12. Birthday Surprise
I was part of a group of friends. About 20 of us would get together at least once a month, but cliques started forming within the group and I found myself in the middle of them. I lived about 30 minutes away from most of them, so sometimes they’d hang out without me even though I told them I’d drive to hang out. I never got invited.
Then, the final straw came. I was planning my birthday. I sent a FB invite to the group and mutual friend/acquaintances only to be “reminded” by an acquaintance that one of my friends from the group was having a big party that same day. I wasn’t invited to that party. I still had mine with the few good friends I (still) have, and I haven’t really talked to the other group since.
13. Silence Isn’t Golden
I was at an event and 20 of my "friends" couldn't come up with one special memory or funny story about me. Instead, they treated me to one minute of silence with all of them staring at me awkwardly. It only ended when one of them got uncomfortable and made up a fake story about me. Despite me telling them it was a fake story, they decided to move on.
We had been friends for three years, seeing many of them daily and others at least once a week. I don't hate them, but I can never really trust them. So I cut all ties with them. And five years later, I have zero regrets about that decision.
14. Friendship Tax
I had this weird thing a while ago where, to celebrate one thing or another, this group of five I was in would go out drinking every night for a week. I couldn’t join them on one night, and the next night they wanted me to pay for my share of the drinks...from last night? They kept going, “Yeah mate that’s 10 for today and another tenner because you didn’t pay yesterday.”
I’d say it was just them pulling my leg, but the guy who paid the bill that night didn’t stop until I actually gave him the money! Anyway, I drink with different people now.
15. Secret Sleepover
When I was in seventh grade, I found out who my real friends were. I asked a friend if we could have a sleepover after spring fling, but she said her mom told her no one could stay over. So I asked a different person, who said the same thing. I asked three people who gave similar answers. After spring fling, as we were all heading to our parents’ cars, the third one told me they were all having a sleepover together.
Oh, and also that they had gotten ready together for the dance, but didn't bother inviting me. I was so pissed off, I remember rambling to my poor mom about it in the car.
16. Anger Management
We all had a mutual friend with high-functioning autism. I'll call him Ollie. Ollie is a good person, but at times, he makes people uncomfortable, and once in a while he even has angry outbursts towards us. Nothing we could say or do could stop him from going into one of these rages. When it happened in public, people would stare at us.
One time at a coffee shop, the police were almost called on him. It usually happened if he didn't get his way about something. Like in the case at the coffee shop, the rest of us agreed on going to Olive Garden next but he wanted Mexican food. I'm making him sound like he's a bad person, but he really is good-hearted otherwise.
We're all in our 20s and we know it's his autism that was the reason he acts the way he does sometimes. He always apologized shortly afterwards and then he wouldn't have another rage for a long time. He'd often say things unknowingly to people who don't know him well. Like one time at Zumiez, he was making one of the girls working really uncomfortable with the stuff he was saying.
I was the only other girl in our friend group out that day, so I apologized to the girl that was working and tried to explain he just has autism and wasn't trying to be creepy on purpose, but now we're all too embarrassed to ever go in that store again. It got to the point where we started making plans without him and not even realizing it.
After we realized what we were doing and talked about it amongst ourselves, we figured out that the less often we hung out with him, the less often the rages would happen. So we started only inviting him to every third or fourth concert or outing we'd go to. Except one night, this all ended up backfiring on us horrifically.
At one concert we didn't invite him to, it just so happened his family drove him there. He cussed us out in front of all our other friends in the lobby for not inviting him. He's since apologized to us, but we haven't hung out with him since. He eventually got himself kicked out of that concert venue anyway.
17. Catty Behavior
I started a new job recently and a few of my coworkers have asked me about myself and gotten to know me. In a meeting last week, two girls asked if I had any animals. I let them know I had a cat and they asked if they could see a picture. The meeting hadn’t started just yet, so I quickly went to my desk and got my phone.
I came back and it was still just us in the room. I showed them the picture and put my phone in my pocket afterward. Fast forward, and I recently had my 30-day review and was told that me being on my phone during meetings was unprofessional and that I had offended someone in the office. When I asked which meeting my boss was referring to, I was stunned. He said it was the one from that week.
They were the only ones there at the time it happened, and I didn’t get out my phone again so it must have been them. Really bad way to start a job.
18. Of Course Her Name Is Karen
I was with friends on a trip to Japan, drinking one night in the Roppongi district. I'm trying to taper off, but Karen (no, really, it was her name) keeps putting drinks in front of me. She kept paying the bartender for weird shots for me but not for anyone else in the group. She's saying really catty stuff but laughing like it's all good fun, we're pals.
Then, she starts saying some pointed stuff that makes me think she's been holding on to some really ugly resentment for a while. After I'm good and sloshed, she pushes me over to my partner and tells him to grab a taxi and take me back. On the way back to the hotel I look at my partner and say, "I didn't realize until now that Karen hates me."
He replied, "She sure seems to." Neither the trip nor the friendship was the same after that night, and I had the worst hangover of my entire life, passed out on the floor of a Tokyo hotel bathroom.
19. A Picture’s Worth a Thousand Hurts
It was the end of term, so around 40-45 classmates agreed we would go to town after school, eat, take pictures, etc. It wasn’t strictly “invites only” or anything, yet the boys who I thought were my closest friends there were somehow surprised that I came. Eventually, we split. Some went to McDonald’s, others Burger King, etc.
We then regrouped for a group photo. At this point, another 10 students who weren’t initially going ended up coming, making around 50-55 people there. So one popular guy prepared to take a picture. Then some others were like “Why is HE (me) in it? Let him take it.” This picture literally had 70% of my so-called friends.
I didn’t feel good at all. No one offered to swap and no, it was not because I’m a great photographer.
20. Mean Girls
The group of girls I hang out with at college have never once made any effort to see me outside of school, and yet they're all super open about the fact they meet up as a group without me. Like, they'll talk about group plans that I'm not a part of when I'm sat right there with them, and still not a single one of them has ever asked whether I want to come.
It's been two years. I would make new friends but I go to a really small college and there's nobody else I could really integrate with, especially this late in the game.
21. Too Cruel for School
I was roommates with said friend before we actually started hanging out. It started nice, gossip here and there, mutual loathing for our professor. But then she started drama with the club we both go to and started ruining it for me by constantly stringing the guys in the club along. It was obvious they flirted with her, and she would manipulate them into buying her stuff.
Gradually, to avoid drama, I stopped going to the club and talking to her. So she kept telling our mutual friends, “Oh, I don’t know why but she is mad at me and ignoring me! I didn’t do anything,” and generally paint me as the bad guy. FYI this girl never asked me anything. She didn’t greet me or try talking to me, but she said she did.
She then started saying how I owed her for all the things she paid for, which confused me because every time I offered to pay her back she would decline and said it was no problem. I also would pay her back if the thing she bought was too expensive. This went on for the rest of the year, and I was so depressed when all the low-key stuff she would say to our mutual friends came back to me because they wanted both sides of the story.
Luckily, she got academic probation, mostly because I also stopped doing her homework for money. So now I don’t have to see her anymore or be roommates.
22. Dino-Sore
I had a friend purchase a bunch of tickets for our group of friends for the midnight premiere of Jurassic World a few years ago. There were probably 16 tickets purchased, and I was pumped to go. The DAY OF the showing, he texts me at like four and says that there are not enough tickets for me, because he "forgot to buy" my ticket.
I pressed him on this, and asked him how of the 16, how was it MY ticket he didn't purchase? He backpedaled and claimed I told him I didn't even want to go. So I texted him screenshots of the five times I told him how I wanted to see it when we discussed where we were going to be at the theater, etc. So then, he came right out and said it.
He was giving my ticket to his new girlfriend, who he had just started seeing the week prior. I was pissed, and ripped him a new one. But, the worst part is? None of the other 16 people who went ever said a word to him about it. It was at that point I realized they didn't really care about me. I no longer talk to any of them.
23. Don’t Be Sensitive Bro, It’s Just Your Ex-Girlfriend
My core group of high school friends had an entire night while I was working late where the running joke was how they could screw with my life because my reactions to chaos were "funny." I don't mean pranks. I'm talking, "Who should sleep with his ex?" "Should one of the women here date him and have it be really dramatic so he's stressed out?"
All sorts of scenarios about doing real damage to my life in serious ways and cackling. This was also the same crew who, when one of the dudes slept with said ex six hours after we broke up, called me immature for being hurt. When I asked them about it individually, they each said that my feelings being hurt by the conversation meant I needed to learn to take a joke.
I walked away from them entirely pretty much on the spot and didn't look back. Two decades later, I hear things occasionally about them through random connections or social media. Most of them are professionally mediocre social train wrecks. Really drove home that the best revenge is living a better life than the people who did you wrong.
24. Teacher’s Rat
When we were in high school, one of the students was drawing the refraction diagram, and for a minute I got confused and whispered to my friend that I felt like he was drawing the wrong one. I quickly realized it was right, said never mind, and got on with reading.
I didn't know the teacher was observing us, but then he asked me to stand up and tell the whole class why I was talking.
I simply apologized, then he asked my friend and she said that [My name] thinks it's the wrong diagram. I immediately said that I was confused and it's the right one. But the teacher had stopped listening after my friend's "[My name] thinks it's the wrong diagram.” The thing is, it was a well-known fact that I wasn't this teacher's favorite student.
He kept on saying that if I think it's so wrong, then I should correct it. I kept saying, "No, sir, I was mistaken," but he just wouldn't listen. So after giving my friend the stink-eye, I went to the board, erased the diagram and said, "I don't know." The teacher was furious. Thank God the class ended and the next teacher was standing right outside.
25. Dogs > People
When they threw a rock at my dog, everything ended right there. Contacted me a few months later to hang. I said, “Nah, don’t ever contact me again bro.”
26. The Feeling Is Mutual
When my girlfriend, who had become part of the group, started cheating on me with a friend from the group, everyone just said they "didn’t want to choose sides." Yeah, I don’t want to choose any of you either.
27. Do You Have to Let It Linger?
I recently invited a friend over to watch the election results roll in. Nerdy I know, but it is a bit of a tradition we have had for over 20 years. He spent the whole night playing two poker tournaments on his mobile phone, making almost no conversation. He crashed at my place that night, and I told him that I needed to start work at 10am the next morning, because he has a bit of a reputation for being hard to get rid of.
The next morning, I made us breakfast at 9 am, and then at 10 he decided he needed to use the bathroom, took his phone in there, and didn't come out for 40 minutes. Then I reminded him that I needed to start work. He took 30 minutes to put his shoes on, all the while repeatedly checking his phone. It didn’t even end there.
Once he had his shoes on, he then told me he was just going to have a couple of cigarettes before leaving. He sat outside in my courtyard for another 30 minutes, and then just walked away. No Thanks for having me over, or Thanks for breakfast, or Good to see you, or even Goodbye. Just walked away. Then he sat in his car across the street smoking another cigarette.
This was the same guy who a few years back was three hours late to come over for dinner, partly because he stopped for a freaking burger en route. And the same guy who showed up six hours late to my daughter's second birthday party. And just didn't show at all to my 40th birthday. I reflected on it afterwards and realized that he's not really one of my oldest friends, he's just some jerk I've known for a long time.
Needless to say, he'll be receiving no more invitations from me.
28. What Would I Do Without You…And Your Car
I was grounded for a while, and when I was finally able to leave, they said this to me: "We’re so glad to see you again...we had to walk around everywhere." I was the only one with a car at the time.
29. The Smoking Gun
It was when they almost shot me in the head. They were about to drive me home—we were teenagers, just able to drive—and I saw them messing around in his dad's room as I was getting ready. We get in his parents’ car. I'm in the passenger seat, he's driving, the other is behind me. All of a sudden, it felt like my ears popped and there was just a loud high pitched ringing that wouldn't stop.
Right in front of me in the dashboard was a hole that wasn't there before, just an inch or so to my left. I looked back and saw him holding a gun, which I guess they took from his dad's room to play around with and look cool. When I started freaking out, they started getting pissed off at me to be quiet because his dad might notice.
He was mowing the grass by us, but had those giant headphones on. They forced me to sit calmly for the ride and made me swear not to tell anyone. I was pretty shaken and also sort of afraid of them, so I never did.
30. It Your Birthday and I’ll Leave if I Want to
There were two terrible instances with the same group of friends when I was 15 years old. They would show up at my house to “hang out” and would just spend the next few hours getting off with their boyfriends. Same group of friends for my 16th birthday. I’d planned bowling/cinema, and one-by-one they dropped out a few days beforehand.
One of them, who I thought was my best friend, straight out said she didn’t want to see the movie I’d picked out for my birthday, but got her boyfriend to call me to tell me they weren’t going. The friendships with that group fizzled out a few years later. My best friend and I had a falling out—she instigated it—and the other friends never bothered to contact me afterward.
It’s been 20 years and I’m really surprised none of them have contacted me with one of those “hey girl!/hey hun!” Spam messages from an MLM scheme. They would definitely be the kind of people who would get caught up in that.
31. Pool Party Pooper
In middle school, we had a school day trip to a park with a swimming pool, mini-golf, etc. My three best friends all said they weren't going to swim, so I didn't bring my suit. When we got there, they all had their suits and towels. They said they changed their minds about swimming but forgot to let me know. I had to play mini-golf alone while they swam.
This was apparently all communicated by phone the evening before. I do think they were real friends, but they clearly didn't consider me as close a friend as they considered each other.
32. Cabin Fever
I tried to plan a trip to a very cool cabin with a group of friends. I had wanted to go for a few years, but no one could ever go. Then, I accidentally found out the truth one day. Someone slipped up and said something as we were all hanging out. They were actually going to that specific cabin for my friend’s boyfriend’s birthday.
He didn't like me, so he told them all they couldn't invite me. None of them stood up for me. I lived with two of them at the time. I moved out a few weeks after that.
33. The Old Double Cross
I had a best friend for a while, we'll call her Charlie. One summer, Charlie introduced me to my ex-boyfriend after begging me to go "save" her from this party she didn’t want to go to. Everything was going great, that boyfriend and I were super in love, always spending time together, as new couples do—but this drove Charlie crazy.
I didn't really notice anything was bothering her at first, until we agreed she move into my (dad's) place for summer so she could see how being "on her own" was. I'm never home because I'm with my boyfriend, she's constantly calling and texting and coming to hang out with us because she "has no one else." As all of this was happening, she's wearing my clothes, sleeping in my bed, calling my pets her pets, etc.
She moves out in August, things are great, she finds herself a little boyfriend, and I stop seeing her as much as I used to—think four or five times a week as opposed to every day. Charlie and her boyfriend break up sometime in during that period, but frankly I don't really remember because she was always crying about something.
Flash forward to June of the following year. Things go south with my boyfriend and we break up. I find myself someone new and move on. Charlie though, my best friend in the entire world at this point, takes it upon herself to start sleeping with my ex-boyfriend and casually forgets to tell me, until—and she darn well knew—I found out my new boyfriend was cheating on me.
She sends me a cute text saying "Oh. I slept with your ex-boyfriend on Friday. I forgot to tell you." So at first I'm like you know what? Cool. Good for him. Glad he's found someone to be happy with again. But then the reality of it all set in and the more I thought about it, the more I remembered her always trying to be around, inviting herself over to his place all the time.
It did not sit well with me.
34. The Opposite of a Wing Man
This kid in high school I was friends with would belittle me constantly because he thought it was joke, as he got picked on a lot. Well, one day we were hanging out and I accidentally left my AOL messenger signed in. He then said horrible things to the girl I was really close to sealing the deal with. She never seemed to believe that it wasn't me and things weren't the same with her after that.
Screw you, Dan!
35. Sorority Sinister
I've had abusive friends, but I've only had one who was out-and-out crazy. Let's call her D. D seemed nice at first. She was a transfer at my college my sophomore year. We got along great, she was looking into joining my sorority. We signed up to live together in a suite the next year. And then things started to go downhill.
She started saying things that sounded awful that weren't really true. She saw some scrapbooks at the sorority house, and one had some pictures with naked guys in the background. Well, she decides to tell my friends that, "The sorority has scrapbooks filled with naked boys." Um. What? No. They weren't even the subject of the pictures!
Okay, whatever, maybe she just misspoke. Then one night she wakes me up and asks me where my roommate is. I'm just like "... I was asleep. How should I know? How did you get in here??" So later in the school year, I go to my sister's school and sleep over. D comes into the hallway and starts banging on my door in the middle of the night screaming, "I KNOW YOU'RE IN THERE LET ME IN."
My roommate at the time is like "...????" and opens the door. D is drunk. VERY drunk. My roomie says, "She’s not here, she's at her sister's college." "I KNOW SHE'S IN THERE" "No, seriously, look—" and points out my empty bed. D tries to sleep in the hallway. RA has to get her back to her room. Now alarm bells are going off, but it's too late to change the rooming assignment.
Fast forward to next semester, fall of my junior year. I have a single, she has a single, and the last room is my then-boyfriend and one of my best friends from college (let's call them E and R). R has a girlfriend I'm friends with, we'll call her L. L is over a lot, since she lives on top of a bar and the noise is ridiculous.
My boyfriend E is fine with this and basically just sleeps in my room the entire time. One day, we can't find the soap. We ask D if she knows where it is. She says she doesn't know. She later says that she felt we were taking advantage of her because she bought soap twice, and she saw it in a drawer. We explain that we had put it in a drawer because you can't have anything out when it's cleaned, so they just put in a drawer.
She felt we were "taking possession of the soap." Um. Okay? R bought a huge thing of soap that we used the rest of the year. No big deal, right? This is the first of many meetings we need to have with her because she will have issues with us and instead of telling us, goes straight to the RA or the RD. This gets problematic.
A few meetings later, we find her cleaning everything in her room. She says she got fruit flies. We weren't that surprised. She'd left fruit sitting for days in the common room we had to throw out. She needed to clean everything. Okay, cool, no problem. RA comes when she's out of the suite and says, "Oh, so D told you she's moving out then?"
Uh, what??? No, she didn't. "Oh. Well." She comes back, admits to it. We're like okay, I guess? We're mostly blindsided by this. She goes to the RD and says we’re the reason for the fruit flies, because, as she says, "she saw crumbs in our room." Uh. The fruit flies were in HER backpack, and since when do fruit flies go for crumbs?!
So, she moves out. But she doesn't check out. The room is empty but for the basic furniture. Plus, some of her toiletries are still in the bathroom, and a mirror. After about two weeks, we figure she just abandoned the stuff. L takes the mirror and puts it in E and R's room, as she makes her own clothes and it helps her.
E and R have posterboard with Magic cards laid out on them for organization on the desks in the empty room. One day out of the blue with no warning, when E, L and I are there, D comes to check out. She asks us to move the Magic cards. No problem, we move them. Then she starts grumbling about how it's actually her room.
Uh, you moved out two weeks ago. It's not your room anymore. Then the RA's going through the usual thing, and gets up to paying for damages in the main room. She starts going off about how she was never in that room and blah blah blah. We have to explain to her that he's saying that IF there are damages, and there aren't any.
"Oh, okay." Cool. Then she says, "Did I leave a mirror here?" L says, "Yeah, it's in E and R's room, I was using it. We didn't know you still wanted it." And D goes, "Oh I still want it," goes, grabs it, and leaves with it, shaking her head and saying, "Don't know why people are taking my stuff..." We figure this is the last of it. Right? Wrong.
She comes back a few minutes later and says, "L, R's not here, so you're not supposed to be here, and I told the RA so he can kick you out." I say, "D, she can be here, she's my friend too." She says, "Uh, no, not really." Someone else says, "No, she's my friend too." Then she turns to me and says, "Well, go screw yourself, witch." And she leaves. I'm in shock. I'm a nice person.
No one has ever called me that to my face before. And then I'm livid. My then-boyfriend gets me to calm down. We change the code on our door so she can't get in anymore, and throw out the rest of the stuff she left behind. We think that's the last of it, for real this time. Weeks later, after not talking about it at all, E and I are walking up one of the sidewalks from our dorm, and she comes up.
I don't remember what we were saying exactly, but from behind us we hear, "OH HEY GUYS." Guess who it is? D. Yup. Awkward. A few weeks later, one of my sorority sisters comes up to me and asks me about the whole fiasco. I tell her what happened and she says, "That's what I thought." "Why?" "I was at a party and D was saying all these awful things about you, and I was just like, 'That doesn't sound like the girl I know.'"
I have no idea how long she continued to badmouth me, but believe me I was glad when I officially would never see her again.
36. Do NOT Mess With the Dog
My friend volunteered to house sit and watch our dog while we went overseas on vacation. What she actually did was leave him locked in the house for days because she was too busy "working" to bother letting him out or give him water. Our house was easily 30 minutes closer to her job than her place was. We no longer talk and still have the dog.
37. Daddy’s Little Monster
The one who takes the cake is probably Snowflake. A little background: Snowflake is the daughter of a high-middle class family with little to nothing to be worried about in the world, yet seems to have her brain badly wired because she would pretend to like you, then talk about you behind your back, then finally blame it on another person or some stupid excuse like, "the doctor changed my meds."
She would never tell you directly that she didn't like you, you could only know if the people she talked to had the decency of letting you know she had been rambling about how you were Satan incarnated and ate babies for dinner. The worst part about Snowflake is how she played the part of daddy's sweet little girl, but only found a sense of purpose when hating someone.
Hence, not a month passes without her finding a new target. I know at least three other friends who have been through this with her, yet I was the only one with enough common sense to tell her to stay away from me when she gave me a classical half-hearted apology.
38. Bussing Right out of This Friendship
I had this friend in elementary school, I think his name was Dillan or something along those lines. I became friends with him because he liked a lot of old shooter arcade games such as Galaga and the like, and I did as well. I wanted him to sit next to me on the bus one day, and he refused. He wanted to sit next to his other friends.
I insisted that he just at least sit next to me for one day, and then he got real salty and said something that broke my heart. He told me: "We are not friends." I just kinda sat there for a bit and felt pretty upset. In fourth grade, he took out his pencil and started drawing on the classroom floor like an idiot, and would later start chucking pieces of rubber on the playground at other kids, mostly first graders.
Pretty glad I wasn't friends with him for long.
39. Maid of Dishonor
I was standing in a store checking out an item in a glass case. I could hear a familiar voice in the store, and while I was thinking of turning around to say hello, I caught the reflection of my two friends in the glass case. I could hear one of them whispering "is that_____?" and something struck me as odd. So instead of turning around, I pretended to keep looking at the item in the case.
That way, I could watch their reflection behind me without being obvious. I then saw my other friend make the "shush" motion and they both hid their faces and turned and left. I was so choked. The worst part was that one of the friends was my maid of honor only two months prior. I thought we had a great friendship. We’d been friends for nine years.
All that made me re-evaluate that friendship. Luckily, a week later, she let me know she was moving 700 km away. I blocked her out of my online life after that.
40. The Weight of Friendship
These “friends” constantly made fun of my weight up until I burst into tears. They also never apologized for it. All I could think was, "Maybe you’re being too sensitive.” Still, those hurtful comments are embedded in my memory. But now I’m 135 lbs., screw those people.
41. The Death of a Friendship
I was heartbroken when my father died, but soon after, I experienced another crushing blow. NONE of my friends showed up to the funeral. It was an hour and a half away, so when they made up excuses not to come I said I understood. I didn't. Surprisingly, two of my neighbors who I barely knew at the time showed up. I'm friends with them now.
42. The Saddest Day of Your Life
My wife and I had a small wedding. I didn’t invite a ton of people, but I invited 15 or so friends. That day, my worst nightmare came true. Besides my best man, only one showed up. What’s worse is that all these people said they were coming. I no longer put effort into those friendships. In fact, I’ve struggled with social anxiety my whole life.
These “friends” were all people I met at work. I work at a big company and this was the first time I actually had friends. Or I thought I did. I wouldn’t call any of them super-close, but I thought they were at least close enough to come to my wedding. They always talked about coming and would comment saying that I better invite them.
I worked on several different teams at work back then, and most of them didn’t know each other. I don’t think it was intentional. I just think I misinterpreted what true friends are. I was more of a casual friend to them than they were to me. I did wonder if I did something wrong, and it made me feel pretty awful for a while.
As someone who didn’t have much experience with friendships, I think I just invited people who didn’t really value me as much as I valued them. Still, I definitely looked back at my behavior and wondered for the longest time if I had did something wrong, if it was my fault.
Sources: Reddit,