Brutally Bad Friends

September 13, 2022 | Violet Newbury

Brutally Bad Friends


Friends are supposed to be our most trusted confidantes. We tell them our deepest, darkest secrets and count on them in times of trouble. Finding out we have been betrayed by someone we considered a friend is one of the hardest pills to swallow. These Redditors shared stories of some of the worst things friends have done to them that turned their closest chums into their greatest enemies.


1. Caught In The Middle

A friend of mine was dating my best friend at the time, who was female. It was cool, even though he knew I was basically in love with her. I just let that go, but then this guy decided to ruin everything. He tried to date my cousin while dating my best friend. He turned all of our worlds upside down. I had my cousin crying on one line and my former best friend on the other.

They were both bawling over this piece of work that was playing both of them. It was messed up because I ended up in the middle of all this nonsense. I ended up beating him up in front of all our friends and some of his family members too.

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2. Out To Market

I was driving a “friend” home at around 1 AM when I got into a car crash. As I entered an intersection on a green light, I was hit from the right by a driver who didn't give a hoot that his light was red. I called the authorities, but they said if there were no victims and the cars could be moved, they wouldn’t come to investigate.

They told me that I had to go to the station the next day with the other driver to give a statement. The next day my friend was supposed to meet me at the station to give his statement as a witness. However, he never showed up and didn't answer his phone. I ended up paying for it. Instead, the driver who hit me—who was alone in the car at the time of the crash—brought a friend of his who gave a statement that he was in the car and that I was the one who ran the red light.

Therefore, the officer concluded that I was lying, both about the cause of the accident and that the other guy wasn't there. He took my driver's license for three months. When I finally managed to reach my friend, he told me he had to buy groceries for his brother at 7 AM. I haven't spoken to the jerk since.

Brutally Bad FriendsWikimedia Commons

3. Voodoo Child

I had a friend who was severely depressed. She had tried to take her life multiple times, was scarring herself, etc. She told me she wanted to become a psychologist. I told her that maybe she should get well first to succeed as she wished. That ended up being a HUGE mistake. She didn't understand the advice I gave her and thought I had called her crazy. She then told everyone in my friend group, and I got ditched by this group the next morning.

I was told by her boyfriend at the time, "You don't deserve to hang out with us anymore". She threw away 12 years of friendship just for some misunderstanding. It took me half a year to make friends with other people and reconnect with some of my old friends from that group. She then proceeded to make a voodoo doll of me with hair she took from my hair brush and tried to hurt me.

I had to deal with the damage our friendship did to me. I was always watching after her, removing the blades she hid, healing the fresh scars on her arm, caring about her, giving her all my attention, listening to her dark thoughts, and all of that without her giving something back to me in return. I kept my feelings to myself, and she never asked if I was OK. She was a toxic person, and I'm glad not to have her in my life anymore.

Brutally Bad FriendsWikimedia Commons

4. Workplace Woes

Someone who I once considered a friend for years also happened to be a co-worker of mine. They were in a direct position to assist and resolve a matter of a hostile work environment. My boss became unhinged—he was committing severe commission fraud—and I was fighting back against him since it threatened many people's jobs. Instead of helping me, my "friend" decided to go corrupt. What he did was absolutely disgusting.

They pulled some stunts, which landed many good people in a world of hurt, including some being fired without any advance notice or, in my case, demoted and ostracized. By doing this, my friend gained favor with some of the more morally-devoid executives, resulting in a promotion and a massive raise. When I put all the pieces together and realized what had actually transpired, I called them out on their actions.

I'll never forget the facial expression of "I've been found out", followed by an aggressive denial and projection. At that point, I knew I was on my way out with the company. My former friend decided to stab me in the back several times on the way out, costing me well over $20K in damages. I got a lawyer involved but decided to stop pursuing the matter when the employer threatened the jobs of several friends who still worked there.

A few months after I quit, I had a talk with someone else who was privy to specific knowledge. It was time to get my revenge. I shared what my "friend" had done and was given a few more puzzle pieces worth of information. It was flat-out sickening. Everyone hated my friend, yet they kept being rewarded by life. I bumped into them several times, as we frequented the same places, and they actually turned and walked the other way to avoid me.

They were either ashamed of themselves for what they did or feared that I might harm them. I don't know if I actually believe in karma, but if some unseen force really does level things out, my former friend is eventually going to get a serious dose of karmic justice. They're a terrible person who has harmed many good people with nothing more than a pen and keyboard.

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5. Hold The Ketchup Please

I had a serious fear of all condiments. I am well over 6 feet tall and big, but I would scream like a little girl when condiments were near and have no idea why. Ketchup was the worst. When I was in college, I came home plastered one night and jumped into bed. My friends had covered the complete inside of my bed with ketchup. I freaked out. I put my hand through a door, broke a finger, and destroyed the shower area while trying to clean myself. The guys said I was like some weird crying red Hulk monster.

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6. D&D Dirtbag

My grandfather was in hospice. I went with my parents to stay with family while we watched him slowly lose his life. During that time, I had no one in my generation there, so I could only vent to online friends, so I did, particularly to a friend named Paige. Paige was also in a D&D group I had formed a few weeks prior that now couldn't meet because I was unavailable.

We had yet to have our first session. We finally did after I got to go home for a few days, but then I was transported back to be with family because my grandfather passed in those few days. Then it was all about planning the funeral and reception. I woke up the day before the funeral to see a wall of messages from the Discord group, mainly between Paige and her friend, Alice.

The most recent message I saw was, "three out of four people is still a group". I opened the app to see that Paige was planning session two for the next day, the day of my grandfather’s funeral. Alice was entirely on board, not really knowing my situation. Neither the Dungeon Master nor the fourth player had seen this yet, so they weren't involved. When I got in the chat like, "Hey, what the heck" Paige immediately went on the defensive.

Alice apologized to me, and Paige told her not to, saying that neither of them had done anything wrong. Paige claimed she was just asking if anyone was available, not trying to exclude me or anything. I pointed to her own words, and she blew up at me for being sensitive. We stopped talking after that, and the group never got to session two.

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7. Unthankful Wretch

A friend called me in the middle of the night. Another friend of theirs was on the second line, laughing about how my friend was dying as she had taken lots of sleeping pills. After a while, I realized my friend was for real and hung up. I phoned emergency services and got them to go over to her house. They got to her just in time and pumped her stomach, saving her life.

Her brother phoned me the same night, and I told him what had happened. A few days later, I called her up, and she told me to take a hike. Later on, she confessed to our mutual friends that she had taken stuff from me. I haven't heard from her since, and from what our mutual friends told me, she hates my guts for saving her life that night.

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8. Put To The Test

When I met my best friend, she was engaged. Her fiancé called off the wedding, and things were amicable between the two. I was doing a bar crawl event in the city, and my team all canceled the week before. I mentioned it to her, and she told me to hit up her ex-fiancé, who had been nothing but cool to me. So I went with her ex-fiancé, and when we hit the mid-point of the bar crawl, he tagged me on Facebook.

My friend’s new boyfriend then started bashing me all over me on Facebook, saying I was a lousy friend. The next day I found out the disturbing truth. I was told that my friend’s suggestion was a friendship test and that I chose her ex-fiancé over her. Over the past year, I had always been there to talk her through fights with her new dude and spent thousands of dollars on bar tabs because she was broke.

I had been nothing but supportive of her no matter what was going on. She had discounted it all. She told me, “You should have known better". Meanwhile, her ex felt bad for creating drama. He bought concert tickets and asked me to come because I had a bad week. I’m sure my “friend" will come calling the next time she and her new boyfriend have a fight.

Brutally Bad FriendsWikimedia Commons

9. Suddenly Gone

I had two best friends through most of high school. It was the kind of friendship where we would spend at least five nights a week all together at one of our houses. We always did everything together. People invited us places as a group—that type of thing. We were inseparable. Then, during our penultimate school year, over the course of a week, they both halted all social contact with me.

They defriended me on social media, never returned any of my calls, and classmates suddenly knew intimate details of my life history. We haven't exchanged a word since, even though our parents still exchange Christmas cards. During that year, I didn't lose any other friends or notice any change in how people acted around me. They were my greatest childhood bros, and they just left me.

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10. Bar-Hopping Abandon

My roommate and I had gone out to a couple of bars on a Friday night. I hitched a ride with her out there, with the understanding that we would all head over to an after-party together when the bars closed. At the end of the night, I saw some friends and ended up talking to them for a little bit. When I went back to try to find my roommate and our group of friends, they were nowhere to be found.

It turns out they had left. I called them, and they were already at the other party and refused to come back. They left me. And then it got worse. My phone battery ran out, and everyone was gone. I had to walk 10 miles back to my apartment at 3 in the morning. I was a 22-year-old girl at the time, so I was more than a little afraid. In the morning, they had the nerve to blame me when I was upset.

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11. The Girl Who Cried Wolf

A girl I knew went out with a group of friends and texted me, "Help. Big mountain man with me. Don't know where I am", and said she was in harm's way. She wouldn't respond to my texts back, and I didn't want to call and have the phone ring. I called everyone she was supposed to be with, and no one answered their phone. I thought all of them might be goners.

After consulting with someone else, I called the authorities, but they said they couldn't trace the call. I even tried calling her family. I then called a mutual friend, told her what happened, and she insisted we go look for her. We started driving to where the group was last known to be. Three hours after the text, the supposed victim called me while en route and said it was a joke.

I told her about all the things I had done to try and help her and told her to get lost. She said I "over-reacted" and then proceeded to make fun of me with the rest of the group she was with. I asked her why she thought being in harm's way was funny. After that, I was ostracized and pretty much shunned by all of them.

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12. His Advice Was Fishy

I was dating a girl for two years, and a buddy of mine started in with, "You're at college, man. There are plenty of fish in the sea. She does the same boring stuff all the time. You can do better", etc. He was pining for me to break up with her. So after three months of this, it somehow got through to me, and I broke up with her. Big mistake. 

I found out later that he'd done the whole thing so he could be there to “comfort her after I was so heartless breaking up with her”. Then, he slept with her. On my 21st birthday, I ran into him at the bars when I was blackout trashed, and he gave me 20 bucks because he felt bad about it all. Apparently, I took the money without saying a word and gave him a black eye.

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13. Something Didn’t ADD Up

A friend of mine broke into my room while I was at work and pilfered my ADD medicine. He absolutely refused to acknowledge that he took it from me, even when confronted face to face. I found out that he frequently unlocked my door with a credit card to take whatever he wanted, including money and my medicine. Needless to say, we're not friends anymore.

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14 He Played Me Good

I was always the youngest kid in my class and hence always the smallest boy around. I had this one" friend" whom I had befriended on the first day in high school since I had just moved to the state. Later on, once I started mingling with others, he got jealous. So, one day after school, he invited me to a park to play soccer with four of his buddies.

Once I got there, they all surrounded me and beat the living daylights out of me because I was now a part of another "group". It left me with permanent scars on my head. One of them also had a weird habit of trying to touch my rear all the time, even at school.

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15. That Friend Needed To Go

My friend Dan and I met a very attractive girl at the same time while working at Starbucks. We both got her number, but I was the one she was talking to the most. We hung out a few times, talked all day, and I knew she was into me. I told Dan this, and he approved. He told me I could go for her if I wanted. I thought about what a good friend he was for not getting upset because this girl was seriously hot.

This trend had continued for about a month when I learned that she and Dan had planned to drive to Austin together since it was about a four-hour drive. I thought it was cool because the whole time there, she was texting me. About a week later, when they were both back, I noticed less attention from her, and whenever I hung out with Dan, he was always on his phone smiling.

I knew she was on the other end but basically just ignored it. After a couple of more weeks passed, I got suspicious and calmly asked him if they were a "thing", explaining that I wouldn't be mad at him because she wasn't my girlfriend or anything like that. He assured me they were just friends and that I should still go for her. So I kept trying.

The more I tried, the less I got responded to. About a month further into it, I was going crazy about this girl and what caused her disinterest in me. I talked to Dan about it constantly, and he gave me advice. He told me what to say to her and encouraged me that she still dug me. A couple of months later, I finally gave up and moved on. About six months later, Dan told me they had been getting busy ever since they met.

Brutally Bad FriendsUnsplash,Jeremy Perkins

16. Brainwashed

I met this girl during my first time visiting the college I was attending. We hit it off rather well, exchanged Facebook information, and became really good friends. During the first semester of my freshman year, we were in almost all of the same classes and worked for the newspaper together. We became instant best friends.

I had never had a female friend that didn't always seem like she was out to backstab me, so it was really nice. At the end of our first semester, we talked about dating a little bit because I had finally come out of the closet as bi, and she had been for years. It turned into a threesome between the two of us and one of her male friends, who kind of got forgotten when the two of us went at it.

We both enjoyed it and talked even more about dating. That’s when I got my heart broken into a million pieces. Not too long after, she instantly stopped talking to me. It wasn’t a gradual thing, but suddenly, I was no longer her friend. She never explained anything to me, acted like I was disgusting whenever I was in the room, and generally ignored me any other time. I didn't know what I had done wrong, and I was devastated.

It went on like that for another nine months. We still had to see one another because we worked together and had planned our second-semester classes together. It was awkward, and she grew closer and closer to two of our mutual friends. Over the summer–in an Ambien-induced trance– I sent out a mass text to everyone in my contact list with the message, "I'm sorry".

I left a note for myself explaining that it was to see if anyone thought I had something to apologize for. I woke up to a text from my friend saying, "No, I'm sorry”. That’s when I found out the devastating truth. She explained that our two mutual friends were angry about the fact that she and I had hooked up and had convinced her that I was a horrible person.

They had brainwashed her and turned her against me for no other reason than the fact that they didn't like me. She had fallen for it. She realized later that our two mutual friends were trash.

Brutally Bad FriendsUnsplash, omid bonyadian

17. Behind The 8-Ball

When I was in college, my friend and I went out for drinks on St. Patrick’s Day. We were bar hopping around 3 AM. It was the last call, so I finished my drink and headed to the bathroom. My friend asked to borrow my phone because his phone battery ran out. I didn't think much of it. I came back, and my phone was blowing up with an endless number of text messages asking if I was OK. It turns out he texted everyone on my phone asking, “Where can I score an 8-ball”?

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18. No Nuts About It

When I was in grade 10, my four friends and I were walking back to school. A group of about 8–10 guys grabbed my friend and started punching him. I punched one of them in the head. They all let go of my friend and got the “leader” of their crew. He went buck wild on me. The friend who was getting punched tried getting him off of me while I had no idea where the other two were.

After I got knocked into the street, the gang ran away. My other two friends did nothing at all. They just stood and watched. They made stupid excuses saying they got hit in the nuts, which was FALSE! I wasn’t tight with those two any longer, and the guy who did help got a girlfriend and stopped talking to everyone.

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19. Bleach Of Trust

My ex-best friend was really controlling. She didn't like it if I was seeing anyone and used to stalk me and my date when we were out. She used to guilt trip me into ditching my companion to stay with her by cutting herself or screaming my house down. However, if she was asked on a date on a day when we had plans, she felt it was fine to ditch me.

I was getting sick of being controlled and seeing her every day, so I asked not to see her one weekend. Her reaction was seriously disturbing. She ran into my kitchen and drank bleach. If that wasn't enough, she then told her parents at the hospital that I told her to drink the bleach or I wouldn't hang out with her on the weekend. Thank goodness she went to university and moved away.

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20. Not Part Of My Domain

My "friend" photoshopped my face and our friend's face onto some racy website. He even purchased a domain name of our names and left it up for seven years before accidentally removing the album. He still owned the domain name, but the image was broken. I still hang out with him once in a while.

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21. An Unhealthy Friendship

I used to talk a lot to my college friend’s sister. After some time passed, we became closer friends and shared a lot of stuff. One time, we spoke about my then-girlfriend, and my friend’s sister wanted to know something about my girlfriend’s health issues. I was not about to share the information with her. She kept asking, but I refused to answer. Then, all of a sudden, this girl got mad and went bananas on me.

She ranted about how my girlfriend was oh-so-important to me and wished cancer and a painful death on me. I ended the conversation without a second thought, but she kept writing foul-mouthed text messages to me for a few days. I never met with her again after that.

Brutally Bad FriendsUnsplash, Julien L

22. Shun Of A Gun!

I had a friend back in middle school who was sort of a sociopath. He didn't really “want” anything bad to happen to you. He just didn't care if something bad “did” happen to you. One day, another friend and I were playing around in his house. We were horsing around as kids are inclined to do—until things went too far. The third friend shoved me innocently, but I went mouth first right into the edge of a table.

It really hurt, so I cursed. My friend booted me in the stomach as hard as he could and yelled, "Don't swear in my parents' house". At the beginning of high school, he ended up shunning me and taking all my friends with him. It put me into a pretty severe depression.

Brutally Bad FriendsUnsplash, Hunter Johnson

23. Marred By The Rumor Mill

One of my friends—who always bragged about being a true Christian—got high at a party and told everyone there I had recently lost my virginity to my boyfriend. Another "friend" at the party decided the news was "Too bizarre not to share", and told the entire school. It was the worst few days of my life. I didn't know who knew, who didn't, or how far up it went.

All I knew was that I hated the fake friends I had in high school. That same rumor spreader gave my phone number and address to 4Chan because I made a joke about his prowess with the ladies, or lack thereof. I was terrified to be home alone for weeks, and I kept my phone off for days after I got threatening message after threatening message.

Brutally Bad FriendsUnsplash, Jacob Bentzinger

24. Psycho Sister-In-Law

I moved in with my brother and future sister-in-law. They needed a place to live, so I felt like it was the right thing to do. We all rented a house together right before they got married. A year and a half later, I wanted to get a place with my boyfriend. My sister-in-law FREAKED OUT. She started bawling about how they couldn’t afford the house without me.

As a result, my boyfriend, his daughter, and I moved in instead. The crisis was averted, or so I thought. Over the next two years, my sister-in-law became a slob. She began working from home and refused to clean up after herself. That included her cat’s vomit and hairballs. She put their litter box in the bathroom next to the kitchen, then refused to clean it for two months until it became so unbearable that my brother would do it.

Then it got worse. She completely took over the living room and made us unwelcome in any of the home’s family spaces, including the kitchen, dining room, and living room. My brother did nothing. He even exempted her from cleaning. At the time, we had a "chore chart", and we all pitched in, except for her. She made it impossible for my boyfriend and his daughter to feel completely welcome in the house.

The two of them had to hide out in our bedroom during the day and make as little noise as possible because as soon as she heard ANYTHING, she would come from the front of the house all the way to our room at the back of the house and complain. We tried to move out three more times. Every time she would moan, "Why are you doing this to us? We can't afford the house without you”.

I didn't want to make my brother’s life utterly miserable by abandoning them with a monthly payment, so we continued to put up with it. At one point, she started making comments like, "I love your boyfriend and his daughter, but it's a good thing I can block out noise as well as I can because otherwise, I would just kill them". When I would tell my brother about the comments, he would just say I must have misunderstood what she meant.

We finally decided that enough was enough and planned to get an apartment. She exploded. I didn’t back down—but I was in for a major disaster. We had some financial difficulty and couldn’t move just yet. My sister-in-law was thrilled. Two months later, she got a new job with a nice fat new paycheck. Two weeks after that, I walked through the front door, and she said, "So, now that I have a better job, I want to reopen for discussion, you guys moving out".

It was just like that without any forewarning. We ended up renting a bigger and nicer house for less money than we were paying her and my brother. She became jealous and raided her wealthy friend’s storage unit. She took out some of their nice furniture and crammed it into their house. She never tried to contact me again, and for the most part, my brother would only call me when he needed something from me.

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25. Tabbed Out

At the end of my first year of college, we all went out for a friend's birthday at a bar. It was going to be the last time most of us were going to see each other until the fall. We went out, had a great time, and as I was leaving, I was sidetracked and forgot to pay my tab. I had left because I was exhausted, and it just slipped my mind.

When I got home, I fell into bed and was asleep before my head hit the pillow. I woke up a couple of hours later to a ton of missed calls. One of the girls had given the bar my phone number, and a couple of them were on Facebook talking about how terrible I was. The one who I considered to be my closest friend in college left me a couple of voicemails calling me names.

I had a ton of texts from them saying that everyone just pretended to like me, no one really did, that they all talked about me behind my back and just felt sorry for me, and that was why we were friends. One of them decided to speak for everyone and said a bunch of incredibly hurtful things. I felt really awful and immediately called/texted all of them to apologize.

I wanted to find out if they were still at the bar, find out who had paid my tab, and who I needed to pay back. I obviously didn't do it on purpose, and they all thought that I had. Rather than packing my stuff because I was about to move in two days, I spent the whole next day driving all over town apologizing to people and paying back whoever paid what.

Two of them paid $10, and one paid $30. The one who paid $30 was a girl that I did not see eye-to-eye with, and we both openly hated each other. She was the one who was totally cool about it, really easy to find and pay back. She told me she understood and that how everyone else was treating me over it was wrong. My enemy treated me about 1,000 times better than people who were my friends and who I had trusted.

It really hurt that they all immediately believed that I had tried to cheat them. They were all incredibly malicious about it. Not only that, I had paid way more than $50 to feed them. Once a month, I held a board game get-together party and spent at least $50 each time on drinks and food for them. I had also lent people money if they needed it, yet they all turned on me.

Then in the fall, I started to make new friends. These people found my new friends and told them that I was not to be trusted, that I was a cheat and a liar, and that no one could believe a word I said. It really hurt. They were terrible people.

Brutally Bad FriendsUnsplash, LOGAN WEAVER | @LGNWVR

26. Stop Playing Games

I was friends with this girl who did many terrible things to me. She would body shame me even if I was right in front of her. She would exclude me from playing games with her and would guilt-trip me all the time, etc. I didn’t want to leave her because I didn’t have anyone else. This one specific time got me really mad. 

I was playing an online game with her, and we were just talking. Another person walked up to us and tried to be friends with us. I didn’t really mind, but apparently, my friend did. She ended up leaving the game after not even a couple of minutes of hanging out with her. I befriended the new girl and went to go talk to my friend. I asked her why she had left and if she was okay, but she wouldn’t tell me.

She finally gave in and said that I liked that new girl more than her. I was guilty and tried talking her into “forgiving” me, even though I did nothing wrong, and she didn’t. I had to unfriend that girl just to please her. Once I did, my friend then ghosted me for two weeks and then came back as if nothing had happened. I was upset and angry at her.

Years later, she tried talking to me again, trying to catch up. I didn’t answer her. She then texted again a month later and tried to guilt-trip me into being friends with her again. I ended up unfriending her on everything.

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27. My Friend Was A Useless Twit

My friend was constantly depressed about something. He couldn't get a job or a driver's license, and after failing the GED once, he wouldn't try again. I thought life had just done him dirty, so I figured I'd do him a solid and hooked him up with a job with my neighbor laying tiles. As a newbie, all he would have to do was help move tools and equipment, and do simple jobs like hammer nails while learning the job so he would become useful.

My neighbor—the boss of the outfit—would even pick him up at his house every morning and drop him off every night. It was a great deal. At first, my friend tried to turn down the job and give it to his friend. My neighbor made it clear the job offer was for him and him alone. I pressured my friend to take it to help get him to get out of the house and away from the video games that dominated his life. Eventually, he took it.

Things started out OK, but then he started not waking up until my neighbor came to his house to pick him up. Then, he quit doing anything. He expected $50 a day for $10 work, and after my neighbor chewed him out because he could not hammer a nail, he had a mental breakdown in front of an important client, so he was fired.

If it wasn't bad enough that I had put my word, reputation, and relationship with my neighbor at stake for him and him ruining it all, he took my getting him a job as me becoming his own personal charity. He started coming around my place for lunch and dinner when his mom cooked something he didn't like. He wouldn't talk about anything but video games and would just sit down at the family computer and surf racy videos in front of my mom.

When I left for college, there was no reason for him to come around my house anymore, but he did. He was always looking for food, an internet connection, and any other handout he could get. When my parents finally banned him from our property, he wigged out and said that WE shouldn't treat him like that after all HE had done for us! Needless to say, we aren't friends anymore.

Brutally Bad FriendsUnsplash, Ludovic Migneault

28. A Penny For Your Thoughts

I was showing this "friend" of mine an Indian head penny from the 1800s that I found. He swiped it out of my hand, threw it onto the ground, and dragged his shoe across the pavement with the penny under it. Doing so destroyed the side with the date marking. Then, he said it wasn't a big deal, and he would get me another one because he had tons. He never gave me another one.

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29. He Went Out Of Control

I invited a best friend of five years over to hang out with ten other friends and me at my house. He waited until after everyone went to sleep except for him and two of my lifelong best friends before he proceeded to talk trash about me for the next six hours. He outed me in a very disrespectful manner to the friends that didn't know at the time—but that was just the start of my nightmare.

He then entered into a blind rage and broke my laptop in half, sliced my tire, cut up most of my shirts and shorts, cut up all of my shoes and threw them into the yard, broke several other of my belongings, and drove away. The next day he denied that he had ever been to my house and began calling around trying to get people to lie to the authorities for him, saying he had left earlier with them.

Brutally Bad FriendsUnsplash, Taras Chernus

30. Eclipsed

I was supposed to go to the movies with a friend of mine, as she had no one else to go with. The movie was Eclipse, so it took a little bit of convincing before I agreed. When the day came, she told me she was going to be a little late, so she asked me to purchase the tickets for the both of us. It was the opening weekend, so getting tickets was going to be a bit difficult.

I got the tickets, and then approximately five minutes before the movie was to start, she called me to say she couldn’t come and just hung up. As I was a person who hated confrontation, I didn’t return the tickets. Instead, I walked in by myself and watched the movie. It was one of the worst decisions of my life. She is no longer my friend.

Brutally Bad FriendsUnsplash, Joshua Rawson-Harris

31. She Paid No Respect

When I was a sophomore in college, my dad suddenly died. t was a difficult time since it was completely unexpected. Most of my friends who could get the night off came to his funeral to support me—even those who I didn’t even know that well. One even flew into the city to pay his respects. My BEST friend, however, blew it.

She thought her time would be much better time spent singing at a karaoke bar with her roommates instead of being with me during my most vulnerable period. She was fully capable of attending the funeral. She just chose not to. To make matters worse, those "friends" she chose over me became her worst enemies. Our relationship was never the same after that.

Brutally Bad FriendsUnsplash, Aritra Roy

32. Early Morning Misconduct

At six in the morning, my best friend, who was also my business partner, showed up at my house. That day, we had a meeting at 3 PM with a big contractor. He was so unbelievably plastered that he climbed up my garden lattice and opened my bedroom window to get me up. He continued to drink, puke, and poo himself. He showed me a gun he had bought and talked about how we were going to make so much money that day.

I booted him out. He became irate but left. I fell back asleep and woke up around noon. I noticed that all my equipment was gone—a $1,000 camera, $500 lights, etc. That jerk had broken in and taken all my stuff, along with the Mother's Day gift I had for my mom. He also called the contractor and talked trash about me.

The company all went down the drain. We lost our deal, and I had to liquidate a bunch of stuff to pay back the advance we had received. I never found him or heard from him again after that. I had looked and even hired people to find him.

Brutally Bad FriendsUnsplash, thom masat

33. Two-Faced Friend

I was friends with this girl during my freshman year of high school. We were both in foster care, so we had some shared trauma. We were both in the process of being adopted by our families. She decided to go around the school telling people that I said she would never get adopted, which wasn't true. Then, during lunch, she told me we couldn't be friends because I was "depressing to be around".

I cut her off completely. I stopped eating with her at lunch, blocked her on social media, and avoided her in the hallways. Then one day, I got called up to the counselor's office. She was up there waiting for me. I still can’t believe what she pulled. She told the counselor that I was the one who said we couldn't be friends anymore and told her some personal details about my life. The counselor made me apologize to her and tell her we could be friends even though I didn't want to be. I still wasn't her friend after that. I can't stand a two-faced liar.

Brutally Bad FriendsUnsplash, Atikh Bana

34. He Took Me For A Ride

My ex-buddy had gotten free tickets to Six Flags and somehow gave them to a girl I was crushing on with instructions to show me a good time. While we were gone, he went in and lifted every device that had an electrical cord attached to it from my apartment. It wasn't a difficult mystery to solve, considering the girl I was crushing on wasn't the thieving type.

She was actually the one who figured out the plot before we did since we would never have suspected our ex-friend. Due to even better friends, my ex-friend’s face is now being held together with metal pins. I still never got my bass or amp back, though.

Brutally Bad FriendsPexels

35. Betrayed By The Boss

I walked into the break room at my job and overheard a disturbing conversation. It was a group of people joking around about me wanting to take my life. I had some problems with depression, and when I let my discipline slip, things could get rather nasty. There were only two people at work who knew about this. One of them was my team leader, who I considered to be a friend.

The other was my boss, who needed to know so I could have access to the social services department when I needed it. A week after the incident, I walked off the team. I left them to deal with the other inept and lazy team members on their own and got myself a new bike to get my mojo working again. I didn’t take revenge. Instead, I got even.

Brutally Bad FriendsPexels

36. Fifth Grade Fodder

One day, when I was in the fifth grade, a boy in my class that I'd had the biggest crush on since kindergarten gave me a love note at recess. I was so excited about it. The note said, "Let me know if you like me too! I won't tell anybody"! I immediately started writing a reply and poured my 11-year-old heart out to him.

I passed the reply note back to him as soon as I could, and then I waited. At recess, I planned to go find him, talk to him, and hold his hand or something—whatever fifth graders do. But as I walked around the playground, I found him crowded in a group with every single one of my friends giggling at something. He had shown them the note I had written.

When I walked up, they all laughed at me, and one of them said, "He never liked you! Why would he like YOU??? It was a joke! You're so dumb", and they all laughed harder. I had a hard time making friends for a while after that. It really messed me up when I was young.

Brutally Bad FriendsUnsplash, Les Anderson

37. Out Of Lock

One day, I got blackout trashed. I was an hour from home, had no car, and it was 3 AM. My friend locked me out of her house. I woke up at 6 AM in a plastic patio chair feeling like I was on fire because it was the middle of summer with not a cloud in sight. Eventually, her neighbor—who was my friend as well and the cause of this particular fight—let me use his phone. I finally got a ride back home, but not without getting ridiculously dehydrated and sick first.

Brutally Bad FriendsPublic Domain Pictures

38. No Brotherly Love In This City

I was from Connecticut and lived in Philly. A friend I grew up with came down to Philly to look for work, so I let him move in with me. At first, I allowed him to stay for cheap, but once he got a job, I started charging him his fair share. He constantly complained that he could not afford it, and I let him slide. However, eventually, costs began adding up, and they became too much for me to bear alone.

His primary argument was he did not have a bedroom, which was true. He had a walk-in closet with a bed but not an actual bedroom. However, he still needed to pay his part of the bills, not just rent. The main kicker was that he changed jobs almost six times in as many months. One of these jobs was handed to him by my real roommate, and he quit because it "didn't pay enough".

The job he took after paid even less. He finally moved out, $1,000 behind on bills and expenses. He deleted me from Facebook and has not contacted me since. Then, in the end, according to him, I was the jerk.

Brutally Bad FriendsUnsplash, Sigmund

39. Vanishing Act

My best friend at the time was planning on having his son move from the East Coast. His son came earlier than expected and needed to get out of the 350-square foot studio he and his wife lived in and get into a real apartment. He didn't have the money, so I loaned him $1,000. He paid me back some of it. Then he vanished without any explanation. He wouldn’t answer my phone calls or emails—nothing.

Brutally Bad FriendsPexels

40. The Cat Got Away, Or Did It Stay?

We moved out of our house and couldn't keep our cat. It was the only outdoor cat we had, so it was a fighter, brought in fleas, and wasn't very friendly. A kind friend volunteered to take the cat to his aunt's house. She lived on a farm so the cat could stay outdoors in the barn, which he loved anyways. We gave our friend a key, and he was supposed to get the cat and drive him out to the farm.

A week later, I went to check on the house we had moved out of, and made a heartbreaking discovery. The cat was still there. He was spooked something awful, but seemed healthy otherwise. The only food would have been some dry food that may have fallen on the floor in the basement, and any water he drank must have been from the toilet. I had no idea how he survived.

Our friend told us he couldn't catch the cat, so he just gave up and told us he got him. We took him in, and he was doing fine once again.

Brutally Bad FriendsPexels

41. He Sold Me Out

Over the course of two years, I had become close friends with a guy who—unbeknownst to me—was a recovering addict. One day I noticed that my bank card was missing from my wallet. I called my friend to share the bizarre news, completely oblivious that he may have been the culprit. He told me he would be right over. He never showed up, and I never saw him again.

I later learned that he had sold it on the street to some fellow addicts who did over $5,000 in damage. My bank didn't hold me liable and refunded every nickel, but I'll never forgive the guy.

42. He Did It, Alright

During my first week in college, I was at a house party with my roommate, who I didn’t know that well at the time. He pushed me into a pool and ruined my iPhone. I had to walk about a mile back to my dorm, and on the way, I got a cactus stuck in my leg. He took me to the AT&T store the next day, and I had to drop $220 on a new phone.

For the next week, he constantly said, "I didn't do it, man. I didn't do it", even without me bringing it up. It was a bad moment.

Brutally Bad FriendsUnsplash, Ibrahim Rifath

43. Bad Business

I went into business with a friend who was supposed to bring in new clients while I managed the employees and business side of things. His daughter had brain cancer, so I let the fact that he wasn't holding up his part slide for several months. To be fair, I knew that going in. Still, I found out a few months later that he was lying about clients paying upon completion of the projects and was getting the deposit checks—which were 50%—sent to his house.

When I found out, I confronted him, and he lied about it. So, I got proof from a client. I shut down the business but had to keep leasing our building, which he refused to help pay for. It cost me $50,000 in total. I didn't sue him because, technically, he was entitled to half of our profits, an attorney would cost me a fortune, and he had no money due to medical bills.

Brutally Bad FriendsPexels

44. The Final Straw

Over the years, my friend had done some really messed up things. For example, she fooled around with a guy I was dating on top of my hot tub when I was passed out inside the house. I found them together the next morning. Then, she ditched me right before a free Lynyrd Skynyrd concert we were supposed to go to together. However, the final straw that ended our friendship was something else. 

When I broke up with my ex, I needed a place to move to ASAP. Her boyfriend of six months needed a roommate ASAP, so I moved in with him. The first couple of weeks were awesome. Then, my friend and my roommate showed me what they were like when they were plastered together. I had to lock myself in my room all the time as they smashed glass and electronics and screamed at each other.

She would drive home under the influence, and he would turn on the stereo until 4 AM when I had to be up at 7 AM for work. Many times when he would turn it on, I would have to come out of my room and ask him—as nice as possible—if he could turn the music down. Then, he would begin raging on ME. He would sputter in my face, scream at me, blame me because I wasn't there that night when they were drinking, etc.

On the official night that ended it all, we had all gone on a double date together. My ex-best friend took me aside at the bowling alley and asked how I felt about her and her boyfriend living together. I didn't say yay or nay, but I DID bring up the severity of their fights and asked her what she would do if she couldn't escape. She told me it was something for her to think about.

Evidently, a pitcher later, she made a decision. On their drive home—my date and I drove separately—she turned to my roommate and said, "I don't think I should move in with you". When he asked why she proceeded to tell him what I had told her and blamed me. His reaction was terrifying. At that point, they were near my duplex, and he JUMPED OUT OF THE MOVING CAR when he saw me.

He chased me down and went after me. He had his fist raised to hit me and was backing me out into the street. Thankfully the guy I was seeing stepped in, but I ended up having to sleep elsewhere that night. I tried calling her to tell her that she needed to call her boyfriend to calm him down and explain to her what he had done to me.

However, she was too trashed to comprehend. I moved out two weeks later and told my landlady it was a matter of safety. My "best friend" wrote me a nasty email telling me what a horrible person I was for moving out. She and her boyfriend then proceeded to spread lies about me to our mutual friends. Thankfully, those friends knew what a jerk he was and knew they were all lies.

Brutally Bad FriendsPexels

45. Lost And Found?

When I was in high school, I lost my wallet and asked my best friend at the time if he had seen it. He told me he hadn't, but he would keep an eye out for it. The next day at school, I asked him if we could check in his car since I had been riding around with him. He claimed he already had looked all over his car, and it wasn't there even though I was pretty convinced I had left it in there.

When I was scouring around in the back seat, I opened up his backpack, and there it was. It had been emptied of all the cash I had in there, which was quite a sizable amount for me in those days. He insisted that some random dude he was giving a ride to must have taken it and conveniently put it in HIS bag.

Brutally Bad FriendsFlickr, Marco Verch Professional Photographer

46. My Money Sailed Away

I had a friend who told me she needed money for rent because she had lost her job. It turned out she took my money to buy plane tickets to Spain from the US and was partying on some guy's yacht. I believe she targeted me specifically because I wasn’t on social media and wouldn't have seen her posts. The only reason I found out was that I told a mutual friend about it when she was ignoring my texts about her paying me back.

I never recovered the funds. Lesson learned.

Brutally Bad FriendsWikimedia Commons

47. Finally Out Of The Picture

There was a kid I went to high school with whom I was very close. We had every class together and everything. About four years after high school, I saw that he and the girl I was dating at the time were spending a lot of time together. I was around, so it didn't strike me as odd. One day, a friend of mine came to me and asked if I thought it was weird. I didn't—until they said that.

A day or two passed, and my "friend's" mom called and asked me to come by. When I went over, she had my friend’s phone and showed me all the text messages he and my girlfriend had been sending back and forth. That’s when I had to confront the disturbing truth. The text messages all said how they loved each other, couldn’t wait for me to be out of the picture, and how I would get what was coming to me.

There were also a ton of voicemails from her saying, “I love you”. She had bought him a very nice watch for Valentine's Day, and all I got was a box of chocolates. I felt like dirt and had no idea how even to confront the two of them about it. So, I continued to pretend I didn’t know anything, and my "friend's" mom did the same.

About a month later, I got a call from his mom at 2 AM, and I met up with her. She had his phone again. This time there were messages between him and some unknown person. This time, it was even more devastating. He was trying to pay someone to have me offed. Following that, I confronted my girlfriend on EVERYTHING. She denied it at first, but then I went into details about what I knew.

She admitted to the cheating. It had been going on for about two years or so while she was living with me, but she had no idea about the apparent "hit". I left my girlfriend, and my friend ended up doing time for conspiracy to commit murder.

Brutally Bad FriendsPexels

48. The Short Rent Of The Stick

In my junior year of college, four of my very best friends—who were like family to me—invited me to come to live with them in a sweet house. The rent was a little high, but I had a decent income and could afford my share. I also figured it would be nice to get out of the dorms. Our first month in, one guy couldn’t make the rent. I thought, “Sure, I'll loan it to him this month, no big deal”.

During the second month, another friend was short. I was the only one with savings. I still hadn’t gotten paid back from the first guy, but it was either to lend the money or sleep in my truck, so I paid it. In the third month, the friend in charge of the heating never set it up, and the gas ran out. This was in Alaska, so no gas meant frozen pipes.

I had to throw down $500 to get an emergency truck to come out that day, and nobody could chip in. The other two roommates were again short, and I STILL hadn't been paid back from the previous loans. By the fourth month, my savings—that were supposed to last the year—were gone. The power, internet, and water were shut off because the friend in charge of those "forgot" to pay them, even though I had been paying my portion the entire time.

I moved out and spent Christmas vacation huddled in my truck in the 40° below weather. One month later, they tried to sue me for the utilities, saying that I skipped out on them and left them penniless. I showed up to court with a full copy of state tenant laws, check receipts, and payment history and got the case thrown out.

Brutally Bad FriendsPexels

49. Story Days

My friend used his fake depression sap story to hang around my girlfriend and me. Then, he convinced her I wasn't a very good person and that he was better for her than I was. She, being stupid, believed him and cheated on me with him.

When I went to go break up with her after catching wind of the news, I saw him sneaking out the backdoor as I was pulling up. Well, they got what was coming to them. Three years later, she told me how much of a mistake she had made and wanted me back. I never felt a better usage of the word “No” in my life.

Brutally Bad FriendsPexels

50. In Troubled Water

I was hanging out one day with a few friends who had tried to get me to try nitroglycerin to see what it would do. I told them no. Not thinking anything of it, when the two of them went into the kitchen, I asked for a bottle of water. After drinking the water, I became white as a ghost and couldn’t get up without passing out.

After asking if they put the nitro in my drink, they just yelled at me for being paranoid and crazy. I found out later from one of the other kids that “my friends” had indeed spiked my water.

Sad Teenager Wearing a Black Hoodie siting on a couchcottonbro studio, Pexels

Sources: Reddit


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