Sometimes your friends don't end up being who you thought they were. A great first impression can often disguise hidden baggage, insecurities, and disgusting habits. These Redditors thought they'd chosen their comrades wisely only to find themselves faced with the ugly truth...
1. A Plumber’s Worst Nightmare
I helped a buddy pull an engine, load it, then move it from his truck into his garage. His garage smelled awful. I happened to slip and fall when I noticed something terrifying. His garage was essentially his basement, on dirt, with no concrete or anything. His main sewage pipes were suspended under the house by twine.
There was a large hole dug in the ground and one pipe went straight into the hole that ended about 3 feet down. I asked him about it. He said he had bought it like that. The house was built before sewers, and there was no septic tank either. The previous owner had dug a tunnel under the house leading to a storm drain.
How this passed inspection is beyond me. It did explain the big hole around the pipe. He told me how it’d get clogged up with toilet paper, which they then had to dig out with shovels.
2. He’s Naked and I’m Afraid
I was at a typical sleepover—movie, video games, popcorn. When it came time to go to bed, I went into the bathroom, changed into my pajama pants, and walked back in to find my friend already in his bed and smirking. I didn't think much of it, so I crawled into my sleeping bag and asked if he wanted to play some more video games. He threw open his blanket and I saw he was naked.
The kid flashed me. I was understandably stunned and I said something along the lines of, “Put some clothes on." He responded, "Nope, my house, my rules." I was really uncomfortable by now, and didn't want to sleep. He covered himself back up with his blankets and said he would put his clothes back on, which he did. I tried to shrug it off, and we played some more video games for a little bit, then turned off the lights and went to sleep.
Not too long after the lights went out, I heard him rustling around, then getting out of his bed. He says, "I'm naked again," laughs, and tries to lay on me. I shoved him off, and he kept trying to lay on me. A brief back and forth went on, and at this point, I'm pretty much yelling at him to leave me alone and go to sleep. I heard him stand up. I thought he was going to leave me alone now. I was wrong—what happened next was the worst by far.
I started to feel something splattering against my sleeping bag where my feet were. It didn't take long for me to figure out that he was relieving himself on me. I told him I was going home, and as I'm trying to get out of the sleeping bag, he body-slammed me. I was stunned. As he went to jump on me again, I kicked him in the stomach as hard as I could, and he went down crying.
I woke up his mom at around midnight and told her what happened. She went into the room to find her naked son on the floor crying and yelled at me to leave. I called my mom and waited for her on their front porch, as my friend's mom was going bananas when she saw the pee on the sleeping bag and ground.
3. That’s Barking Wrong
When I was 10, a new kid moved into our town and started at our school. I always tried being nice to new kids because I moved and changed schools a lot and knew how hard it was. We became friends, and he had me over for a sleepover—but it got creepy real fast. At his house, he showed me his inappropriate Polaroid picture of his mother with a dog.
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4. You Think You Know Someone
I was very close friends with this guy I met in high school, let's call him John. Then John started dating this girl, Caroline. I never really became friends with her but I liked her. We finished high school and lost touch a bit, and they married and had a baby. We still live close to each other, so we would go out occasionally with some other friends.
Then, in 2019, I learned they were getting a divorce—and the reason blew my mind. Caroline’s friend told me that John had been abusing her. It even got to the point that he pointed a weapon at her, said she was a bad mom, and cheated on her multiple times with underage girls. John was never this type of guy when we were teenagers, but his father always acted like this and I think he developed this behavior later.
I don't consider John my friend anymore, and he lost almost every friend he used to have.
5. Driving Me Up The Wall
One day, my wife needed to go to the airport. I didn't have a car and Uber is not cheap, so I asked my friend if they could drop us off. After all, the airport was on their way to the club they went to on weekends. They agreed very reluctantly but didn't call or show up when it was time to leave. I got this sinking feeling in my stomach at that point.
It was so bad that I didn’t call them to remind them or anything. I just got the feeling that they didn't want to help us and I didn’t want to make it weirder. I was on my way to the bus stop to catch the bus when we bumped into them. Now having no way out, they said they forgot about it and offered to drop us off after all. Honestly, I wish we hadn’t even said yes; in the car all they did was taunt us about buying a car.
We didn't speak again after this incident.
6. Nature’s Chewable
When I was 10, I was at my friend’s house with a few other girls our age. We stayed up late watching TV. At one point, my friend’s mom came downstairs and told her that she finished clipping her nails. She then gave my friend the clipping from her big toe. My friend then put that in her mouth and started chewing on it.
When we asked her about it, she just stated, “It’s good,” and acted like it was nothing out of the ordinary.
7. Big House, Big Attitude
In 4th grade, the new "weird" girl in our class invited me to a sleepover in her fancy neighborhood. Being a nice kid and from a lower-middle-class family, I decided that I’d attend. While she was giving me a tour of her house, I couldn't help but notice her bedroom was absolutely massive compared to her parents’ room.
So, I asked what the deal was with that, and she said that since she was an only child, her parents had given her the master bedroom because they wanted her to have a big space for all her toys. That checked out. She was an only child, and her room was filled with insane amounts of goodies...I should've known that that was a big, fat lie.
Later, we went downstairs while her mom was finishing up dinner. I was telling her mom how nice her house was and how cool it was that they let her have such a big room. I mean, what a dream! She nonchalantly told me what really happened was that their daughter had thrown a huge tantrum and demanded to switch bedrooms.
She talked about how after she had put up such a big fuss over something she had decided she wanted, they couldn’t say no. Red flag number one: noted. Then we all sat down for dinner. Well, at least her parents and I did. My "new friend" ate from a dog bowl on the floor. Confused, I started asking a bunch of questions—and the answers shocked me to the core.
Apparently, she only would eat canned beef stew at home because her parents refused to buy her actual dog food. The entire dinner, her mom kept begging her to, "please at least eat some peas at the table with your friend." She only barked in response, and I guessed that meant no because she never did come to the table.
After the most awkward dinner of my entire life, she incessantly bossed me around and did things like refused to allow me to touch her computer mouse when it was my turn to makeover my Barbie on her Mac or only let me watch her jump on her trampoline. Then we started to play with her hamsters but by her rules.
She demanded that I only play with her in a very precise way, and a few times, I think I messed up because she screamed that I was, "doing it wrong!" So, I only had one choice as a lone child in a house of crazies: I faked throwing up in her master ensuite bathroom, claimed I was homesick, and called my mom at 2 am to pick me up.
She got there with lightning speed and took me to a 24/7 drive-thru while I spilled all the beans on what had happened.
8. Quiet Cuts
Ooof! This one hurt. When I was married, we had a friend group of three couples from our street. We went to football games, trips to the beach, and spent holidays at each other's homes. After the divorce, I went traveling for a year then moved to a condo downtown in our city. I'd had lunch with the wives after returning from traveling.
I thought we were still friends. I was sitting on the second-floor balcony of my new condo one night about 8 pm and saw them walking down the street. I said, “HI! So good to see you!” They'd all been out to dinner and were headed to another couple's apartment who had moved downtown while their house was being renovated for a quick drink.
I was excited to see them and asked them to stop by on their way back to where they'd parked. I tidied up my place and anxiously awaited seeing my old pals. I was texting with one of the ladies during the wait. About 9 pm, I saw them walking and chatting back towards my place. They couldn't see me. I wish I hadn’t seen what I did.
When they got close to my balcony, they stopped talking and walked quickly and quietly by. Then started laughing and talking after they passed. The one I'd been texting with while I waited sent me a text an hour later saying they were just now leaving the other friend's place and it was too late to stop by. I replied that I'd seen them when they left.
I never spoke to any of them again, even though they tried to be "friends" on Facebook. I wasn't hurt that they couldn't stop by on short notice. It was that they made me a joke that really hurt.
9. Sharing Something Sweet
I went over to a neighbor's house a few months after we moved into the neighborhood. They had a son who was a year younger than me and a daughter who was four years younger than him. We’re hanging out in the garage passing a hockey puck around when we decided to stop for a break and have a snack. He chose a chocolate bar.
He was eating it and finishing his last mouthful when his sister walked into the garage. She wanted some of the candy even though it was all gone. So, he jokingly stuck out his tongue that had a portion of chewed-up chocolate bar and asked her if she still wanted to have some. She replied with a serious "yes"...and then my jaw dropped.
He transferred some of his pre-chewed chocolate bar directly into his sister’s mouth like a bird. To this day, I have a hard time not visualizing them French kissing a chewed-up chocolate bar when I see them at their parent’s house visiting.
10. Little Terrors
When I was about 15, I went to a friend’s house (let’s call him Doug). From there, we met up with one of his friends at their house (let’s call him Tyler). Down the hallway at Tyler’s house was a door with a deadbolt on the outside. Tyler asked us if we wanted to see something “hilarious.” I said, “Sure,” and immediately regretted it.
Tyler unlocked the door and there was a little old lady, probably in her mid-to-late 80s, in the corner of a dark room. She was surrounded by dirty dishes and half-eaten bologna sandwiches. She looked up at us, startled, and said, “Who are you? What do you want?” Without answering, Tyler then picked up one of the sandwiches and threw it at her.
He got the poor, little old lady covered in mustard and bologna. He then threw a drink at her. It was awful. At that point, she got up and started yelling, “What the hell are you doing?” and cursing at him. Tyler ran out the door and locked the deadbolt behind him. She was banging on the door. It was awful. Anything but “hilarious.”
A minute or so passed and Tyler unlocked the door and walked in. She was so visibly confused and sweetly, calmly asked why she was wet and what was all over her. “It’s alright Grandma,” Tyler said, “just sit down and eat your food.” Tyler and Doug thought it was the funniest thing in the world and didn’t stop laughing for hours about it.
I left and didn’t go back to either of their houses again. Just witnessing that made me sick to my stomach.
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11. All Tied Up
When I was 12, I slept over at my supposed best friend's house. Her then 17-year-old brother played his music very loudly and then shook his junk in my face. My friend and her brother then tied me to a chair and made me watch a movie that freaked me out. After that, they proceeded to laugh their butts off when I woke up in the middle of the night screaming from a nightmare. I’m not friends with her anymore.
12. Love Me Some Sweet Milk
It was the early 1990s when I was a kid. I slept over at a buddy’s house for the first time. The next morning we woke up and his mom made us cereal. The milk tasted sweet, even for my childhood taste buds. Something about it all seemed off. Just as my buddy finished his bowl of cereal, his mom came over and turned the bowl on its side to pour the leftover milk from the cereal bowl into a milk carton.
The mom then did the same with hers. I felt my face turn red with shame and embarrassment and my stomach turn. Horrified and confused, I asked, “What is that? What are y’all doing?” He turned to me and said, “That’s our cereal milk.” As it turned out, his ENTIRE family poured all of the leftover milk from each bowl of cereal back into a separate milk carton, specifically for cereal. I drank this entire family’s backwash.
13. Christian Values
I got an apartment off-campus and invited all of my friends to come to visit—then no one showed. Later, that same apartment burned down when I was in college, and not one single person let me crash on their couch while I got situated. I had to commute from my parents’ home two hours away for each day I had class. I had classes daily, and this went on for over four months.
Because apartments near the campus are on rental leases, it was hard to find an apartment mid-semester. The worst part about this is that I belonged to a Christian organization and I would put in a lot of money for the collections that were to help others in our circle when they needed it. For example, I put in $50 once for a person whose mom had cancer.
Meanwhile, for me, my home burns down and I lose everything, and those so-called Christians were nowhere to be found. All of them would go up to me the next day and say, “I heard your apartment burned down,” but with no follow-ups like, “Do you need anything?” I mean, I was wearing old T-shirts and raggedy sweats because I didn’t have any clothes.
I took out an emergency student loan, and it was one of the worst periods of my life.
14. I Think I’ve Seen A Ghost
I was friends with my little league baseball coach's son. One day they invited me to their house for a "play date." As I walked through the door, I saw a huge framed white cloth with some weird symbol. I didn't think much about it because at the time I didn't know what it was. My coach noticed me looking at it as I entered the house and said, "My Grandad wore that. It’s been in the family for years.”
Naturally, I thought nothing of it. If anything, I thought that it was cool that they kept old family heirlooms like that. But now that I’m older I realize what that white robe was. It was a KKK robe. And the worst part of it: I’m not white.
15. A Gruesome Memento
I moved cities in the second or third grade. I met someone the first day and he invited me to his house that weekend to stay over. Everything was great at first. We played GameCube and stayed up until three in the morning (the latest I had been awake up to that point). When we finally couldn’t keep our eyes open, he said we had to sleep in the basement so that we wouldn’t wake his parents when we went upstairs.
I actually thought it was pretty cool to sleep in the basement. Little did I know, I was descending into a house of horrors. When we got downstairs with our sleeping bags, I immediately knew something was wrong. The worst smell I've ever experienced filled my nostrils the further we descended. I found the culprit in the corner of the room.
There was a bed covered in what looked like crusty blood and some pus-colored streaks. Turns out, his mother had had a home birth the week prior and kept the sheets as a memento. I haven't been back since.
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16. The Cabin In The Woods
I had a group of friends in my mid-20s that I had considered close. These were people who were going to be a part of my wedding when it eventually happened and were going to be aunts and uncles to my future kids. Our kids were going to grow up together. Then I realized in the summer of 2014 that they didn't feel the same way about me. It was one rude awakening.
There were a bunch of little things leading up to it and a bunch of little things that happened after, but two big things were a local wedding that I wasn't invited to and an apparently incredible weekend at a cabin in the mountains that I also wasn't invited to. I was feeling depressed because of the wedding and all of the aforementioned little things and some other personal stuff going on in my life, so I had begged the organizer of the cabin if I could join.
It was pathetic. I said that I can sleep on the floor; I can come for just one night; just anything as long as I can come over. I was told very firmly, "No. There's no more room." But it gets worse. Oh yeah, my birthday was also that weekend, and literally, all of my friends that I would have asked to spend my birthday with me were already out of town or at that cabin.
No exaggeration, for a year after these events, whenever I spent time with these “friends,” the conversation would somehow gravitate to how awesome these events were. Like during a board game night, someone would bring a board game and go, "This is the game that we played that one night at the cabin, remember? Bob got really lucky with those dice rolls, didn't he?" and that would trigger a full-blown conversation about how awesome that weekend was.
Or we'd be at a dinner and someone would go, "Where's Frank and Lindsey?" and someone else would go, "They're finally on their honeymoon. Man, remember the awesome wedding they had?" Made me feel awful.
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17. All That Dads Do
I had a sleepover in high school, and one friend went to the kitchen in the middle of the night. She saw my dad wasted only in his underwear and a stained shirt on his knees in front of the fridge drinking mustard from the bottle. The rumors spread, and I was more confused because I thought everyone’s dad did the same.
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18. Wet And Wild
I hadn’t been to my friend’s house before when she asked me to come over, so I accepted. We were in her living room watching TV when she took a sip of water from her cup. A funny commercial came on and made her choke on her water. When she stopped coughing, I watched her spit straight onto the carpet. I didn't go back.
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19. Caring Friend
In 9th grade, the mom of a person from my friend group called my mom. My mom didn’t know how to describe their invitation and ended up saying it was a playdate when she called out to me. She asked me if I wanted to go over on the weekend. I agreed even though it seemed a little weird, but he was nice just probably shy.
On Saturday, I biked over there, and my friend’s mom answered the door. She seemed surprised that I got there on my own. So, I went upstairs to his room and asked what he wanted to do. He opened up his toy chest full of well-loved plushies and action figures and asked if I wanted to play with them. It was a little odd. Weren't we a little old to be playing with toys?
Still, I wasn’t going to knock a little nostalgic make-believe time, so I told him okay and asked how he wanted to play. He said, “We make them fight!” I sat on this 14-year-old’s bed, holding out toys for him to bonk other toys against them and make “pow” noises for three hours. I kept suggesting we do something else.
But over and over, he just said, “Just wait ‘til after we make THESE guys fight!” I did not go over there again. I told my parents it felt like one of my babysitting gigs. He was fine at school, though. So, we just kept it to that.
20. Swim Date Scuffle
I was meant to stay the night with a kid just a few doors down from my grandparents’. He lived with his grandparents and his grandpa was a facilities manager at an upscale apartment complex and offered to take us swimming there for the day. His grandfather dropped us off at the main pool and said he’d be back in a while.
The pool was Olympic-sized and simply had too many people, so we decided to explore and ended up at a smaller pool on the property elsewhere. We were swimming, having a good time and everything was great—that is, until he started a splash fight. We were going back and forth and then he started screaming at me at the top of his lungs. Then he went too far, and I knew I had to act.
He ends up cornering me and tries to push me under the water, still screaming. I wrestle myself free and hit him square in the nose. His nose started bleeding like Niagara Falls and he started cursing at me repeatedly as loud as his lungs could muster. I got out of the pool and grabbed my things and headed back to the front of the complex. People were staring and trying to calm him down. He started walking after me, hands at his sides in fists, covered in blood from his nose.
I make it back to the front of the complex and am desperately trying to get someone to let me use a phone to call home. No one would listen. They’re enamored with the screaming kid who, by the way, is still lumbering after me. He’s a mess. Out of nowhere, his grandfather appears and snatches him up and disappears with him through a door. I was still trying to get someone to let me use a phone when his grandfather reappeared.
He asked me what happened then told me he has to take the kid home, and that I can’t go with them. They finally let me use the phone. My parents didn’t answer, so I ended up getting ahold of my aunt who was still working and couldn’t come to get me for another two hours. The office wouldn’t let me stay inside so I was outside in the parking lot standing around waiting, still having no idea what happened.
My aunt showed up and off we went. When I got home, I got yelled at for being so far from home. A few days later my mom went to talk to the kid’s grandfather. She came back and told me that we couldn’t hang out anymore. She told me that he needed medication to keep him calm and that he had missed his dose that day. The situation wasn’t my fault. I never saw him again.
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21. Sleepwalking Smasher
I was a sleepwalker. At about the age of seven, I slept over at a friend's house, sleepwalked, and woke up in an enclosed space. I panicked. I pushed my arms straight out in front of me against what I thought was a wall. Once I realized what was happening, it was too late. It turned out to be an enormous bureau that was placed diagonally in the corner of the dining room. I ended up pushing it over. It was full of plates, glasses, and fine china, etc. It was 4 am.
22. Nothing To Fear But Josh Himself
I had this best friend, Josh. He and I grew up together, and we’ve been friends since the second grade. We went through everything together. When I was young, I was very stupid and naïve, and I didn’t realize how destructive our friendship was until we started drifting apart. For example, as a child, he would always say things to scare me.
Josh always used to talk about creepypastas, doing his best to convince me they were real. I ended up having to go to therapy because I was so terrified of slender man that I was having nightmares and hallucinations because I was so scared and sleep-deprived. It sounds stupid, but I was only 7-8 or so. One of the most blatant examples was when I was called to the office, but they didn’t specify why.
Josh turns to me with panic on his face and says, “Your dad could have been shot!” My father, who I was close with at the time, was an officer. When he played with my emotions and let out his sadism on me, this felt normal and I didn’t know any better because I had a rough childhood. I remember about a year and a half ago—the last time we hung out—he was on the phone with his girlfriend.
Apparently, she had cheated on him, so he was purposefully humiliating her and berating her. I wasn’t in the next room, we were thigh to thigh on my bed playing Call of Duty, so I could hear absolutely everything. I didn’t know how abusive he was to everyone until I saw him take it out on other people, and since then we just haven’t talked.
23. Opening Up
When I was six, I needed to use the bathroom at my friend’s house. But, instead of the guest one, he led me to his parents’ bathroom. The place was filled with trash of all sorts—boxes, magazines, an inflatable pool, lots of things. It was hard to navigate. He pulled out a drawer from the installed cabinet by the door. And POINTED to it.
He told me to pee in there. I thought he was joking...until he went ahead and peed in there himself. I couldn’t argue with that, so I too peed in there. Then he shut the drawer, and we went and played more ninja turtles. I have no idea what became of that family.
24. Stood Up
I got convinced to go to homecoming without a date by my “friends” in my sophomore year of high school. This was after getting ditched by my homecoming date freshman year. Everyone told me that going with friends would be a lot better than going with a date and that I would have way more fun than last time, so I decided to take a chance and go.
The plan was to get dressed by a specific time, wait until my friend’s parents come to pick me up, go out for a nice dinner, then go to the homecoming dance. I got dressed at the time I was supposed to, let my friends know I was ready and waited…for hours. I texted and called every single person that was a part of my homecoming group, letting them know I was ready, and not a single person responded. Then something in me broke.
I remember sobbing about it in the backseat of my dad’s car when he took me to McDonald’s 30 minutes before the dance started. He felt bad and didn’t want me to go hungry. After I ate, he drove me to the dance, and as I get out of the car and start walking toward the line to get into the building, still wiping tears from my eyes, I see the same group I was supposed to be with right in front of me.
I went up to them and asked why no one bothered to respond to my messages. They pretty much responded with, “Oh, sorry,” and split off from me the second we got inside the building. That was about five years ago but I still remember it like it was yesterday. People suck.
25. The Day the Drain Field Collapsed
A friend of mine had a monster dump during a sleepover. It backed up the entire drain field, with poo-water coming through the sinks and the washing machine. We spent part of the night bailing water out of the bathroom window. The next morning, we woke up to the sounds of a backhoe and my dad shouting. It turned out that my buddy's poop was the one that finished off the drain field. The whole backyard had to be dug up and an all-new drain field put in.
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26. Everything That Glitters Ain’t Clean
I was at my friend’s place and he asked me to get us a couple of clean coffee mugs from the dishwasher. I’ve been second-guessing everything I’ve ever eaten at his place ever since. Besides the two “clean” mugs in the dishwasher, I found a couple of other not-so-clean items. Staring back at were two toilet brushes, just washed. No amount of dish detergent would make that kosher.
27. Popping In
I had the weird family who made our guest feel uncomfortable. I was about 12 and had a huge zit on my bum that was incredibly painful and deep under the skin. I couldn't pop it no matter how hard I tried and, in my extreme pain sitting down, asked my dad to pop it. He agreed, and I dropped my pants and then bent over.
My dad then put on gloves to do the deed. In the middle of all this, my younger sister's friend walked in without a sound as we were behind a wall that connects the hall sector to the living room. She gasped and just walked out of the room.
28. Didn’t Make the Cut
I grew up with a girl a couple of doors down, who I considered to be one of my best friends. When we were about 10 or 11, she had a birthday party sleepover, and I was invited along with six other girls. We played games, did our hair, watched movies, and sang karaoke. Toward the end of the night, she told me, in front of all the other girls, that I couldn't sleep over because she could only have six friends there.
It was something she hadn't mentioned until that point. I was crushed, but I packed up my sleeping bag and all the stuff I'd brought over and prepared to walk home. But I didn't even realize how bad it was yet. On my way out, I passed another girl who was arriving late to the party with all her sleepover gear in hand. I walked home in the dark and didn't tell my mother what had happened. I played Monopoly by myself and pretended everyone else was there with me. My friend never apologized and I never said anything about it.
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29. Pains In The Butt
I live in severe chronic pain every day due to several illnesses. The friends I had would either just complain about their own life nonstop to the point I'd be exhausted of conversation, or else tell me, "If I were you I would have offed myself a while ago now." Maybe it’s meant to be endearing, saying I'm strong, but it never comes across that way to me.
30. Birthday Bash of Bad Friends
My cousin and I were best friends growing up. She was six months older than me, and we were always together. When she would come over to visit, my other best friend who lived down the road would play with us too. We were a grand trio. My cousin was having a birthday sleepover. She told me she was inviting her friends from school who I did not know. She even invited my best friend who lived close by.
This was my first all-girls sleepover and I was really excited. When my friend and I arrived, my cousin’s friends were extremely cold to us. When we joined them in the bedroom, they laughed at us and didn’t speak to us for most of the evening. These girls went to a mixed boys and girls school so the group spent most of the time talking about boys and all the things they had done.
They took great delight in belittling and making fun of us, as we went to an all-girls school so we had no experience or interest in boys at that age. They continually alienated us from the conversation and would laugh with each other whenever my friend I would try to join in. This was my first experience feeling so isolated in a room full of people. I felt extremely uncomfortable.
During the night the girls got even nastier. I had enough and said I would sleep elsewhere. I moved my sleeping bag into another room. My cousin begged me to rejoin, as she didn’t want to get in trouble with her parents. I returned sullenly and felt like the smallest person in the world. Thankfully the morning came and I was only dying to get packed up and for my mom to collect me. When I got home, my mom asked me how the night went and I just broke down and sobbed my little heart out.
31. Fire In The Hole
Years ago, I visited a friend who lived in a bad neighborhood near the city. Upon entering, I passed the kitchen. I saw all four burners on the gas stove were on full blast with nothing on them. There was no vent, and the ceiling had a big burn hole all the way through to the second floor where his mom was in her room.
Her room was the farthest from the kitchen, and she was watching TV on full blast. I realized that the gas stove was the centralized heater for the whole house. I’m a certified fire safety director now. This almost gives me a heart attack just thinking about it.
32. The Multiplex
I went to meet a friend of a friend and to pick up some of their belongings as they had moved out. It was the first time I was meeting that guy—and definitely the last. We walked into his place and he had three TVs and various computer screens set up in the living room. All of them were playing…adult entertainment. That guy and my friend thought that it was completely normal and my friend didn't warn me.
After we left, my friend just shrugged and said, “That's what he does.”
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33. Moving On Up
I had the same group of three friends since elementary school, but that was because I was very introverted and didn’t make any other friends. Because of this, I stuck with them for 10+ years. However, I was considered the “weirdo” of the group. They constantly belittled me, and they would “accidentally” hit me or throw me down. Even in high school, I was the joke of the group.
My life problems were brought up and laughed at, and at this point, I started distancing myself from all of them. Once we graduated high school I told myself that I will never speak to them again, which I did. Truthfully, I miss having a group of friends (I have no friends now), but I’m so glad I’m not friends with fake people who hurt me day in and out.
Four years later, they still complain about me leaving their friend group, because apparently, “I think I’m better than them.” It’s pretty ridiculous that they think they’re entitled to my friendship when all they did was hurt me for years.
34. In Bed With the Bugs
I slept over at my friend’s house when I was about 12 before going on a weekend trip out of town with her family. Her mom was a hoarder. I found a weird-looking bug in my friend’s room during that first night. She nonchalantly tells me that it’s a bedbug. I barely slept, feeling all sorts of creepy crawly things and spent the rest of the trip with awful bites all over my arms. Miraculously none of the bugs came home with me.
35. That’s Weird. Period.
This happened many years ago. My friend invited me over to her place to swim in her pool. She was someone I had just met through another friend of mine so I didn’t know her that well. The three of us were in her room changing into our swimsuits. That's when I noticed something disturbing. There were a bunch of used—read: bloody—maxi pads laying open on her desk.
I asked her what that was all about and she very nonchalantly answered, "It's so my mom knows I'm not pregnant.” We were maybe 12 at the time.
36. Outing Yourself As A Jerk
Right after I came out of the closet, I lost a ton of friends. They were all super supportive and encouraging at first, until I started openly seeing guys. Then my closest friend started excluding me from things. When I confronted him about it, his answer was, “I know you’re gay, and that’s great! But I don’t want to see or hear about all this gay stuff.”
So I was allowed to be gay, I just wasn’t allowed to talk about dating anyone or flirt with anyone…and just like that, all of the other friends in that group fell in line with him. Good riddance, though. Now I am surrounded by people that matter.
37. Sticky Fingers
For some reason, this friend took a hoodie from me when we were hanging out. I knew it was him, even though he denied it. When I finally confronted him, he called me a “spoiled rich brat” and said it was a prank. He even somehow looped in my other friend into pretending it was just a dare. That much dishonesty over a hoodie? No thanks.
38. All Shook Up
I crashed at my friend’s house when I was about 14. The guy didn’t tell me that a few days before he had found his mom’s vibrator hidden in her room. He told me to turn off the lights because he had something to show me. Before I could do anything, he rammed his mom's pleasure toy into my mouth and ran off laughing. I never stopped over again and I couldn't look his mom in the eye again either.
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39. If It’s Yellow…
I found a dog poop on my friend's carpet next to his bed. When I pointed it out, he elected not to pick it up but to leave it and clean it up later. At the same sleepover, I went to use the restroom and the toilet had not been flushed by the previous person. It was just pee in there, but it had been in there so long that when I peed into the water, I broke through a solid thin layer of film created by the unflushed pee.
40. The Truth Comes Out
Once high school ended, I heard about all the rumors they made up about me. Horrible, horrible stuff. They told people that I was addicted to drugs—so much so that they were the reason I got tested at school. They also said I was easy because my friend’s boyfriend was my best friend and she wanted me to stop hanging around with him.
High school sucks, just a bunch of children trying to be better than everyone else.
41. MY Bundle Of Joy
When I had a miscarriage and was grieving, my “friend” just wanted me to focus on her pregnancy and just forget about what I was feeling and to act like nothing had happened. Literally two days after my miscarriage, she insisted I got out with her to go shopping for her baby and talk about cradles and things like that. Selfish jerk.
42. Nobody’s Perfect
I think I realized the fake aspect of my old group of friends when things started to happen to me in a way that didn’t fit their narrative, and so they blocked me out and continue to do so to this day. Specifically, it was one of my closer friends, who I was constantly hanging with since third grade and was also in a band with.
The biggest asteroid of realization came when my current, only, and actual best friend told me recently that this ex-friend said verbatim, "He can be your problem now," when I was in a psych ward for a manic experience. Like, I’m sorry that my mental framework isn’t up to your standards, but didn’t we confide in each other for no less than a full decade?
Didn't we develop as friends over several years with tons of common interests? Didn't we have tons of fun playing music? It just doesn’t matter because I chose to experiment with substances and you didn't? And that my brain is wired in a way that couldn’t handle it? I never took from you. I never hit you. I never intentionally harmed you in any way.
When I found out he said that and felt that way, it gave me a lot of insight into how this guy really is for the most part. His nonchalant reflection on our days of being in our old band was always, "Yeah, we suuuuucked," with a very condescending and critical attitude. Like yeah, but wasn’t it fun? Why be so critical and treat it like it was just some stupid ephemeral portion of your life?
You probably wouldn't be teaching music to kids now and having a successful new band had we not done what we did. But everything has to be perfect for it to be worth it to him. I’ve always had problems with depression, various mental health issues, and so on, so it hurt when it really hit me that his choice was, "Nah, I’m gonna distance myself" rather than, "Is there something I can do to help or understand?”
It definitely continues to have long-lasting damage and impact on how I view the world. I hold myself accountable for the awful stuff I have done. But my real friend stuck around, the only real friend I ever really had among them. I've been sober for almost four years now, and he supports me even though he's not into the whole sobriety thing.
43. Whirling Dervish?
I had a friend that I would sleepover with relatively often. One night after we had gone to sleep, he turned a lamp on, stood directly in front of the area where I was sleeping, and just spun in place while making weird noises. I asked him what he was doing and he talked about being possessed. I laughed because I thought it was funny. He kept going for about an hour, long after I had expressed that I was tired and asked him to stop.
He kept saying that he couldn’t since he was possessed. Eventually, I turned over and tried to fall asleep, despite it all. The following morning, he insisted that it had not happened. He had never walked in his sleep during a sleepover before, and to my knowledge, he didn't make a habit of it. No matter how much I pressed, he wouldn't admit to doing it. It was very disjointed and unsettling.
44. Two-Ply, One-Ply, No-Ply
Two friends of mine shared an apartment. They started fighting about who bought the most toilet paper. I didn’t realize how intense their feud got until I visited once. It wasn’t so much what I found but what I didn’t find. Their fight had gotten so bad that they both stopped buying toilet paper altogether. And they resorted to desperate measures.
It got to the point that they only used the washroom when they had to shower. Sometimes it’s the things that aren’t there that are the most shocking.
45. Hedging My Bets
My “best friend” in high school was awful. On Wednesday, I’d ask if she wanted to see a movie Friday night. She’d always say maybe, if I can get out of doing whatever with my parents. Come Monday, I’d hear her talking about how great the movie was. Apparently, last-minute her parents said she didn’t have to go wherever and “miraculously” a group of people called right then and asked her to see the same movie.
She’d always say, “I figured you made other plans” when I confronted her about it. In reality, she’d just wait to see what the better option was and pick on Friday. God that made me angry.
46. Give Your All
When they ghosted me after 17 years of close friendship, that HURT. I still have no idea what I did wrong. But then there was extra salt in the wound. See, it was right after I spent a week eating instant noodles because I donated every cent I had to one of them for her cancer treatment GoFundMe. Hurt more than any relationship breakup.
47. Freedom At Last
As soon as I got out of a difficult and manipulative relationship, they all said “Oh, we knew you were struggling, we just thought it was a thing you needed to go through.” On some level, I get it I guess, but still…Once I went off to college, they all cut ties with me anyhow. Still trying to find my social footing, but at least now I know some red flags to watch for.
48. Party Down
I was at a party, really depressed after a bad breakup, and I started drinking too much. My horrible ex showed up, caught me somewhere alone, and hit me. I begged several friends for help since I was too gone to drive home alone, and they ignored me. My ex-best friend was there, completely sober, and refused to drive home with me because she didn't believe my ex would do that.
There's no Uber or anything in my country, by the way. The whole thing escalated, and one guy I didn't know ended up finding me alone in a field crying and throwing up. He brought me back to the house, built a bed out of blankets for me, and sat guard all night to make sure my ex wouldn't do anything again. I moved away for university and only saw my ex two more times in public places where he just glared at me.
I blocked him everywhere, and he was only kicked from the friend group later for unrelated stuff. I no longer talk to the ones from the friend group that were at the party. I found new friends at university and met an amazing guy who didn't give off a single red flag during the time I took to carefully get to know him. We're engaged and have a baby on the way.
49. One For The Burn Book
I had an eating disorder for two years, though I no longer do. During this time, I was in a toxic friend group. None of them seemed to trust me at all and wouldn’t tell me anything. One day, a boy named Jake who I was talking to asked me out and I said yes—only it turns out one of them liked him. Again, I didn’t know this as these people never confided anything to me.
I walk up to them one day and I hear one say, “You know Jake deserved better, not a fat whale like her. At this point, she deserves to starve, tell her to keep up the good work.” Words can’t describe how sad I felt and it took a lot to get over. I’m much better now and even though that was two years ago, I look back and the past me and the current me, and I couldn’t be more proud of myself.
50. Kids, Bath Time!
I spent the night at a friend's house in the sixth grade. To put that into perspective, we were eleven or twelve years old. Anyhow, he lived with just his mom—his dad wasn't in the picture and he was an only child. Seeing as though it was just the two of them, they developed a close relationship but, in my humble opinion, they were way too close.
We were having a great time until his mom called him for bath time. With her. Like, together. They even left the door open like it was nothing.
51. A Little Off The Top
This was when I realized who were my friends and who weren't. We were supposed to go on a tour and we saved our money and pooled it together. These fake friends then told me they had to cancel the plan because the ticket prices got too high, and told me to wait a few days to get my money back. My real friends asked me why I bailed on them, and were worried that I had an emergency.
Turns out my fake friends didn't want me to come and instead used my money for their booze and told everyone else that I bailed out and took my money back so everyone else would give more for their booze allowance.
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52. House Slitherin
I had a friend named David and he invited me to his house once. Little did I know that his family were horrific hoarders. You couldn't see the floor of his house, and I was literally stepping in bowls filled with cereal. At one point, I saw a snake just slithering through the refuse. That was way more than enough for me.
I immediately made up an excuse that I was sick so I could go home. It was an actual nightmare.
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53. Split Down The Middle
I flew out to support a friend going through a messy divorce. While I was there, she left me in the apartment to meet up with her boyfriend, who I didn't know about. It didn’t end there. This boyfriend turned out to have just been released from prison for manslaughter. Once she told me that, I told her that I didn't want to spend time with him, especially considering the circumstances of my visit.
The next night, I woke up in the middle of the night to find him in the living room. She said that she thought it wouldn't matter since I was asleep. The next day, she invited her soon-to-be ex-husband over without telling me and then asked me to meditate their conversation once he got there. That conversation turned ugly fast, and she ended up storming out.
He broke down and asked if I thought it was salvageable, and I told him that she had already moved on. Maybe not the best idea on my part, but at that point, she had shown me how vile of a person she is.
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54. Getting Schooled
My "friends" I made at university were so fake. They were the first people I met there and got along with. There were three or four guys, in addition to myself, who were inseparable for months. Well, one semester my course registration got messed up so I wasn't able to enroll in classes with them. Eventually, I managed to protest with my school enough so that they let me into a full class they were in.
That way, I could at least see them once a week and hang out with them after class. Big mistake. It was like I didn't even exist anymore to these guys. They would say hi to me and ask what I was up to, but I was never invited to anything anymore and was removed from the group chat we had. It hurt like heck at the time, but I think the most important thing I learned from all this was how to distinguish between actual friends and acquaintances.
I didn't expect much from acquaintances and learned to rely more on my actual friends.
55. The Lion’s Club
My parents were in a bowling league and would bring me with them. I made friends with a girl who hung out at the bowling alley because she lived in a home on an acre of land next to it. One night, she invited me to over to her house while my parents bowled. I asked my parents and they said I could. I was in for the story of a lifetime.
We walked to her house and when I walked in there was a lion cub (like Simba, like a giant wild cat) chained to a coffee table in the front room. She asked me if I wanted to pet the lion and of course I did! I pet the lion, we hung out and I got back to the bowling alley like nothing happened. I really should have taken a picture.
When I told my parents about it, they were like, “Sure,” in that indulgent kind of way that I knew meant they didn’t believe me. The joke was on them though. Years later, I was reading the newspaper and saw that the girl and her family had been charged for illegally having exotic cats. I showed my parents and had the best "told you so" moment in my life.
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56. Taking You For A Ride
When several of them messaged me on Facebook during the last week of high school to say that the only reason they ever hung out with me was that they were pitying my best friend. I should have caught on when they made me pay for the gas and ride in the trunk of a Ford Explorer every time we went anywhere. That's one reason I never go back to my hometown.
57. My House, My Rules, My Face. Everywhere.
One of my wife's co-workers invited us to a dinner party. I wasn't really friends with that guy because, well, you’ll see. Anyhow, he was a very accomplished doctor who, supposedly, was the foremost authority in his specialty. I knew the man had a huge ego but nothing prepared me for what I saw when we went to his home—or shrine, as it turns out.
As soon as we walked in the door there was a life-size painting of himself that one of his patients had given him as a gift. There was nothing too strange—if a little self-centered—about that. He saved a patient’s life and they were very grateful so they gave him a painting. No biggie, right? Well, that house might as well have been an art gallery…in his honor.
His wife took our jackets, hung them up then walked us to his massive living room where the rest of the guests were mingling. As I looked around the room to take in what a magnificent home this man had, I noticed that there were hundreds of pictures lining his shelves and walls. Every single one of those pictures was of him. Not of his wife, not of his four children, not of his siblings, parents, etc.
Even the pictures that looked like they may have been group photos, he had clearly cropped so that he was the only one in the frame. I'm terrible at hiding my true feelings. My face usually gives me away every time but I spent the next hour desperately trying to pretend like that wasn't remotely strange. After a few drinks, I decided to head to the bathroom.
I had to take a dump and I'm not shy about doing so at another person's home. I walked into their guest bathroom, closed the door, lifted up the lid, sat down, and grabbed one of a dozen books that were sitting next to the toilet. The first book I picked up was—surprise!—written by our host. So, I picked up another book and you guessed it, that guy was the author.
I checked all of the books in the stack and not surprisingly, they were all written by this guy. Part amused and part disgusted I looked up and noticed there was a picture on a small table across from the toilet. That guy again, staring at me while I tried to use the washroom.
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58. It Gets Better
I wasn't popular in school at all. I had a reputation for being a freak with an attitude problem, but I performed well in academics and sports and was often seeing the same people within that high-performing group. I got relatively close to the girls I did sports with since we spent so much time together at practice and at meets, and we even had lunch together sometimes.
BUT when it came to anything social, I was never invited. They went to parties every weekend, they even threw the parties, and they didn't ever invite me. Sometimes they had the excuse of "Oh there were just too many people," but most of the time they didn't bother explaining why I wasn't included even though we spent a lot of time with the same people.
I ran into some of the girls I was closest with a year after graduation and they acted like they barely knew me when I said hi.
59. Is That A Feather Boa?
I had a friend who lived on his own in high school and we partied at his place a lot. He had a revolving door of roommates to help with rent. One of these roommates was a seriously sketchy character. He was extremely paranoid and rarely spoke to us besides uttering vague threats. The one he always repeated was that we never, EVER go in his room. Seemed easy enough because he always kept it locked.
Well, one day he found himself locked up—in the clink. He communicated through family again not to enter his room, saying that eventually, his family would come get his things. Weeks went by and a strange smell started coming from the locked room. This dude and his family were super scary so we didn’t want to mess around and find out.
But finally, my friend just couldn’t take the smell anymore. He figured that it was probably just rotting trash and that he could take it out without touching anything else. He was way in over his head though. When he finally entered the room, he found a massive, decomposing boa constrictor. It wasn’t even in a tank.
60. Small Town Spite
This one hurt so badly. See, I was the only one from my "real" friend group that finished college. During the time where I was away and each of them was understandably struggling to figure out what to do next, we obviously had a hard time not growing apart. It wasn't that bad until they started dating these guys from our backwater hometown.
I tried to be happy for them, until these guys showed their horrible true colors. I’m a Black woman, and they turned out to be disturbingly prejudiced about both these parts of me. After a particularly bad night, I made my feelings about them known because I was hurt, fed up, and honestly I thought my friends deserved better than these jerks.
After that, they barely answered my messages, stopped including me in their plans, and actively made up stories when I tried to make the plans first. We use to hang out every day when we weren't at school or at work, so this behavior didn't go unnoticed to me. Then, my dad got really sick and spent the entire summer I was home in the hospital.
I was really stressed and struggling and these friends knew it, but barely reached out. That's when I knew despite everything we had gone through, they were fake friends. We had a fight at one point and I never spoke to any of them again. My only "consolation" to this day is that they stayed in that stupid town for those guys. They had plans about moving down south and doing other stuff and never fulfilled any of them.
Meanwhile, I have done all the things I said I was going to do. However, I don't consider it much of a consolation because despite how they treated me, I didn't want them to live sad lives. But oh well, karma comes for everyone.
61. It’s A Feline Frenzy!
I went to high school two towns south of where I grew up and I made some new friends through sports almost immediately. The two girls I befriended invited me to this other girl's house. I hadn't really talked to her much but she seemed nice so I went with them. After a little while of jumping on the trampoline, one of my new friends asked this other girl to show me her "cat room.”
We went up to the bonus room above the garage and opened the door to a house of horrors. There were countless cats and kittens of all ages, colors and sizes. But not even Catwoman would have been comfortable in there. The whole room—the ceiling, the walls, the floor, everything—was covered in filth. The poor cats were crawling over one another.
The girl whose house it was didn’t seem to think it was off. She just started playing with the kittens and tried to hand one to me to play with. I don't even know what I did. The two girls who invited me were laughing hysterically and I tried to make some type of excuse to get out of there and one of them was like, “Oh, but you haven’t met "Sprinkles" yet.”
The girl whose house it was went off in search of one specific cat and we were trapped in there for another ten minutes while my new friends laughed maniacally. I can remember the smell. Oh, the smell.
62. No Fun
Shortly after getting sober, I realized that a majority of my "friends" only kept me around so they could feel better about their own habits. I was heavily addicted and setting myself down a path I never once thought I could or would take. I stopped for my own benefit and health, and was treated like a selfish piece of garbage for doing so.
The next months ensued and not one of them checked in to see how I was doing, but instead, my high school best friend started sleeping with my ex-high school girlfriend. I was with her for five years and actually thought I was going to marry her at one point. Ironically, she dumped me for doing illicit substances and is now an honorary member of the group I was cast out of.
Replaced with the person who partially fueled my substance use, who dumped me for that use, by the group that didn't like me stopping my using, so they could all use substances together. It's now been over a year since I quit, and honestly couldn’t be happier. Got rid of an addiction and about 1,000 lbs of dead weight. But it was an eye-opener, to say the least.
63. Liar, Liar
She pretended to have millions of dollars but lived in a condo. She always told ridiculous lies like she “flew to New York overnight” and she had “five pairs of AirPods and three Apple Watches, she just kept them at home.” All lies. She was a pathological, compulsive liar who was manipulating and told unbelievable and outrageous lies and expected everyone to believe them.
She also was a know-it-all and used fake facts to make it seem like she was right. I was only friends with her because I was the new kid and no one else was nice to me. To make a long story short, I cut her off, made new friends, and now I don’t even talk to her anymore.
64. You Kidding Me?
When I was babysitting her kids, things were going great. We would hang out all the time, and we’d have movie nights and just talk and chill. But the second she no longer needed a babysitter was the second I got kicked to the curb. No explanation...not even a text back. Some people will act like your best friend until they no longer need you. Their loss, though.
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65. Radio Silence
She just kept delaying or canceling our meet-ups. ONE time she had a valid excuse, or at least one I didn't blame her for, when her uncle landed in the hospital. But I still wasn't happy about it because she could have texted me what was going on, rather than three hours after we were supposed to meet up. How am I supposed to know what is happening?
But excuses just kept piling up, and the one that did it was when I had asked her for a ride to work the next day. She said cool. Even after she had already accepted, I offered to buy her dinner to sweeten the deal, and she accepted. The next day came, and I heard NOTHING from her. Tried to confirm half an hour before, tried 10 minutes before, and then I had to scramble to find my own way to work.
Uber/Lyft/Taxis were all delayed because it was a Saturday night, so I got on one of those rental Lime scooters. The brakes didn't work. I had to end that ride and start another one and made it to work 12 minutes late. Even two hours into my shift, she STILL hadn't replied, but I could see she had SEEN the messages. I unfriended her and blocked her on Facebook.
With the exception of her being in a near-fatal accident, there was no excuse strong enough for me to care about her again. The next day, she tried to text me, but I never opened it. I only saw the preview: "I have no excuse.” I mouthed You’re right before I blocked her number and deleted the conversation. She earned me my first tardy at that job, ever.
66. Dirty Double
I had two guy best friends, and I’d never thought anything about it despite being a woman. But apparently, they did. We all went off to the same college, and I had made new friends. I decided to bring some along to a big night out with my two best friends as well. I was not drinking that night, and I had to drive home.
After the night was over, I said bye and left. Next morning, I got tons of texts that broke my heart. My true friends explained that my “best friends” had started to trash talk me the second I left. They made up lies, called me things, and told them that I slept with both of them whenever they wanted. It was so bad, my newly made friends distanced from me.
67. Poor Career Choices
My best friend and I met as entry-level employees. We both helped each other out and elevated each other over the years. I stayed in corporate in middle management and made good money. He went into business for himself. His company was struggling, so he asked me for a favor: He wanted me to quit my job and help him build his company.
He could only pay for half of what I made at my current job but promised that the business would be a success. When the money started rolling in, we’d split the profits and share the credit. He made it sound like having a best friend as a boss was appealing; "C'mon it’ll be fun!" So, I said yes. Six months later, I landed our first million-dollar client. I asked him when I’d get a split of the profit distribution.
"What profit distribution?" And just like that, he started taking back everything we talked about; "No, no, no, you heard me wrong. I never said half the profits.” Everything would have been fine if we'd had a written agreement. But I didn't think it was necessary. I’d stupidly trusted a person I talked to daily and thought of as my own brother.
Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice? Nuh uh. When he tried to scam me, I knew our friendship had to end and I also knew that I could no longer be his co-worker. I left his company. When I left, he immediately screwed up his relationship with the rich client I landed. He got ticked and took his business elsewhere, leaving my "best friend" and his company to go bankrupt. Oh, and that wasn't all.
He then got a divorce because his wife, who did the accounting, saw a receipt that didn't make sense. She looked it up and found out that he visited a Russian “cat house.” Three guesses what that was code for. Meanwhile, I went back to a corporate job and always, from that moment on, made sure to get things in writing. Plus, people were impressed that I landed that million-dollar client, so I actually came out on top.
68. Not Sharing The Big Day
My wedding was the moment I realized I had fake friends. I invited friends from college to my bridal shower and nobody showed up. A few had legitimate reasons, and I wasn't upset about them. When I kept getting RSVPs as “no” for the actual wedding, I was disappointed, but nothing was going to ruin my special day. Something almost did, though.
My favorite was when I had to call my college roommate because I hadn't received her RSVP. Her excuse? "Oh, it's on my birthday." That's it. That's all she said. I just asked if it was a yes or no, but she gave me that excuse.
69. Take Care Of It
I had a best friend who promised me that he would pay my rent with our business profits while I went out of town. Instead, he completely betrayed me. He used our hard-earned money to buy himself a truck and then told my landlord that I had the money for rent, but refused to pay. Thanks to him, my family ended up homeless.
70. Unrequited Love
It turns out I wasn’t as good a friend as I thought. My best friend of 20 years got married, and while I was invited to the wedding, I wasn’t in the wedding party, though a number of other friends were. I was asked a number of times by fellow guests at the reception why I wasn’t in the party, and had to brush it off with, “Oh, she knew I was really busy.”
I never asked her why. I just kind of left it alone because I’m not quite ready to be told flat out that while she’s my best friend, I’m not even a close one of hers. I suppose I should have known. I’m always the one to initiate contact, and she sometimes doesn’t even respond, but I kept chalking it up to her being busy and a bit of a ditz because when we did get together, we both seemed to have a really good time.
71. At Least Put Some Effort In
I had a "friend" who would only contact me when she needed something, but she was pretty sly about it in the beginning. Like, inviting me over to hang and then bringing up the favor organically, like “Oh, we don't have anyone to watch the dog next weekend,” or “I want to move this bed but it's so heavy,” etc. After a while, it got more egregious and obvious
Stuff like only calling to ask to use my truck or dog sit. I'd politely say I wasn't available and eventually she stopped calling. She still texts every now and then to "catch up." She tried that a few times in the past and it was always followed by a request, despite my no longer responding. To this day I cringe when someone says, "Hi, friend!" which is her freaking catchphrase
72. Wasn’t Me
They became a drug addict and blamed everyone else for their problems. I tried everything for over a year. I ruined a lot of my own life trying to be there for them. It was a hard lesson to learn that sometimes the people who you really love you and care about can be beyond help. It hurts me to remember the girl that my best friend used to be.
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73. Projecting, Much?
She told me she was cheating on her husband, while laughing about how funny it was that her boyfriend would come over to the house and hang out with her husband and her and their newborn. After I told her that wasn't cool and we weren't friends anymore, she told everyone that I was sleeping with her husband and an abusive alcoholic.
None of this was true. There was a happy ending, though: The husband got divorced and got full custody, while I got new friends.
74. Terrible Truths
She did lots of really awful things and manipulated me into apologizing for everything. The breaking point was when she told me, "I know you think you really love (fiancé's name), but really, they should be pre-emptively attacked to get rid of some of that pride. Bring them down a notch." ...What? I was absolutely horrified.
I ended the game night as quickly and calmly as I could and ended the friendship immediately after. She tried to explain why she was right. Then she tried to somehow spin all this as my fault and say that I was unreasonable for saying that she was wrong. At most, she admitted that she had been "tactless" but never admitted that what she said (about maiming my fiancé!) was wrong. After that tense conversation, I stopped getting in touch with her.
Six months later, when she reached out to me, she gave me the worst "apology" of my life. She said she was sorry that I had misunderstood her words. Then she said that she was willing to be the bigger man and offer me her forgiveness. Apparently, she should have anticipated that I wasn't ready to hear hard truths about the love of my life. Yeah... Nope. I don't need that. At all. Still not friends with her.
75. The Creepiest Form Of Flattery
This girl started copying me. Everything about me. It was something straight out of Single White Female. She started using my frequent phrases, tried to pick up all my hobbies, and started dressing exactly like me. The final straw was when she started getting really possessive when I would hang out with people without her and tried to turn me against all my other friends.
We aren't friends anymore, but everyone tells me she's still obsessed with me and talks about how I abandoned her to anyone who will listen.
76. What A Ditch Move
My childhood best friend was always ditching me last minute for any better opportunities that came up—babysitting jobs, sleepovers with more popular girls at school, etc. She literally told me to my face, "We can always make plans another time." Well, excuse me for thinking that she’d actually honor her commitments to me.
Finally, enough was enough. One day, she was absent from school. When I got home, she called me demanding to know why I hadn't already called her to see if she was ok. I explained that I'd had a lot on my mind, since I had broken up with my boyfriend that day, but she didn't care. She had assumed I would be there for her when she wanted me, but she'd kick me to the curb when I wasn't useful to her.
When things were good, she was an amazing friend, and we had so many great times together. I still wonder if ending our friendship was the right thing to do. But she didn't treat me right, and I finally had to leave it. I have never had the same level friendship with anyone else. I invest my loyalty more carefully now.
77. You Are NOT The Father
She tricked one of my friends that she was pregnant with their child, and used my phone to do it. She used to take my phone while I was sleeping and text my friend—the guy she hooked up with—pretending to be me, saying stuff like, “She is throwing up again this morning” and various other pregnancy things to convince him. She was not pregnant and 100% knew she wasn’t.
78. Dinner Was Fine
She was my friend from elementary school. We basically grew up together as babies all through high school and remained in contact through college by hanging out in between semesters. In our mid-twenties, she was attending medical school on the east coast, but I always figured we'd be in the same city when she did her residency.
Meanwhile, I had made a new friend who worked as a nurse in a very well-regarded hospital in Northern California. Here's the thing, though: This hospital was known for only hiring employees through internal references. So, while we were on winter break, I invited New Friend out to dinner with me and my old best friend, so we could all hang out and so that my old BFF could get a foot in the door of this fancy hospital.
My plan could not have gone worse. I introduced them to each other, and my childhood best friend proceeded to spend most of dinner just passive-aggressively insulting New Friend; phrases like "only a nurse" were tossed around. As humiliating as it was for me, I knew New Friend felt even worse. I’m ashamed that I did not defend my New Friend as much as I should have.
Later, as I was preparing to drop childhood best friend off, I overheard her talking to a mutual friend about how rude and inconsiderate I was to invite New Friend when it was "their" time. I ghosted her the next day. I dropped 15 years of friendship without an ounce of remorse. I didn't think I owed her an explanation.
79. Drastic Measures
She threatened to hurt herself if I didn't do what she wanted. She asked me if she could sleep over at my house one night. I told her no since I had grandparents visiting the next day. She continued and tried to convince me to let her. She then said that if I let her, she would stop cutting, but if I didn't, it would be my fault if she finished the job.
I didn't let her, and I "ditched" her the same year. She's still alive to this day. She has a girlfriend and is moving out of town soon.
80. Worth It
I got pregnant unexpectedly. I was freaking out because I’m already disabled, and at that point, I didn’t feel I had any job skills. I was worrying out loud about needing financial aid. My "best friend" decided that was the perfect time to tell me that only awful people were on any form of government assistance. She said that I needed to accept that I'd be a terrible mom and that my kid would be doomed to a miserable life if I didn't end my pregnancy. After that, I got up and left the table. We haven’t spoken since.
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81. The Skin You’re In
My “friend” refused to come to my wedding because she hadn't had weight loss surgery yet ad didn't want to look fat and frumpy on my wedding day. That was the culmination that led to me severing ties. She used to refer to me as her “DUFF,” the designated ugly fat friend. Then as we grew up, I slimmed down and grew into my appearance rather nicely.
Meanwhile, she did the opposite, which infuriated her. Relatedly, she tried to make up a dozen excuses as to why she couldn't be my maid of honor. She couldn't afford to travel to my wedding; I offered to pay for it all. She couldn't afford the dress; I also paid for my bridesmaids’ dresses. Then when she went on a very lavish and expensive trip to a resort and posted photos on Facebook, so I called her out.
That's when she said she didn't want to go and be in pictures because she was having gastric surgery and my wedding was too soon for her to be hot in my wedding line. At that point, our other mutual friend melted down and literally listed all the ways my best friend was a frenemy and toxic to me and to all of us. Feels bad, man.
82. Life Wrong Friend
In hindsight, there was a long list of manipulation from him, but here's the thing that really made me snap. He hadn't reached out to me for a year, even after my life was in jeopardy in the hospital. He just didn't seem to really care about my health issues. But then, when he had a crush on a girl I knew, he pops back into my life, begging me to only mention good things about him and even suggesting that I outright lie to this girl.
When she and I were talking at a party, I mentioned some nice things about him, then felt skeezy about it and went on to change the topic. We ended up discussing mental health and my "friend," who had by this time joined our conversation, mentioned how I was a drama queen because I'd almost lost my life at 17 and had been in chronic pain since then.
I basically called him out in front of her and my other friends. I reminded him that when I went on antidepressants when I was 16, I asked him to keep an eye on me as they could make me suicidal. To this, he just responded, "Well, if you are suicidal, just do it." Yeah, that girl did not go out with him and I have not spoken to him for seven years now. No regrets.
83. The Opposite Of A Good Time
When he kept on trying to jeopardize my sobriety. I would block his number; he would get a new one. I blocked him on all social media; he would create new accounts. I'm going on a year of being sober and to this day he stalks me and tries to get me to slip up. It's quite exhausting running from him while trying to maintain my sanity and sobriety.
84. Request Denied
She had a massive crush on a very nice guy who’d tried to let her down gently as best as he could. I don’t remember the details, but I started taking his side because she was becoming overly obsessed with him, despite me trying to convince her to move on because unfortunately, he just wasn’t interested. She didn’t talk to me for a month.
The nail in the coffin was the month that I started dating my wife, and she did not get along with her at all. She constantly played the victim in whatever negative interaction she had, and it just wore me out to the point where I intentionally started letting go.
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85. Two-Faced
When he started cheating on his girlfriend indiscriminately and then would brag about it to me. To make matters worse, my then-girlfriend was friends with his, so he indirectly involved me in his lies when I had to cover for his dumb behavior, which honestly I regret doing to this day. We ended up fighting over it and aren't really close anymore.
86. Unkind, Unfunny, Unfollowed
He was just a jerk, overly sarcastic, not the flattering and funny kind but the teardown kind. But over the years, his manipulation turned to violence. He outed my personal information, constantly lied about me, hit me a number of times, and told my secrets to anyone who would listen. And to this day, he stalks me because he's got nothing better to do.
87. Girls Rule, Boys Drool
I knew I didn’t want to be friends with this guy when he lost his mind that we came second to a group of girls in pub trivia. On the car ride home, he then ranted about how "It'll never happen again" and he "refuses to let a group of witches get the better of him." Really disappointing stuff, and that was the last time I voluntarily hung out with him.
88. A Real Big Deal
I was going through severe depression. I just couldn't muster the energy to even shower. She was asking to hang out, and I told her that I wasn't feeling well and my depression was consuming me. And she said, "Well, we all go through things in life. If you were a real friend, you'd take the time to make sure I was ok."
So, I got really worried that something bad happened to her. I immediately apologized and asked her what was wrong. I'll never forget her words. She said that she was going through a really hard time too. She was busy cheating on her boyfriend with a new guy, and this new dude wasn’t being attentive enough. I was stunned. After that phone call, I stopped being her friend. Literal depression was better company than that girl.
89. Ok, But What About Me?
When my dad died, my best friend didn't call or text me, but managed to message a mutual friend who I had previously slept with a few weeks before for a quickie of her own. He asked her if she had messaged me about my dad, and when she said no, he said “You should message your friend.” He was texting me throughout this situation, too.
She knew for five days that my dad died, and the weekend it happened I comforted her through a breakup. I hadn't told her then, but she found out two days later from a mutual friend of ours. I ended the friendship after that. I lost two of the most important people in my life within a week, even if one of them wasn’t as great as I thought she was.
90. Time To Pack Up
We were best friends throughout most of elementary and all of high school. We went to different high schools but would still hang out regularly. Then, in our teens, he started to "forget" to invite me to things. Slowly, the "cool" metalheads from the local scene were his only company. But after high school, I thought we patched things up. We planned to go to the same city for college, and we agreed to share a place. I took it upon myself to search for one. After everything was agreed with the landlord, my "friend" didn't answer his phone for two days.
That's when I found out the truth. He had applied to a university in another city on the opposite side of the country without telling me a thing. I was furious and lost good opportunities for living space. I still didn't want to hold a grudge but was waiting for him to be a man and make amends. I never got an apology. He didn’t call at all.
Then some 15 months later, he called me…asking for money. He knocked up some girl, married her, and then divorced her. All in the span of two months. I told him that he wasn't my friend and I wasn't going to help him. But it didn't end there. His father disowned him quickly, and he had nowhere to go, so eventually I took pity on him and let him live at my parent’s place.
They had what you could call a mini-house, which was an extension of the house. But when my parents suggested he pay super low rent (mostly to just cover the utilities), he refused. After that, I had to kick him out of my life again. But even still, we weren't through yet. A few years later, he got in a work injury but had no insurance, so he asked me to help him one last time. I relented, and I regret that decision to this day.
He still had several screws in his arm, couldn't work, and was semi-disabled. I felt bad for him, so I gave him a room in my apartment. I was already working then so I could afford it for the time being. We agreed that he would pay the rent when he was able to get some cash. Everything seemed fine between us for about two weeks.
It finally happened when I was working a sudden night shift at 9 in the morning. I got back home to find the doors unlocked, vomit and broken glass on the floor of the kitchen, the entire bathroom covered in pee, my room trashed, multiple items broken, and a girl in my bed. My "friend" and another girl were on the couch. That was the last straw.
I didn't let them just grab their things and leave, though. I made them stay and clean everything until it was spotless.
91. This One Will Make You Sick...
When a "good" friend of mine who I worked under had cancer and wasn't able to pay some bills, I loaned her $200 just to help. I was only 18 years old at the time and I felt bad because she had kids. It was right around the holidays and I just wanted to help however I could and be a good person in life. She promised to pay me back when she could.
Turns out she lied about having cancer, was embezzling money from the company I worked at, scammed my other coworkers, and would come in after skipping work for her “chemo” to make fraudulent returns while I was overseeing the store by myself because of her absence. I eventually got her fired and got promoted to her position.
92. The Bad Husband
I lost respect for this friend when it came out that he was cheating on his disabled and housebound wife. But that was just the beginning of the nightmare. She managed the finances and managed the electronic toll-road bill that showed he was in the wrong state when he was said he was at work. When she confronted him, he denied it until she then pulled out the phone bill with his texts and calls to a number in the general area of the state he had been in.
He then divorced her and tried to screw her out of her share of his Navy pension and insurance. They were married for longer than his time in the service (25 years) and was she entitled to half of it. He went out of his way to hurt her. She passed less than a year later in a nursing home while he was moving in with a completely different woman than the one he originally cheated on his wife with.
Real classy guy. He showed up to the first wife’s funeral with #2. He also claimed to go out "whaling" while in the Navy—he and his fellow sailors would apparently search out and bed the largest lady they could while on shore leave. The winner who took home the biggest got bragging rights until the next round of leave. Horrific.
93. He’s Not Bothering Anyone
Back in the 90s, a family friend's dog had passed. I ended up going over a few days later to play basketball, and the dog was laying in its usual spot, in a small bed near the TV in the living room. I said, "oh, I thought spot passed," and he said, "he did." That's when it all clicked into place. The gears started turning and the horror of it all became crystal clear.
Turns out, they left the dead dog just laying there and they were gonna bury it that weekend when the sister came home from college. But in the meantime, they just left it laying there. It was an emaciated old chihuahua, so it's not like it was a gassy, swollen, stinking mess. More like a tiny little dog mummy, all dried out. But still, who does that?
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94. Nice Day For A Rude Wedding
My best friend of 10 years called on my wedding day to say she couldn’t make it because she was just so sad about her recent divorce. Later on, I found out the truth and it wounded me to my core. Turns out, she just had a date and would have rather done that. Our whole friendship was fake, it just took me to that point to realize it.
95. Third Wheel to the Rescue
After prom, we went to a friend's house to hang out. It was him, his girlfriend (my BFF at the time), and me. I slept on the couch while they did their thing. At around 6 am, they came running down to get me for help. When. I saw what happened, I didn't know whether to laugh or barf. I guess they were so drunk that they intentionally sexually and/or jokingly peed all over each other and the bed, and were trying to use bug spray to clean. It was the epitome of a hot mess.
96. Brutal Honesty
This friend, I'll call her Mary, had kids the same age as mine. We got together for play dates pretty often and our kids would sleepover at each other’s houses for weekends. I liked Mary. We would often visit and talk while our kids were playing. One weekend, her kids had stayed at my house. The older one called her mom to see when she was coming to pick her up.
I was in the room, and the kid put the phone on speaker for some reason. Mary told the kid what time she would be there. Then it took a dark turn. She then added, "You had better be waiting outside. If I have to go in and spend the next hour talking to that woman, I'm going to be really annoyed.” We didn't spend much time together after that.
Did I overreact? Was Mary just having a bad day and not want to talk? Well, here's what happened after I overheard my friend say that to her child: I simply stopped initiating contact and wasn't as available to do stuff for her. When we dropped off or picked up the kids, I smiled and waved. I let the kids make the plans for playdates.
I no longer had time to help her with her garden or watch her kids while she went out with another friend. She never contacted me unless she wanted something. This had always been true, but I had not realized it. The "friendship" eventually fizzled out on its own. So, I guess it had never been much of a friendship to begin with.
97. Rubbernecking to the Extreme
She loved misery. I was driving her to work (she lived on my couch) and she was sobbing hysterically in the passenger seat, she really hated her job and was an unbalanced person. We come across a horrible wreck, her tears dry up instantly and she gets this huge smile, I’ve never seen her so happy.
I ask what caused the sudden change and she starts laughing like a lunatic—side-splitting giggles. She says that it looks like there were some fatalities due to the wreck and seeing it just made her day. I was pretty disgusted/creeped out. She was absolutely chipper for the next two days.
98. Everything Changes In An Instant
This happened six years ago. It was a week after my birthday and we decided to throw a late birthday party; my parents were busy with work on my actual birthday, so we rescheduled the party. I invited quite a few of my friends, but one of my friend’s fathers called my parents saying he'd be late to the party. The party was from 7:00 pm to 12:00 am.
He never showed up. Once the party was over, we were heading home and talking about how fun the party was. That conversation was cut short when a vehicle drifted into our lane and collided with us, and I blacked out. When I woke up in a hospital bed, I started to panic, but the doctor that was running tests on me told me to calm down and that I was alright.
After about 20 to 30 minutes of questioning and small tests, I asked the big question. Me: Sir? Where are my parents? The doctor basically froze there for 10 seconds and responded, and I'll never forget what he told me. Doctor: I'm so sorry but... your parents didn't survive the crash. I was informed that my dad perished on impact, and my mom was pronounced dead when she arrived at the hospital with me.
I couldn't believe it. I wanted to cry, but all I felt was anger. I knew the person who drifted into my lane was at fault, so I asked who crashed into us. It was my friend’s dad—and he was the ultimate entitled parent. Apparently, he was under the influence of something when he arrived and was currently handcuffed to a hospital bed.
One of the nurses told me later that he was demanding help before his son (who was also in the car) got treatment, even though his son was on life support. He eventually went behind bars and I don't know if he's been released or not, but if he's out there he better hope we don't cross paths. I'm currently living in a foster home with a wonderful family who treats me like I'm their own flesh and blood.
But as long as I'm alive, I'll never forget my real parents, and I'll never forget my best friend, and I'll never forgive that father for what he's done.
99. You Don’t Get What You Give
I am a giver to my friends and loved ones. Giving without explanation of any return. Over the years, my wife has continued to complain about my fake friends, claiming they are around me for my generosity only. So she came up with an ingenious plan. She asked me to be a bit selfish and ask something of those she suspected of being fake.
I did, and, well...most of those so-called friends suddenly disappeared or found themselves extremely busy with other, more important, matters than to help a friend in need. For some it took just a text to make them disappear, others a call. What can I say. I am lucky to have a partner who is very emotionally intelligent, and she read them with ease.
As for my remaining best friends, I say: Thank you for being there when I needed you, and I'll be there for you. Love you all.
100. No Trespassing
I had a friend, well, ex-friend, and we got into a massive, almost physically violent argument. I told her to leave my apartment and get out of the complex since she didn't live there. Her reply was so stupid, it’s unforgettable. She said "I don't have to! This is government property!" I was like… girl no...just no…I called the cops and they came and informed her the opposite. Ahhh, that was satisfying.
