A review of 38 studies showed that adult friendships, especially those that provide quality companionship and support, significantly predict well-being and can protect against mental health issues such as depression and anxiety.
However, there are no guarantees that, at some point, we won’t part ways with the people around us—even those we consider integral to our lives.
To learn more about the ways this happens, Reddit user New_Perspective1201 asked others on the platform to reveal why they cut off their long-time BFFs. Below are the most memorable stories they received.
#1
My best friend of over 20 years, we both had kids about the same age, and our daughters were also best friends.
She left her then 15 year old with me for a week while she went on a trip to Bali (no problem at all), and her daughter attempted to end her life. I took her to hospital, got care for her, sat by her bed for 3 days, made sure she was set up with a social worker, got her connected with the local mental health unit and youth services team, and put a plan in place to help her recover and move forward etc etc etc.
Obviously I’d called her mum on day one and kept her appraised, but this woman not only didn’t change her flights and come home (because it would have cost $200 to change the flights), she literally told me “oh you don’t have to go to the hospital every day to sit with her, that’s what the nurses are for”.
And then when she finally got back, she flipped out at me for “parenting her child behind her back”.
I’m still in contact with the kid – she’s living independently and working as a baker’s apprentice, she’s gone no contact with her mother, but she still rings me up when she needs a grown up to talk to.
I will never speak to that “friend” again.
Part of the reason why such losses are so painful is that we can just go replace our friends on a whim. New York City-based grief therapist Natalie Greenberg told We, “Friendships are fluid, fluctuating between intimate and distant moments.”
“There is not one defining feature to distinguish when someone has crossed this threshold. For me, I would consider someone a friend if I could text them without formality — for example, send a question or a thought, without having to say, ‘Good morning, how are you?’ The conversation is always open and ongoing.”
#2
When I was a freshman in college I shared a room with my best friend from high school. I kept a diary that I wrote in every day, and I would hide it in my locked closet.
One day I came back from class to find her reading out loud from my diary to a group of our friends. She had broken into the closet just to get the diary.
I haven’t spoken to that b***h in 30 plus years.
#3
So stupid.
He was an army vet, and a staunch proponent of freedom of speech: he believed that anyone can say whatever they want, and there should never be any repercussions of any kind for whatever anyone says.
I told him the guarantee of freedom of speech in the US just meant the government can’t arrest you; it doesn’t mean freedom from social repercussions.
He disagreed so vehemently, he blocked me and hasn’t spoken to me since.
Thereby proving my point, ironically.
An American adult has an average of four to five friends, similar to numbers from 1970 to 2015, researchers reported.
2% of people describe themselves as friendless, which is also in line with data from previous years.
However, many people long for greater closeness with friends; although over 75% were satisfied with the number of friends they had, 42% felt they were not as close as they would like.
#4
She became a religious antivaxxer and I’m an atheist pediatrician.
#5
She was a key witness to my r**e trial but was too lazy to go into the police station to make a statement. She had three years to do it. I lost the trial, but it was close- I’ll always wonder if I would have got justice if she had done it.
#6
I realized that I was the only one that reached out. So I stopped reaching out and that was that.
If you too are going through something similar to the people on this list, keep in mind that “approaching a loss of a friendship, especially after betrayal or abandonment, is very difficult,” Greenberg said. “It’s important to allow yourself to feel the pain of this loss of a friend, even though it isn’t a human death, or a divorce in the romantic sense.”
According to the therapist, “Friendships can be extremely intimate, and one may experience the stages of grief in the aftermath. Some helpful strategies include journaling, moving your body, allowing yourself to feel sad, and speaking with a grief specialist.” And if you think that sharing the experience online could alleviate some of the pain, maybe it’s also worth a shot.
#7
When I realized that me being a good friend to her was actually just me being a caretaker with poor boundaries and putting up with years of emotional abuse.
When that fog lifted it was completely life changing.
#8
He was bangin’ my wife for 3 years, and had the temerity to say that it was my fault.
#9
Said I deserved the death penalty for getting an abortion and meant it
#10
I was diagnosed with cancer a year after moving across the country from my friends from high school. I didn’t ask for them to do anything except play some online games with me while I recovered from surgery.
Not one of them did. They were playing other games (I could see in my various friends lists) but none of them would put aside the games they were playing to keep me company and take my mind off of things. No texts, no phone calls, nothing. The only thing I asked for was time/online company and they put in zero effort.
This was the last straw in a long, long string of feeling like an afterthought. It’s been 9 years and not a single one of them has even tried to contact me since then. Guess being an “afterthought” was too optimistic even.
#11
He insulted the lady who has been my assistant for almost 30 years.
#12
During Covid he went on a long rant about how disabled people should be allowed to die so he didn’t have to be in lockdown. I am disabled.
#13
Found out he slept with my high school girlfriend and held that secret for 10 years. He also invited my 13 year old sister out to drink and party with his/our friends.
Drew the line, ended the friendship, and clocked him in the jaw for that one.
I didn’t learn he slept with my high school girlfriend until many years after the friendship ended. But that made a lot of things make complete sense.
He was always extremely angry and ticked off at me whenever I spent time with her.
He was never a friend really
#14
Realized that we were only friends when they needed something but was never around for me.
#15
He yelled at me for correcting him on the pronunciation of a word, something he did to me all the time, despite being wrong. He yelled and yelled at me. I said I’m done, bye, but not before calmly getting in one barb at him.
#16
He had the gall to unexpectedly die on me.
(kidding about the gall, I still miss him)
#17
Kept “borrowing money” for me to “feed their kids” or get “their kids medication, it’s an emergency!” And, truly, they were destitute, these instances were plausible. But, one day, after being told one of the kids had been hospitalized and released home, and between the uber rides to and from the hospital they didn’t have enough for his meds at the pharmacy, I signed on to Facebook and saw pictures of them – “sick” kid included – at a block party. Destroyed the friendship for me.
For the record, I never expected them to pay back borrowed money for food or medicine. I was happy to help. Those kids were like my kids, too. It was betrayal and finding out I wasn’t loved like I loved that got me.
#18
We were supposed to move in together- The first move away from our parents. Fortunately, we were renting from my parents, because…. The night before our move-in date, he called me to say he had gotten his own apartment earlier that day, without me. He then listed entirely everything about me that annoyed him and every mistake and flaw I had that he knew about. Since he was my best friend, it was a lot. There was no sign this was coming. We had only ever argued a couple of times. I never knew that so much about me was so distasteful to him. I was devastated.
A couple of weeks later, he called and came over until I spoke to him. He was very apologetic- for reasons I would have completely understood had he told me, he had a breakdown and realized he needed to live on his own. Knowing it was going to mess things up for me, he made it my fault. He said he didn’t mean any of it and was horrified about how he treated me. Yet it was so detailed and specific, going back years to incidents that I had no idea were an issue. There was just no fixing it. I could never feel comfortable and trust him again. On one hand, I miss people I used to know. I don’t miss him or think of him often or with nostalgic fondness. My daughter doesn’t know who he is when she comes across old pictures of us, but she knows about other old friends, since I mention them. On the other hand…
It’s been 20 years. It’s hard for me to have close friends still, because I feel like they may be building lists of things I do wrong and ways I just am wrong and awful. And maybe they’ll call one day when I least expect it and list it all.
It wasn’t good.
#19
He was foaming at the mouth saying he was going to k**l me, while swinging a baseball bat and destroying his own kitchen
#20
Everything was someone else’s fault. On both the macro and micro levels.
If it was an interpersonal issue it was never him at fault, ever. Relationship problems, always his partners at fault. Even when the same reasons caused each break up. Got into a verbal altercation at the bar? Someone else’s fault completely.
It was too exhausting.
#21
He kept having kids with different girls then bailing on them. I just couldn’t watch it anymore.
I left after the third one. Pretty sure he’s at 6 or 7 now.
#22
She backed the woman responsible for my kids dad’s death. (My ex husband and I were great coparents we just weren’t good as a couple) The b***h he was with watched him have symptoms and waited until he was nonverbal and couldn’t walk before calling a friend for a ride to the dr. Not an ambulance. Needless to say he was airlifted and passed from a brain bleed. Could have been saved if he would have gotten proper treatment.
#23
He went off the political deep end when Trump ran in 2016 and I ignored a lot of it, When covid hit, he opted to post a meme reference wearing a mask during covid as the equivalent of volunteering to get on a train to a concentration camp. This post came after a negative comment on my posting about my wife making masks for the family. I reminded him of my heritage and how the part of my family that remained in Germany never survived. His response was “So what, still rings true”. Didn’t bother responding, just removed him from social media and haven’t said a word to him since.
#24
She faked dying of cancer.
Edit: people are asking for the story. I have never written it down, english isn’t my first language and it still upsets me deeply so bare with me.
Her name is Nina, and yeah that’s her real name, because I am done giving a f**k. We were best friends since our teens, through our youth, our twenties. Didn’t have a lot of contact in our thirties but that mostly because of me moving for my career. Yet I remained being very fond of her and still would lend her 3000 bucks during the pandemic to keep her business afloat – in a heartbeat. Contact almost dried out after that. I pinned it to the fact that my proud friend just was too ashamed to owe me money and not being able to pay me back.
Two years later she wrote me a message out of the blue in the dead of night along the lines: «Thank you for every thing you did for me. I want you to know that I will always love you.»
Called her immediately – she was sobbing. Telling me she was dying of cancer like her mother did when we were 19. Told me that she refuses to continue with chemotherapy and that it will be over in less than a year. I cried with her, offered my help, asked if it would be ok if I visited her, but she refused.
The following moths I would check in with her, sent her messages, pictures from back of the day, asked if I can do anything – and of course eased her mind about the money she owed me still. She barely wrote back, wouldn’t let me visit her, wouldn’t pick up the phone
I would lie if I’d say that her behavior didn’t raise some red flags with me – but hey: this is Nina, my Ninni, my oldest friend, so I brushed it off, told myself I had to respect my dying friend’s wishes and grieved by myself.
Then, about three months in, her ex called me. Her ex – the man she had been together with for more than ten years and, who (as she told me) threw her out on the street TWO YEARS ago – during a pandemic, which of course made me hate him and never contact him again.
The first thing he did was apologizing for not calling earlier, that he needed some time to recover. Then he unloaded. Nina told him two years prior almost the same thing she told me a few months back: that she had lung cancer and that the odds weren’t in her favor. He tried to support her as good as he could (he is himself chronically ill and lives of a disability pension). He would cook for her, plant her favorite flowers in their garden, made a collage of pictures of her mom – and after they’d spend a beautiful evening together she would say things like. «You know this might be one of our last happy nights together», totally crushing him and his spirits every time.
She would pretend to have chemo on the weekend for several days at a time. He wasn’t allowed to visit, was – if even – only allowed to accompany her to the entrance, outside of the of the hospital because «she needed to do this on her on». She would write him during her hospital stay for example that «the rescue helicopters are flying like crazy today *prayingemoji*» – and I know it sounds insane in hindsight that he didn’t see through it for so long, but god d**n it: you don’t think anybody is capable of pulling something like this off, especially not a person you f*****g love and whom you believe to know wholeheartedly. Also the level of manipulation – the sheer sophistication with which she made the big lie believable through an endless stream of tiny little lies is flat out frightening.
But well, everybody has to learn sometime, I guess. One weekend whilst she was pretending to have chemo she went silent which was unusual since they would be messaging several times a day plus a phone call every night. He was worried sick and called the hospital in a panic fearing for the worst, asking for Nina.
Receptionist lady said she would have to check with other staff since there is nothing in her computer. She called him back after a while to let him know: there was no patient with the name Nina Surname at the hospital. And after a pause. «I am sorry Sir, but a Nina Surname hasn’t been a patient in this hospital for years now.» This is not a large city. There is no other hospital that does chemo – not within in a two hour drive. And it was the bloody f*****g hospital where she would allow him to drop her off occasionally.
God that poor man. I feel like s**t for thinking so ill of him for so long. Anyways after the phone call he of course was still in disbelief. So he called the woman Nina shared her shop with, who also was very surprised to hear that Nina and him were still a couple and still living together – because Nina of course told her as well that they broke up. Which was very believable since she had been seeing another man who rented her a tiny flat near the shop. A lawyer, a married man with two children mind you – like Ninas a*****e of a father who left her, her brother and sick mom for his affair partner back in the day.
The affair with lawyerman started – you guessed it: two years prior. Oh and apparently Nina had also sold her share of the shop a while back which was also news to her «ex» and me as well.
He confronted her when she came home on Sunday night after «chemo». Turns out: nope. She never had cancer. She made it up to cover up the affair. The reason he couldn’t reach her the whole weekend was because she was on a trip to Italy with her lawyerman and lost her phone.
And yes: she deliberately told me and other people that were close to her, that he’d thrown her on the street, so that we wouldn’t talk to each other, because we weren’t supposed to know about her «cancer».
He of course threw her out immediately and for real this time. It was the same bloody f*****g night she told me she had cancer.
Here is the thing: I knew every word he told me was true. I knew it in my heart. There were signs, tiny red flags, things that wouldn’t add up – tons and tons of it over the course of a friendship that lasted for decades. But of course I also didn’t want to believe it so I still made my own phone calls. I called the woman Nina had her shop with, called people from back in the day and people living in the same small city that might know her – and well, turns out the woman I thought was one of my oldest, dearest friends, my tiny Ninni is a deeply deranged, incredibly cruel and stonecold psychopath that leaves a path of destruction in her wake.
I don’t know what went wrong, if it was her mother’s death who truly was one of the greatest, kindest, funniest women I have ever met, that triggered this sickness in Nina or if it has always been there, lurking. I don’t now and it doesn’t matter.
I haven’t contacted Nina since her ex called me that evening. Him and I have become friends again, trying to help each other heal from her.
Nina hasn’t contacted me either. She probably knows what’s up. I don’t care. I got my closure by making sure lawyerman’s wife knows what her husband is up to. And if you by any chance are reading this Nina – yeah it was me. And you can keep the bloody money if you promise me that I don’t have to ever see your face again.
#25
Slept with my husband then she blocked me
#26
Taking an argument to the internet. They cropped one sentence of a very long message to make me look like the villain. They also did this the day after I attended my uncles funeral.
#27
He dated my best friend (they met because of me) and she utterly trashed his heart and cheated on him. Just… *awful*, I regret introducing them. Our friendship got ghosted during their relationship, and after they broke up, it was clearly done. Sucks, but I get it. Still miss the dude. Hope he’s happier now that he got the f**k away from everyone.
#28
Ruined my hen do because she couldn’t stand not being the centre of attention for one day
#29
She started routinely paying rent weeks late. And blocked me from her social media so she could secretly post about going to concerts and music festivals with her rent money.
#30
Best friend of 19 years tells me to go talk to a cute guy at a wedding
Guy and I hit it off and start a long distance relationship
Best friend of 19 years gives me the silent treatment for no reason for 3 weeks including my birthday because I told her that guy and I are doing really well
Best friend of 19 years starts talking to me again but never explains herself and never apologizes for acting like a child. Never says she’s happy that I’m happy in a new relationship; never shows any support
Best friend of 19 years and I start hanging out again but I keep a safe distance emotionally because why did she get upset about me starting a relationship with someone that she told me to go talk to in the first place
After 1.5 years of hanging out again, found out that best friend of 19 years still talks s**t about my relationship behind my back. That was the final straw for me. Blocked on everything. Moved on. Actually much less stress in my life since cutting her off
No longer best friend of 19 years
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