The worst thing about being betrayed is that it almost always involves someone you once inherently trusted. These distraught people know firsthand how painful such a revelation can feel, so read on as they recount how they confronted the devastating reality of their own loved ones’ shocking treacheries.
1. Spy Kids
My father invented a game. He sold it to a bigger company, and before long he was tied up in a lawsuit, convinced they had ruined it. After that case was settled, he turned on his own board of directors, believing they had basically staged a secret mutiny, and tried to destroy the company. Then, right in the middle of all that, he turned on his family too.
My parents divorced when my sister and I were very young. Later, he accused my mother of spreading lies about him around our small town to damage his reputation and influence local testimony so he would get less money in the lawsuit against the larger company. At least, that was his version of events.
At the time, I was 19 and my sister was 21. One day I called him from college to tell him I had joined the Army, and his response crushed me: he told me never to speak to him again. When I asked why, he said that anyone who supported his “enemy” — meaning my mother — was his enemy too.
I told him I wasn’t going to cut my mother out of my life because of his lawsuit, and I wasn’t going to cut him out either. They were both my parents. But that wasn’t enough for him. He disowned both my sister and me. I kept hoping he would come around eventually, and I figured I’d try talking to him whenever I came home on leave.
It never went anywhere. He stayed cold and distant and always wanted to know why I was really there. Eventually, I realized he had convinced himself that my sister and I had been involved in “corporate espionage” against his company when we were in middle school and high school, working with his board against him.
I finally stopped trying after he exploded at me when I got back from overseas. That was it for me. The court cases started around 2000 or 2001. He went after the board in 2004 and disowned my sister and me in 2005. Then in 2009, out of nowhere, he called to wish me a happy Father’s Day, which was strange since I don’t have kids.
He said he had lost his case, had to pay around a million dollars in damages, and wanted back into my life. I told him I’d call if I ever wanted to talk. I still haven’t called. My sister has spoken with him more recently, and from what she says, he has convinced himself so completely that we betrayed him that there’s really no way back.
At one point, around 2012, he suggested that the only way we could ever be a family again was if we sat down with a lawyer and admitted we had sabotaged his company. Then, maybe, he would forgive us. Otherwise, to him, we would always be liars, and he said he couldn’t live with liars in his family. So yes, my dad more or less lost touch with reality and walked away from his kids.
My sister and I were fortunate that this happened when we were already adults. Some of the hardest years of our lives came right after, and he missed so much growth and change that he no longer feels like a father figure to me. At this point, it doesn’t feel like a huge loss.
My sister and I are adults now, and we are very different — and much better — people than we were in 2005. So really, it’s his loss.
2. Companies Love Misery
A well-known company recruited me and convinced me to sell my family home, move my family away from a city we loved, and walk away from the business I had spent 17 years building. Then they had me work nonstop for a year trying to rebuild a struggling competitor, while I poured nearly $250,000 into it. By the end of that year, I had turned it around and almost doubled the business. Then they betrayed me.
When it came time to offer me a permanent contract, they pushed me out instead. For the last five years, I’ve been rebuilding my own business almost next door, largely out of spite, and competing with them every chance I get. I’ve recovered the income I once had, and now it can’t be taken from me by corporate operators. Anger can be a powerful motivator.
I get over it a little more each day, but watching the person they brought in to replace me slowly lose what they took from me has honestly been satisfying. Even so, what happened that day still sticks with me. “Betrayal” almost feels too mild a word.
3. Weeded Out
One day, the friend group I used to eat lunch with wasn’t sitting at our usual table. When I found them somewhere else, I sat down and asked why they hadn’t told me they had moved. My “best friend” told me they hadn’t wanted me to know. Apparently, someone had told them they would seem cooler if they stopped hanging out with me. But that wasn’t even the worst part.
They also told their parents they had stopped spending time with me because I was using weed. For the record, I hadn’t even tried it until after high school.
4. Home Is Where The Tart Is
I moved in with the guy I was dating. A week later, he went away for the weekend. While he was gone, I baked and cooked for him because I knew he’d be tired when he got back. When he returned, he dropped a bombshell: he had met another woman, and our relationship was over. After that, he became emotionally and verbally cruel.
She felt threatened by me because I was still living there and, in her view, too attractive. So my ex decided the best way to prove to her that he no longer cared about me was to treat me terribly. It was awful. Even worse, he was extremely manipulative. We had mutual friends, and whenever they came over, he would twist little stories and invent lies to make me look unstable and unreasonable. It was miserable.
I left as soon as I could, and my life is much better now.
5. Finding A New Lease On Life
My roommates and I were supposed to move into a new place together, but I was still waiting for them to give me a copy of the lease to sign. They waited until moving day to tell me they didn’t want me moving in with them after all. I had 12 hours to find somewhere else to live and ended up staying for a few days with my girlfriend, whom I couldn’t stand and soon broke up with.
I learned the hard way that, at that point in my life, almost nobody liked me, so I worked on changing my personality for the better.
6. Their Friendship Was A Sham
I had a best friend from kindergarten until about a month before 10th grade, when I walked in on him with my girlfriend at the time—on my bed. I immediately backed out of that situation, went for a drive to a female friend’s house, and cried myself to sleep next to her. I never spoke to him again, and anytime he tried to talk to me in class after that, I just put my earplugs in.
He kept insisting that he was pressured into it and that she would have done things to him if he refused. It’s not like he couldn’t stand up for himself, so I told him I didn’t believe that for a second. People change, I guess, but some things stay with you forever. I will never forget that moment. It completely broke me.
7. Best Friends For Never
I had two friends who were nice to me whenever I spent time with them separately, but as soon as they were together, they turned mean. They teased me about my height—I was 4'3" when I was 13—and they mocked me for studying, even though they copied off me during tests. The final straw was when they called my house just to tell me I was worthless.
I never spoke to them again, but I spent the rest of middle school and high school as an extremely shy girl with very few friends. Since then, one of them got pregnant at 16, and the other is now my height—five feet tall—but very overweight. As for me, once I left that town and went to college eight hours away, my life got a lot better.
8. For Love, No Money
My ex-husband was deployed to Thailand. I had saved up money to take my three young children home to visit family. At the time, I had never felt closer to my husband. He had just survived a traumatic experience that nearly killed him, I had recently undergone major neurosurgery, and our youngest baby was only three months old. I loved my family deeply and truly believed my husband was a wonderful man. I was completely wrong.
While I was in Texas visiting family, I tried to buy diapers, but my card was declined. I thought it was just an error, so I tried again, but it still didn’t work. A friend paid for the diapers, and I immediately checked my account and saw that it was overdrawn. I contacted the Red Cross so my husband could call me. He said the Army had made a mistake with his paycheck and that he would try to straighten it out.
It never got fixed. I had to borrow money from relatives just to get home with my children and feed them until the next payday. A few weeks later, my husband came home, and we were supposed to attend a formal military ball. During the event, one of his friends hinted that my husband had been with three women at once. I was stunned.
When I confronted him, he panicked and admitted that while he was in Thailand, he had spent all the money I had saved on escorts. Then he told me he was worried he might have an STD and that I needed to get tested too. I remember being so grateful for my friends, because I didn’t get out of bed for about three days. I was absolutely devastated.
9. Mommie Dearest
My girlfriend’s mother abused her for 27 years before she finally got help and got away. She has a two-year-old child—not mine—and her mother still wants custody, even though the court already said no. So her mother decided to get cruel. In the week before Christmas, she flooded my girlfriend’s inbox with awful emails asking when she was going to kill herself, saying nobody cared about her, and even suggesting ways to do it.
It would take forever to write out everything she said, but it was worse than any horror movie. It may not be betrayal in the usual sense, but for a mother to do that to her own child feels like betrayal in the deepest way.
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10. Stepping Away
During my first marriage, I gained a wonderful stepdaughter. Later, we had two more daughters together. One Christmas, my grandmother sent gifts for the two younger girls—but nothing for my stepdaughter. It felt strange, but I always tried to give people the benefit of the doubt, so I called my dad to ask whether she had simply forgotten.
As we all know, when people are caught off guard, they often tell the truth without thinking. Apparently, my grandmother had told my dad that if she had to buy presents for all the stepchildren, she’d go broke. Keep in mind, this was her only step-grandchild, and at the time she was staying at her vacation home in Arizona. That was when I got truly angry.
I packed up all of her gifts and mailed them back with a letter explaining that family is family. It doesn’t matter who gave birth to a child—she is my daughter. But my grandmother never understood that, and she still doesn’t. My dad, afraid of being cut out of the will, took my grandmother’s side. So we don’t speak to him either.
It’s sad, but I stood my ground for the right reason. I may not still be married to her father, but I love that girl as if she were my own.
11. Bad Dad
My former stepfather tried to cross a serious boundary with me when I was 15. He had been my dad since I was six, and then all of a sudden, he decided he didn’t want that role anymore. When I told my mom, she confronted him, and he denied it all, of course. Then she told me I was lying and had made it up. I couldn’t believe it.
Feeling unsafe in your own home and family is a terrible thing. Without my mom protecting me, I felt so unsafe that I left for another country just before my 16th birthday. I’m 29 now, and my mom and I have talked things through since then. I forgave her, and she left him years later. But it still hurts.
12. Only A Friend In Need Is A Friend In Deed
Two other guys and I were supposed to share an apartment this year. Over the summer, we were in different parts of the country while we got the paperwork done, but one of the guys and I turned everything in and were all set. Since we had already discussed and agreed on living together, I assumed the third guy was just running a little behind.
But he never replied to our calls, texts, or Facebook messages. I even signed onto Google Chat and saw him online, but about 10 seconds later, he logged off. I would have felt terrible if he ended up without somewhere to live, so I kept defending him and saying he was probably just late. My parents warned me he would back out, and my other roommate said I should stop worrying about him.
Feeling awful, I very reluctantly moved forward, and the two of us signed the lease without him. Then when the semester started, I found out something incredibly frustrating: the third guy was living on campus. He never told any of us that he had found somewhere else to live. I really thought I could trust him and give him the benefit of the doubt.
13. Living A Lie
My boyfriend of four years was overheard flirting with another girl at a party by a friend of mine. And somehow it gets worse: when the girl mentioned me, he said, “I’m just using that woman for a place to live,” because I had been paying most of the rent and bills since I earn pretty good money.
Honestly, it would have hurt less if he had just cheated on me with her, but instead I feel foolish and used. It’s awful. I found out two days ago, and I haven’t been able to sleep since.
14. Seeing Is Beleaving
My ex-boyfriend and my former best friend started seeing each other behind my back while we were still together. I had been with him for three and a half years, though I had known him for most of my life, and my best friend was someone I trusted completely. It took me a long time to recover from that.
15. You Can’t See The Red Flags Through Rose-Colored Glasses
My father cut me out of his life. The cost of having a relationship with him turned out to be $20,000. He had always been unreliable, but I never really saw it. He was my dad, and I guess I always looked at him through rose-colored glasses. My parents divorced when I was five and my brother was seven. My brother saw through him right away, but I didn’t. By the time he was 10, my brother had stopped visiting our dad completely and only saw him maybe five times total through his teen and adult years.
But not me. I was always there for him when he was down, even after he did things that should have been impossible to forgive. He cheated on one girlfriend—really, he cheated on all of them—and she left him. I even gave him my cat to keep him company when I wasn’t there, which was the best I could do at 11. I always defended him to my brother and my mom, even though the truth is that he was never a very good person. I could see that once I was older, but he was still my dad, and I loved him anyway.
Then my brother sadly took his own life, and my dad learned he was entitled to 50% of my brother’s estate. My brother was 30, struggled with alcohol, and his house was really his only asset. He also hadn’t filed taxes in two years. My dad told me not to worry, that he wasn’t going to go after my mom for his share and that he would sign whatever needed signing so things could move forward without trouble.
Two weeks later, my mom called and told me my dad wouldn’t even sign the papers she needed in order to keep handling the estate, let alone give up his half. So I called him, thinking there had to be some misunderstanding. It went terribly. He started yelling at me, calling me money-hungry and saying I was just like my mother, completely out of nowhere.
That gave him a way to justify taking the money and walking away from us, which is exactly what he did. I’m so naive about things like this that my husband had to explain it to me. I didn’t want to carry all that anger, so a few months later I sent him a message saying I forgave him for what he’d done and hoped he was doing well. I never got a reply.
And on top of that, I had to explain to my two boys why they wouldn’t be seeing their grandpa anymore either. This was our second Christmas without my brother or my dad, and it still hurts so much.
16. To See, Or Not To See
My girlfriend suddenly left me for my best friend. He also lived with three of my other close friends, and none of them really did much to help me through it. So every free night, I had to decide between sitting alone with it or going to my friends’ place and seeing the two of them together.
17. Maybe Baby
My best friend got my girlfriend pregnant. We were 14. We went to a party, and I got completely drunk and passed out. When I woke up the next morning, I couldn’t remember anything from the night before. My girlfriend wouldn’t answer my calls and avoided me at school. When I told my friend I barely remembered the party, he went on about how wild and amazing it had been.
But when I finally got my girlfriend to talk to me again, she didn’t mention the party at all. That should have been the first warning sign. Two or three weeks later, she didn’t come to school. So I asked her best friend—who was dating my best friend—where she was, and she said my girlfriend was at the dentist.
A couple of days later, I asked my girlfriend about it, and she had no idea what I meant. Totally confused, I confronted her friend and asked where she had really been. What she told me stunned me. She said my girlfriend was pregnant with my baby—and that I already knew she had gone to the doctor to confirm it.
At that point, I panicked and called my girlfriend, asking what was going on. She told me we had slept together at the party and that it was my fault for not using protection. But I knew that couldn’t be true, because everyone said I had passed out on the couch and stayed there all night. Once I got that confirmed, I started asking around about whose baby it really was.
It turned out the baby was my best friend’s. Someone had seen them kissing in a bedroom. When I confronted my girlfriend, she admitted it—but then said my friend had attacked her and started crying. I called him, and he admitted they had slept together but insisted he hadn’t forced her. The whole thing was incredibly messed up.
A few months later, I moved away for unrelated reasons, and I haven’t spoken to either of them since. Last I heard, my friend was in prison.
18. A Hidden Scapegoat Clause
There was a man I looked up to like a friend, a mentor, and almost a father figure. He convinced me to leave my job and come work for him. He promised he’d help me get promoted, reach my goals, and become part of his team. So I went to work for him, and it was like dealing with two completely different people.
He insulted me, talked about me behind my back, and blamed me for the problems he was having with the rest of his staff. He completely wrecked my reputation and set my career back. It took me four years of working incredibly hard to rebuild my name. I still don’t understand why he did it. It was one of the worst experiences of my life.
19. Sometimes, Love Hurts
I was 24 and in love for the first time in a real, deep way—the kind where you understand the difference between caring about someone and truly being in love with them. We were together for two years. I also had a best friend who felt more like a brother than any of my actual siblings. But he was also the kind of guy who married his wife only because she got pregnant, and cheated on her all the time. I should never have trusted him.
He had that dangerous combination of being very attractive and incredibly smooth with women, so they were always drawn to him. Long story short, I caught both my girlfriend and my best friend lying about what they’d done the night before. I confronted my girlfriend, and she admitted she had been sleeping with him for a couple of months.
My roommate had to physically stop me and threatened to call the police when I tried to leave with a baseball bat to go after my so-called best friend. I’ve never felt that level of pain and betrayal again, and even 20 years later, I still struggle with trust.
20. Look No Father
My father left town when I was six months old. Even when he was around, I think he only saw me a few times. I didn’t even see a picture of him until I was 16. I’m serious—I didn’t even know what he looked like. But an old boss of mine had gone to high school with him, showed me his photo in a yearbook, and even helped me find contact information.
When I finally worked up the courage to call, I ended up speaking to my grandfather—my dad’s father—for the first time. It was the worst phone call of my life. He told me I had made a mistake by calling, said I should never contact them again, and told me to “go to heck.” He passed away a month later. My mother never really talked to me about any of this, so my father has always been a mystery.
People close to me had told me all kinds of stories—that my dad had left the country, died in the Gulf conflict, or was in prison. Now that I’m older, 23, and have a son of my own, it’s hitting me hard. I had pushed it to the back of my mind until my son was born, but the day after he arrived, I spent five minutes on Google and found my dad’s current address and phone number.
My dad had changed his name after I was born, but he was still easy to find. In that quick search, I also learned he has a wife and children and lives in a suburb of Seattle where the median income is over $135,000. I even found a Google Street View image of his house. He has never paid child support.
This man left me when I was a baby and still managed to build a whole new life. His family has no idea I exist. I can’t fully explain how much this has affected me. There’s no betrayal worse than being abandoned by a parent. But it hasn’t all been bad. I had my own child at 20, worked full-time through college, and graduated because I was determined to become a better man than he was.
I would never leave my child after living through this. I still don’t know whether I should call my dad or show up at his front door and completely shake up his family’s world.
21. There’s Nothing Funny About Chuckles
So, I’m having a party. I used to have a friend who had a habit of getting really mad over tiny things and then getting “revenge.” His revenge was always petty stuff you might never even notice. For example, one time he spit into my wallet. One night, he got angry again, so Chuckles went and poked holes in all my condoms. That was bad enough, but then he came back the next day, said he forgot something, and threw them away.
While I was hearing this story, I also found out that another friend of ours had watched him do it. He literally stood there, saw it happen, and said nothing. I asked why he didn’t stop him, and he said he didn’t want Chuckles getting mad at him. To me, that was the worst part of the whole story, and I told him that. And it wasn’t even the only time he watched people mess with my stuff in my home and did nothing.
He’s the kind of person who thinks he can do no wrong. The type who believes he can do whatever he wants and everyone should forgive him because you’re friends and somehow owe him something. He refuses to admit that some of the things he does are seriously messed up. One time, he got into a fight with his mom, went out, got drunk, and then drove home. Something happened after that—we still don’t know exactly what, because he didn’t think he had done anything wrong.
But his mom had the police take him into custody, and she got a two-year restraining order against him. Things like that don’t just happen for no reason. We haven’t been friends in a long time, and I told him it’s because he’s awful. He’s one of the worst people I’ve ever met, and I’ve met some truly bad people. At least those people knew their behavior was wrong.
22. How Dairy They!?
I felt genuinely betrayed when Dove started putting three ice cream bars in a box instead of four. At first, I assumed it was some kind of mistake, but after looking closer, I finally noticed the small print on the box saying there were only supposed to be three now. They didn’t even lower the price. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so disappointed over dessert in my life.
23. Broken Trust
I dated the guy I lost my virginity to for about six months. I was 17 or 18 and thought I was in love, so I was blind to a lot of his flaws. He was older and had a child with someone I believed was his ex, at least according to him, but it turned out he was actually engaged to her the entire time we were together. I already had trust issues, so that definitely didn’t help. I found out a week before his wedding and cut all contact immediately.
A month later, he still tried to get back together with me.
24. Hard Work Doesn’t Always Pay Off
When I was a teenager, my brother and I had a friend whose parents had been divorced since he was very young. His mom chose an alcoholic abusive man over her kids, so our friend basically lived with us through high school. Starting at 15, he worked two and sometimes three jobs—bussing tables, mowing lawns, whatever he could do to pay for his car.
Eventually, he got a job at the local electrical co-op. There was a man there who sort of acted like his mentor. To this day, I’m not even sure what the man’s real position was; he wasn’t exactly a supervisor. But my friend ended up doing all this guy’s dirty work. The man sent him to the CEO’s house every weekend to maintain the yard—the CEO had a huge place with lakes and around 100 acres of land.
Even while he was still in high school, my friend had a full-time job as a night dispatcher at the co-op. From 4 p.m. to 11 p.m., he took calls from people whose power was out. It was a solid full-time job for someone that age, and his mentor reminded him all the time how lucky he was. Then the man started making him come to his own house to mow his lawn, take out his trash, and feed his dog.
Whenever the man left town, my friend had to stay at his house and wasn’t allowed to leave. On weekends, we’d want to go out and have fun, but he couldn’t because he had to house-sit.
Even so, that evening shift let him go to college during the day and earn a degree. For about six years, he did everything this man asked. Then the big moment finally came. A major supervisor position opened up at the company: office job, title, company vehicle, everything. The man kept telling my friend he was going to get it.
Instead, he hired his niece’s boyfriend, a high school dropout with no work history at all. My friend immediately found another job and gave notice.
Then the man told him he’d have to pay the company back for the tuition assistance he’d received for school. My friend ended up on a payment plan just to repay them.
25. Family Matters
My ex-husband’s brother was a terrible person. His daughter found her grandmother when she was 20, and the woman told her to go away. She didn’t, and eventually she found her father, who also wanted nothing to do with her. His wife of 16 years left him over it. Then the grandmother called the girl and told her it was all her fault that her son’s life was ruined and that she should go back to wherever she came from. I learned all of this from my son, who was 16 at the time.
So I called the poor girl and invited her over so she could spend time with my son. It turned out her mother had died a few months earlier, and she had no one. She just wanted to feel like she belonged somewhere. My ex threatened to take me to court for custody of our son if I kept seeing her. I laughed at him. She felt terrible for “causing trouble.” Then one day, she just disappeared.
This all happened years ago. Every now and then, she and my son still talk, but from what I understand, she’s had a very hard life. I blame them. She was a wonderful young woman who needed love and acceptance at a painful time, and instead of giving her that, they rejected her and made her seem selfish for even reaching out. I wish my care and acceptance had been enough.
I think the point I want to make is this: take love and acceptance wherever you find it. And if you reach out to someone and they reject you, that says nothing about your worth. Nothing at all.
26. Caught In A Bad Romance
My mom hasn’t really been part of my life since I was two, and that’s still true now. When my parents divorced, my dad got custody, which was pretty unusual in 1964. He raised me, and in many ways I was lucky because he was an amazing dad. But life still wasn’t easy. His job took him away for long stretches—sometimes three days, sometimes three months—so my grandma helped raise me too, and I spent a lot of time with other relatives.
Growing up in a small town in the 1960s without a mom was really hard. Everybody else seemed to have one. When I was little, my mom would promise to come see me and then never show up. I truly believed my parents didn’t spend much time with me because I just wasn’t good enough. Then last month, I ended a 19-month relationship after finding out he had been involved the entire time with another girlfriend he’d had for four years, who is married.
After that, he kept following me, calling, texting, threatening me, and even keyed my car. I got a stalking protective order, but he violated it several times and is now in jail. Last night, I went dancing with a friend, and when I walked past one of my ex’s friends in the parking lot, she started yelling that she hated me and calling me awful names. I can only imagine what he’s been telling people.
At this point, I’ve let go of every connection I had with his friends and even mutual friends. I don’t trust anyone right now. I’m lonely and struggling with depression. In my statement to the judge, after a lot of thought, I’m asking that he stay locked up for at least a year, mostly so I can finally feel safe and maybe so he won’t be so set on being cruel and vindictive.
I would move immediately if I could, but I own my home, and my children are settled in local schools.
27. Brain Fart
My own brain completely failed me. I had my phone in my left hand and toilet paper in the other. Somehow, I started to wipe with my phone and dropped it into the toilet before I even realized what I was doing.
28. Time To Make It A Long-Distance Relationship
I must have been three or four, just playing in the kitchen. My father was sitting at the table when he suddenly exploded into a screaming rant about how useless his children were, how much of a burden we were, and how he wanted to run away and leave us all behind because of his terrible, worthless children. My mother must have seen my face, because she shouted back, “They’re good kids.”
Then my father turned all that anger on her. It went on for a long time. That was really the beginning of his long pattern of being a furious, harsh parent. It was also the last time my mother ever stood up for us. After that, she became someone who enabled him and would sacrifice any of her children to protect herself whenever things got hard—which happened often.
Now that she’s the one who is helpless and depends on other people, she acts as if she made some huge sacrifice for me and that I should put my whole life aside to care for her. In reality, she was barely more than a parent in name and carried a deep sense of resentment despite doing very little. My school actually had to call our house from time to time just to make sure I was being cared for.
The one time I thought she truly protected me was when she stopped my father from stabbing me—twice—but she later told me she only did it because if I went to the police, my father would have killed us both. Before he died, my dad did calm down somewhat and admitted to some of what he had done over the years, though nowhere near all of it. It wasn’t enough.
But my mother still makes it very clear that she does not care about her children beyond what she thinks we owe her, and she is still completely self-centered. When my husband died, and our house was robbed while he was dying, I called her to tell her. Her response was, “Oh, that’s too bad. You know, there’s a cafeteria here and a little store where I can buy milk and bread.”
So yes, I think the biggest betrayal in my life was my mother’s complete disregard for her children, even when we were very young.
29. Friendship Over
My friend deliberately grabbed the controller out of my hands so I would die and lose my last life on the final level of Battletoads. I still haven’t forgiven him for that.
30. The Prisoner’s Dilemma
Right now, I’m facing three serious criminal charges along with eight other friends. We had all been out drinking one night, and one of the people I was with started a fight. Without really thinking and without knowing what had happened, I turned around and saw a guy hitting about three of my friends. They all jumped in, and I did too, still not knowing who started it or stopping to think that joining in might be a terrible idea.
Long story short, the guy had been yelling at his girlfriend while staring at my friend and saying things like, “You’re a witch.” He only hit him once. But then everything got much worse. Other people joined in, and they ended up putting him into a coma. The man who started fighting my friends was the only person I personally saw and fought. He was still standing and trying to help his friend. I don’t know why, but I thought there were a lot more of them, so I picked the person in front of me and stayed in that fight.
Everyone else ran except for me and one other friend. That friend was someone I had only just introduced to the group that night. Then the owner came outside with a pistol, told everyone to stay put, and actually pointed it at us. He held us there until police arrived. We were both charged with three counts, and I haven’t spoken to that group since I got arrested for one simple reason: I didn’t want them to get caught too.
I’ve known these people a long time, and we’ve been through a lot together. They accepted and respected the fact that I cleaned up my life. I don’t talk the way I used to, I don’t slur my words anymore, and I’ve worked hard to improve myself. I took classes and worked my way into a management position in a respectable field. Just two years ago, the only things I was spending money on were illegal substances, cigarettes, and water.
My friends break the law, yes, but they’ve also been genuinely good to me. I really mean that. Since day one, they’ve shown me loyalty and love. Now we’re at the point of going through this trial. Like I said, I haven’t contacted them because I didn’t want to help law enforcement connect anything. My lawyer told me the police could pull my phone records and see if I had reached out to people I shouldn’t have been speaking with.
In the end, it didn’t matter anyway. They got caught because cameras picked up their car’s license plate about a month and a half later. I don’t know whether they realize that’s what led police to them, but when I saw them for the first time in court at our preliminary hearing, it crushed me. They wouldn’t even look at me.
I lost the people who felt like family, even though they weren’t related to me. I was bailed out before anyone could question me much, but I know that once I take the stand, the court may try to pressure me into turning against them. And if I try to get a plea deal from the prosecutor, I may have to give them up. So what do I do? Do I let them take the full weight of these charges, or do I stay silent and risk losing the job I’ve worked so hard to build?
It’s hard because these people feel like brothers to me. If we didn’t have different last names, there would be no difference in how deeply we believe in that bond. My stomach turns just writing this. This is easily the biggest decision—and maybe the biggest betrayal—I’ve ever had to face.
31. It Sounds Like They Deserve Eachother
My best friend and my ex-boyfriend are probably going to get married soon.
32. From A Bad Feeling To Feeling Bad
My ex wasted a year of my life by lying to me. I had this feeling something was happening between her and my “best friend,” but every time I brought it up, which was often, she’d deny it and try to make me feel like I was just being paranoid. After I finally broke up with her, I found out they had been sleeping together. Supposedly it had only been going on for a few months, and there wasn’t any overlap, but when someone lies to you over and over for that long, it’s hard to believe anything they say.
That was three years ago, and I still haven’t been able to really connect with anyone since. I have two regrets: not ending things when I first noticed the warning signs, and not standing up to him when I had the chance.
33. Cheaters Never Prosper
Right now, I’m dealing with a divorce and court proceedings involving my husband, who is also the father of my toddler. Three months ago, he assaulted me in front of our daughter and put me in the hospital. Instead of apologizing, he bragged about it. Then he tried to get a restraining order against me and take our daughter by claiming I was the abusive one. I’m 115 pounds, and he’s a 210-pound trained cage fighter.
At the same time, I found out he had been having an affair with my best friend since before I even met her. They had actually planned for me to meet her and become close to her so they could carry on the affair more easily. I even let her live with us for six months. The State filed a number of charges against him for what he did to me, and now both of them are saying she’ll testify against me and that they’re going to take my daughter and make my life miserable.
The evidence against him is overwhelming, and I can easily challenge her testimony, but it still hurts deeply. Their betrayal is hard to describe. The State is now trying to bring charges against her too, and he’s facing at least two years in prison. Family court also granted me full custody, and I was able to remove my name from our lease and leave him to deal with the eviction.
He’s also been taken into custody three times in the last two months right in front of me, so karma really does seem to be on my side.
34. He Deserves A Formal Apology
In Year 12, my senior year, I had pretty much accepted that when the Senior Formal/Prom came around, I’d probably go alone if I went at all. Then one day between classes, E stopped me in the hallway and asked if I’d want to go to the formal with C because she didn’t have anyone to go with and apparently thought I was cute. C had transferred schools the year before, but I remembered her, so I said yes.
I got her number from one of her friends, called her that night, and confirmed everything. I was really happy about it. Then about two weeks before the formal, I asked one of her friends whether C was going with her group or wanted to come with mine. Her friend gave me this confused look like she had no idea what I was talking about.
That’s when I found out C had decided to go with someone else instead: D, another girl in her group. No one seemed to think this was something I should be told. I was crushed. So not only had the girl I thought I was taking to the formal chosen someone else, another girl, but she didn’t even bother to tell me.
It turned out I was just being used as a way for her to get in, since the only way she could attend was by going with someone from the school. To her and her friends, the whole thing was a joke on MySpace. They thought it was hilarious. The whole plan was to lead me on, put me in an awkward position, and then act like, “OMG, what are you doing?”
I still have a lot of confidence issues around women because of it.
35. The Embodiment Of Grief
The biggest betrayal I’ve gone through? All three of my miscarriages. My body has let me down in every pregnancy so far, and I hate feeling this way—like I’m somehow broken, like I can’t even give my partner a child.
36. This Mom Seems Beyond Help
I must have been pretty young, maybe around eleven. I wasn’t close to my mum at all. I never told her much about my life, because whenever something bad happened to me, she always found a way to make it my fault. She really didn’t want much to do with my life. Anyway, every Saturday night I had to go with my mum and her parents to my aunt’s house. My aunt had two sons, and at the time I was the only granddaughter.
My cousins constantly picked on me and hurt me. It had been going on for as long as I could remember. Some of my earliest memories are of them hurting me. I still have a large scar on my right arm from when they cut me with glass. I never got stitches because my mum refused to take me to the doctor. Instead, I remember her cleaning it with bathwater while I screamed when I got home from their house. I must have been three or four.
One night I was sitting on the couch when my cousins started going after me again. I couldn’t fight back, because if I did, the adults would punish me even more harshly than the boys did. One of them tried to shove his foot between my legs. I couldn’t get him off me because he was too heavy. I started crying out to my mum for help because I was trapped and terrified.
My aunt was laughing at what was happening. My nan was sitting next to me, saying nothing, just stroking the cat. My mum and grandad were in the kitchen making dinner. Instead of helping me, my mum came into the room and yelled at me to be quiet. I kept begging her to help me. Eventually I managed to get free and ran out of the house.
My mum came after me, shouting that I was embarrassing her, that I was the worst child in the world, and that it was no surprise they hated me. I told her I wanted to go home and asked why she wouldn’t help me. According to her, I deserved it. She dragged me back into the house, and the cruelty carried on until it was finally time to leave.
Things like this happened every week until my cousins decided they didn’t want us coming over anymore. Yes, they were the ones who decided it. After that, I hardly saw my grandparents, and if they passed me in the street, they ignored me. As for my mum not protecting me, that was normal. She did harmful things too, and she let other people hurt me all the time. A lot of the mistreatment started with her.
That day was the worst, though, because I was begging for help. I was frightened, she saw exactly what was happening, and she chose her cruel family over the person she was supposed to care about most. She did worse things herself, but somehow that memory hurts even more than the times she attacked me directly.
37. Uncle Stepdad
My brother got involved with my girlfriend and later married her... the same girlfriend I had two kids with.
38. However You Think This Ends…You’re Wrong
Growing up, my best friend and I were next-door neighbors. We were the same age and went to the same private school. We were basically like brothers. We had sleepovers, played video games, and spent hours playing basketball. We shared a lot of important memories. His home life wasn’t great—his dad drank heavily, and his mum was pretty neglectful.
Because of that, my family kind of took him in. We brought him along on family trips to other states. He got to know all my relatives. We really treated him like one of us. We ended up going to the same high school too. In tenth grade, I started dating the girl I thought was the love of my life. My friend welcomed her into our group, and we all had a lot of great times together. That only made what happened later hurt even more.
During our senior year, she got pregnant, which shocked both of us. We hadn’t planned for anything like that, and suddenly our future felt uncertain. Still, we graduated, and a few weeks later she gave birth. We were both at a crossroads, but eventually she agreed to put her own plans on hold to raise our child.
I was terrified about how I was going to support a baby. I could barely take care of myself, and now I had a family depending on me. Thankfully, my best friend told me he would help us out and ease some of the pressure. I was really grateful. He sat me down and promised he’d always be there for us.
I couldn’t afford college while trying to provide for my girlfriend and child, so I decided to join the army. It gave me some peace of mind knowing my best friend would be back home helping them. I thought it was the best way to support my family and still earn a steady income.
While I was serving, I got stationed in Afghanistan and saw things no one should have to see—people dying, bodies torn apart, scenes I still can’t forget. Eventually I got leave and came home. I wanted to surprise both my friend and my girlfriend. I decided to go to my friend’s house first.
So I walked up to his place and knocked, but no one answered for a while. After about three minutes, he finally opened the door looking rushed. We hugged, and I went inside. As it turned out, my girlfriend was there too, and I was happy to see her. I suggested the three of us play some video games together, just like old times.
My friend pulled out his old Nintendo 64, and we started playing Mario Party. I was in first place until he landed on Boo and chose to steal my star, dropping me into last. I couldn’t believe he would do that to me after all our years of friendship. I had never felt so betrayed in my life.
That was the end of our friendship.
39. A Dramatic End
One of my best friends started acting short with me during our sophomore year of high school. Eventually she admitted that she was upset because I was going to be an exchange student the following year. I even offered not to go if it bothered her that much, but she said it was fine and told me to go. While I was away, I called her on her birthday to surprise her, and she just scolded me for waking her up. When I got back home, I invited her to come with me to a music festival, but she said she was busy and couldn’t make it.
Except I ended up seeing her at the festival. She just stood there staring at me. It was incredibly awkward. Later we had a theatre class together, but she spent all her time with other people. One of them she actually introduced to me as my replacement while I was gone. We agreed to try the “peer counseling” program our student council offered, since we knew the students who would be helping. We arranged it during theatre class, so I got called out and went to the office.
I know she got the message because I was there waiting, but she never showed up. After around fifteen minutes, the receptionist told me my friend had called and said she couldn’t come. As soon as I returned to theatre class, the teacher pulled me up to do a demonstration in front of everyone. I barely held myself together because I was heartbroken, and she was just sitting there looking completely detached.
As soon as I got back to my seat, I broke down. By the time I pulled myself together, she was gone. Apparently my crying made her uncomfortable, so she pretended to be sick and left. After that, the only real contact we had was when she sent one of her theatre friends over to tell me happy birthday while she stood at a distance and watched.
On the bright side, another friend I had known even longer—someone who was often at my house because she was also close with my older sister—has since become the best friend and honorary sister I could ever ask for. She’s the Turk to my JD.
40. A Harebrained Friend
My friend promised she would take care of my rabbit while I was away at school for my first year. She didn’t, and I ended up having to give him away because my parents refused to look after him.
41. A Sobering Retrospection
My biological father accused me of being pregnant when I was 16. I absolutely was not, and I wasn’t even sexually active. He used that accusation as an excuse to try to remove me from his health insurance. He had already stopped paying child support when I was 14, which, at the time, I didn’t really hold against him. My mom was raising two kids on her own then. Meanwhile, when my stepsister—his new wife’s daughter—turned 16, he bought her a brand-new car, a new four-wheeler, and a huge new wardrobe.
He showers attention and gifts on his stepdaughter and his new baby girl, but he spent most of my childhood drunk and only got sober for his new family. That was the deepest and most painful betrayal I’ve ever felt. Looking back now, though, I can honestly laugh about it.
42. He Needed To Catch ‘Em In The Act
The biggest betrayal I ever experienced was also the first. I was 11, maybe 12. I was really into Pokémon cards back when there were only about 150 of them. I used to save my lunch money to buy booster packs, hoping I’d eventually pull a Blastoise. One day, my mom came home and told me she had a gift for me. It was a first-edition holographic Blastoise.
She said she found it in a store bathroom. Maybe some kid had taken booster packs in there and accidentally left it behind—I don’t know. I was thrilled, and my mom looked so proud that she could make me that happy. My best friend Tommy lived across the street, and he loved Pokémon too. I showed him the card, and we spent the day hanging out like usual. Then he went home, and I went to bed.
The next day, Tommy showed me a new card he had gotten. It was a first-edition holographic Blastoise. If I remember right, the limited cards had a number on them, but I didn’t check. I got suspicious and looked in my binder, and mine was gone. I confronted him, and he said his mom had bought it for him.
I told my mom, and she called his mom. His mom told her that yes, she had bought it for him. I was young and trusting, so for months I still kept looking for my card, even though it was obvious he had taken it. That was the day I lost my best friend, someone I had known since birth.
43. I Bet He Forgot To Tip, Too
My husband slept with a waitress on our honeymoon. Yes, I found out that same night. Yes, I left that night. And yes, I gave him divorce papers within a week. It happened a long time ago, and I’ve moved on. I’m in a very happy relationship now.
44. A Last-Ditch Effort
I made a new friend who seemed to really like me and was genuinely kind and funny. At the time, I felt like my other friends were slowly becoming toxic. I was still hanging out with them, but I was trying to create some distance. Then something happened that made me lose trust in my old friend group, and my new friend told me I should just cut them off. Since this new friend seemed so trustworthy, I did.
That left me with basically one friend, and we spent all our time together. Then, just a week later, that new friend dropped me too, and suddenly I had no one. Later, I found out my old friends had actually been working with the new friend the whole time. They had planned it together: get me to walk away from my old friends, then abandon me too. Wonderful.
45. Lies Travel Faster Than Truth
When I was a teenager, my best friend asked if I wanted to go on vacation with her. I said no. Then, almost a year later, her mother called me and asked where I was. I told her I was at home in my hometown. That’s when I found out my best friend had been lying to her mother, saying I was on the trip with her and covering for a lot of other lies too. She had been using me as an excuse for all the nights she’d spent at some random guy’s house over the previous six months.
Her mother called me a liar and went around town telling people I was promiscuous and dishonest. She even tracked down my mother to tell her all the “things she had found out about me.” My best friend didn’t defend me at all. Instead of telling the truth, she told her mother I was lying and was just jealous of her.
46. A Fool’s Errand
I was betrayed by a man who had been my closest friend for thirty years. I was the godfather to his daughters. After his divorce from an abusive partner who even served time for it, I spent a lot of time and money helping him get his life back together. It turned out he drank away most of the money and did very little to rebuild his business. Instead, he poured his energy into an expensive rebound relationship and developed a taste for fancy wine and eating out.
I moved in for a while to help with the kids. He would disappear for days at a time, and it wasn’t because he was working on his business. Before I fully realized he was stealing from me, drinking heavily, and lying constantly, I had lost $15,000, and my mom was out another $5,000 that he used to stop his house from going into foreclosure. He never even thanked her. My love for those kids kept me from seeing the truth and made me look foolish.
47. Going Down Swinging
After a childhood filled with ongoing physical and emotional abuse from my mother, I finally hit back when I was 16. It wasn’t serious. I didn’t leave a mark, and I only did it once to protect myself. But she called the police and told them I had attacked her. So after years of being mistreated, I was the one taken away for hitting her. I told people what she had done to her children, but no one cared.
Now the court says I did to her everything she actually did to us. My mother leaned hard into playing the victim. I had to attend an anger management class where they threatened me with juvenile detention if I didn’t stand in front of a group and say I had a problem with hitting her, while she sat there with a smug expression like she had won.
48. Once A Cheater, Always A Cheater
After my wife got drunk and stayed at her ex’s place for two nights in a row, I was devastated. I still chose to stay and try to work things out because she kept begging me. After about a week, I had reached a point where I barely wanted to keep going. She ignored my messages telling her I was thinking about ending my life, and instead texted me to lie that she was staying with her parents.
She even stopped by and asked if I wanted to talk to her sister, then immediately left and went right back to her ex’s house. She forgot to turn off her GPS tracker, and I found her only five minutes after she had been with him. Now I honestly don’t know what to do. We were married for five years, and all I want is for things to go back to normal, but I know they never will.
49. Good/Bad Riddance
My ex-fiancée betrayed me. Not long after we got engaged, I discovered she was cheating on me, and we broke up. About a month later, we decided to give it another try and see if we could make things work, but it fell apart again. That part is sadly pretty common. What I learned later is what made it especially awful. Around the time we got engaged, she had actually become pregnant with my child.
She knew that at the time I didn’t want an abortion—not for moral reasons, but because I would rather have my child than end the pregnancy—so she became as deceptive as she could. She started sleeping with a guy from work, then waited about a month to tell me she was pregnant and claimed the baby was his. She got him to pay for the abortion of my child by convincing him it was his baby.
That was when we broke up, just before she went through with the abortion. Apparently, she wanted me to find out she was cheating so she could have the abortion and recover at home without dealing with me. Then, once she felt okay again, she came back and decided we should try again. All of that happened during the month we were apart.
I found out later from her best friend. Normally I might not have believed it, but there were direct emails from my ex-fiancée describing exactly what happened and how she planned it. Her friend felt guilty and decided I deserved to know. Apparently, I was the last person to find out. Even my own cousin knew before I did.
They all stayed close to her, visited her after the abortion, and never said a word to me.
