see him succeed. We loved doing s* to him, and then him ranting about it online. It was hilarious, we never knew that [other people] were going so far as to do [illegal stuff]." He blamed it on mob mentality.

Sadly, they went too far with the work thing, and my work went after them legally in a big way: two lost their security clearance, one was suspended from her job without pay, and another lost his entire business (which was operating illegally, but still). The rest just allowed it to happen or decided it was none of their business. It was only then I found out how a lot of these seemingly unrelated events were all planned out.

It just seems so surreal.

Cruelty to animals is an ABSOLUTE dealbreaker.

I ended a friendship because whenever we would spend time together she just wanted to talk about all the people she disliked (which was A LOT of people) and brag about herself. If I visited her parent's house with her and tried to have a conversation with them she would interfere and say things like, "why would you think anyone wants to hear what you have to say". Her mother had a lot of health issues and didn't get out much and this girl I was friends with thought it made her boring and not worth spending time with.

Also, her boyfriend had a very old cat who was blind and walked very slowly. Whenever it got in her way she would kick it and scream at it.

Recently found out that even her family, who are lovely, have broke contact with her because she has treated them appallingly.

Oh, she is also the kind of person who goes traveling to third world countries to take pictures with the locals for her social media and acts like she's a saint for going there and blessing them with her privileged presence.

Ruining someone's start to college? Goodbye.

My ex-best friend from HS was supposed to be my roommate when we went away to University. We talked about it a lot, so when he and another friend went to that town to find us an apartment, I was pretty excited to hear the news. Upon returning, he said that they found a great place, three bedrooms. I said, well, there are four of us, who are sharing a room? He said, no one, one for me, one for Jay and one for Jason. I said, where is my room? He said, oh, um, I didn't know you wanted to get an apartment together. That was a very fast beginning of the end.

Hey, you ask for a marriage? You pay for the marriage.

When I told him that I didn't have the money for a wedding right now and we needed to push it back a year and he said, "well if we don't have it now, we'll never have it". I suggested we just go to the justice of the peace and he said, "No, I want a real wedding" (He and his family didn't have the money to even help...so he expected me to pay for my own wedding by myself). He had some friends over a few days later and I was having a call with my bridesmaids and I overheard him say, "oh, I stay out of all that stuff...the wedding is for her, ya know." It was the first time that I had ever heard him outright lie to someone about something so trivial and dumb. I broke off the engagement the next day after I told him we need to postpone because I'm not trying to go into debt for a day and he still said, No. He finally confessed that he wanted to get married because he wanted something in his life that was secure. I was like....and what was I going to get? A bag of problems is what. I am so thankful for my wandering ears overhearing that bs.

No, you don't deserve anything if you don't work for it.

When I told him about something exciting that happened in my life (getting into grad school), and instead of being excited for me, he was angry because he felt he deserved it more than I did. Despite never applying for any such program himself, getting sh_tty grades because all he did during college was play video games, and having no career ambitions to speak of.

I dealt with a lot of sh_t from him over the span of 2.5 years, but somehow his resentment of my happiness at that moment was the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back. Broke it off with him not long after.

It costs $0.00 to not be a misogynistic pig.

In college, an old friend of mine came to visit and was really rude to my girlfriend. Like "men are talking" type rude. It was subtle, not in your face or aggressive. Let's call him Joe is the sort of guy that is simultaneously god's gift to women in his own mind but has also never had a relationship of any kind, the least of which is because he is nothing to look at and out of shape. Joe is a broken ego chauvinist.

Post college. I now live with my former girlfriend, current fiancee. Joe wants to come over.

He does it again. Same exact thing. Any time she tries to join the conversation he acts like it's the dumbest thing he's ever heard and brushes it off.

We agreed to have him over that night because I felt bad about having no old friends in our wedding party. I still asked him to be a groomsman. It is one of the biggest failures of judgment I've ever made.

I haven't seen him privately since that night, almost a decade ago. I do not plan to.

Some people just aren't meant to be together.

We were fighting over the dumbest things. Time spent together felt like a chore for both of us. Despite all of it, I love her very much and she's an amazing person. We were friends before lovers, I respected our relationship enough to cut it off. It was turning toxic and it's not my intention for her to hurt, so it was the best for both of us. It hurts sometimes and I regret it but.. yeah.

Sounds like the friend has depression and is taking it out on others.

I've hit this point with a friend recently. He's become extremely negative in the past year or so.

Anything anyone says or does is wrong. I bought a tire pressure gauge and tread depth gauge for my new car and he went off on a rant about how I'm spending my money on 'pointless things.'

I told him that I learned to drive in a diesel car and I'm finding it hard to adjust to a petrol. He went on a rant about how all diesel cars are sh_t and how I need to learn my car better.

I mentioned that I was looking for a new job and he went off about how he would have fired me months ago anyway because of my mental health.

He never used to be like this.

Ummm... I have questions, like, why? Poor kid.

Last Friday when my friend, riding in the passenger seat, wanted me to drop her off at her boyfriend's so she could live there...

While her husband was in the backseat with their child literally crying because he is genuinely scared he will be unable to provide for their baby. Like I had to give him 20 bucks for food because this chick did not care what happened...

The mother did not care as she was heading off to get with her new boyfriend.

Another example of Americans' crusade against education. Aim high, bro.

Had a really good friend for about 15 years. I went to college a little late. We were working together at Wal-Mart for the longest time, and when I announced I was going to be cutting my hours to go to college, he scoffed and accused me of wanting to be "elite."

So, I ended up with a Ph.D., and he's now in his 20th year of being a Wal-Mart floor associate.