What was your final straw that made you end a friendship?

[shutupputup]

Two memorable for me.

One friend complete user, money, lifts, dropped you as soon as she got a boyfriend. We fell out and I reached out to her as I was feeling depressed (as was she): she invited me to hers later in the week, to then say she was ill and posted on social media she was out clubbing.

Other one was this year. Horrible weekend away where she sulked like a teenager (no idea why). Tried to meet up with her a couple of times after and got snubbed, She then started messaging saying she missed me but again snubbed my suggestion of meeting up. I gave up. She’s messaged since and I’ve just ignored.

I ghosted my best friend about a year ago now and have been feeling very badly about it, but reading this has made me realise that her constant little digs, her ignoring my crisis when I’ve done nothing but listen to her for years are reasons enough to say „I’m done“ and walk away. Some of the friends on here are absolutely shocking though.

A former work friend. When she wasn't being negative, she was actually quite good fun to spend time with. But she used to almost constantly complain about her life, her career, her relationship, her health, her car, her next door neighbour...whatever was going wrong at the time.

There was always something wrong. She didn't want advice - just to complain. And if something improved, then she'd find a different thing to complain about.

I went on a secondment and wasn't available for a few months - heard nothing from her. Then another friend told me that she was fed up as negative friend was constantly complaining to her all the time. I realised she'd just shifted her focus to the next available person, and that I couldn't remember the last time she hadn't complained about something.

When my secondment ended, I became much less available, and she stopped talking to me.

I ghosted, then cut off one old friend. Only afterwards and over a period of years did I look back and realise that although I'd thought of her as a best friend, she just thought of me as one of many.
She was what I now know to be a Queen Bee surrounded by all her friends, but woe betide you if you were to ever strike up a close friendship with one of her other friends or go out together without her as the king pin in the middle and us as the spokes of her wheel.
She once mentioned the teen dd of a mutual friend who was keen on horse riding and quite good at it, and I said oh yes, I used to ride a lot when I was younger. "Ah yes, but she's talented" was her response to that one.
She had a pet nickname for me which again, looking back was actually quite unpleasant. I belatedly realised it was one of her ways of negging me.
On one occasion, after I'd not only just separated from my ex but had a bereavement which left me basically without any living relatives whatsoever, she said she always made sure she didn't see friends on Sundays "...because MY family is important to ME" - clearly ignoring the fact that I had no surviving relatives at all, which she well knew.
The final straw was when I called her after some months of no contact, asking her if she fancied a quick drink and a catch-up, and she berated me because 'friends are supposed to keep in touch with one another' but ignoring that it was I who had rung her, and not the other way round. I suggested a venue and she then said 'Oh, we go out to <local pub> all the time, you'll have to come along some time.' Great I thought, so I have to wait in until you tell me I can come out to play then? She then said she'd have to cut the call short because she was busy getting ready to go out with friends. Her parting shot was could I ask my DH about some minor matter about an electrical item or somesuch that he'd borrowed about 10 years previously when it was already on its last legs and was now worthless and she wanted the money for it. I suggested she spoke to him about that herself. She'd already asked me about it on about four previous occasions and every time I'd suggested she call him herself, but she never did.

Stuff that for a game of soldiers. It hurt, a lot, as I'd considered her to be a close friend, but that was enough for me.

We worked together. I was struggling to get pregnant with my husband, who I'd been with 8 years. She told me she was pregnant before she told anyone else. I supported her through a breakup with her partner a few months later. When she was 6 months pregnant I was late leaving work one evening, walked round the corner into the car park and saw my husband touching her stomach. Something didn't feel right about it, so I checked his phone while he was in the shower. Turns out it was his baby and they'd been having an affair since just after we'd married. I divorced him and never spoke to either of them again. I had to go into work for months and face my colleagues and clients all knowing what had happened until I found a new job and moved away. I feel like a large part of the reason I didn't have children is because I couldn't trust anyone enough after that.

After trying very hard with several people over the years (ILs included) I have a policy that if you kick me in the teeth once, you get a second chance.

There are no third chances, unless there are serious mental health issues.

Because the people who kick you in teeth repeatedly are usually doing it deliberately, and even if they're not, why hang around with them?

Some people were saying vile things about me behind my back. It turned out she knew all along, and didn’t let me know of stand up for me.

I won’t tolerate that sort of thing from anyone.

My best friend in the whole wide world-the day she met my then new partner,she started shagging him (I'm aware he's fully to blame too)

All the way through a very risky pregnancy,the day I thought I'd lost him,the day I gave birth and at least twice a week until he was 5 months old (they beat me up,walked out and sent me a voice recording of them shagging)

Both have tried to come snivelling back and both have been told to fuck off

Met a woman at work,became friends until I turned her down sexally and she took that badly

I was meant to shag her behind my dp and her husbands backs-in her bedroom where her 9 year old knows all about sex noises apparently as she doesn't keep it down

I'm not gay and made this clear,but all I got back was that she liked me so she should be entitled to have me

I'm giving up on one friend-shes all about 'me,myself and i'

She's shagging a new bloke for money as she doesn't want to work,pleads poverty and sponges money from her disabled son and elderly mother (she seems to think I should help fund her life as I'm loaded-im really not-so I've stopped meeting her,we chat,or rather she talks about herself on sm)

She's so wrapped up in her own life,she couldnt even say congratulations when I had my first gd-all I got was 'I'm meeting new bloke later,I'll con £100 out of him'

She's very draining

Another woman was a customer at work

She would come round to my house and just spend hours talking at me,ignoring boundaries and bitching about people I've never met

I didn't want to hurt her feelings so gave up many precious days off to listen to her-id be mentally shattered by the time she left (I wouldn't put up with this now)

It came to a head when she came round the first Christmas that we'd lost my darling fil

There are some things I wouldn't talk to my lovely mil-sex being a major one-we just don't

This woman banged on my door,mil answered it so she pushed past mil (who's not that steady on her feet) and stood in my lounge,hands on hips and smirking

'Where have you given dp a blow job on this sofa?I'm not sitting there!heehee,i cant go and sit on your bed!you spend most of your lives fucking in it!hehe'

I didn't know where to put myself,my poor mil was just looking at her and mild mannered dp was fuming

She then demanded my mil (who doesn't have the best eyesight) a cup of tea while making herself comfy,settling in for another bitching session

I lost it and threw her out (slinging that massive handbag of hers behind her) and told her never to bother me or our families again

(I found out just before she came round that she had been messaging my adult dc on sm but they'd ignored her,which had wound her up so shed come round to bollock me for my adult dc not speaking to a barmy woman theyd never met)

So she's ignored me and taken to coming to my work (retail) and harassing me there-shouting at me/my colleagues/bosses and making a pest of herself

My next step is the police-I'm past caring about hurting her feelings and she can say what she likes about me as long as she leaves me,dp,mil adult dc and my work alone

Fucking loon

Friend I’d known since school. Just an unbearable narcissist. Talked endlessly about herself and didn’t listen when I spoke. She wasn’t even listening when I told her how my father died. When she was young, we got on because we shared a similar sense of humour. But in the end I was SO bored by her company that I was tearing my hair out. Final straw was one Saturday night. She came over for a few drinks and just talked and talked and talked…about herself and her life. She has a manic streak, and is very high energy. That can be tough even when the person is kind and interesting. But when they’re completely self-centred it’s unbearable. I described her as a narcissist, but it would be more accurate to call her a monomaniac. I remember staring at her in disbelief at one point, and wondering how the hell someone could talk that much about themselves. After about four hours of this, with her raising her voice to quieten me if I took too long speaking, and playing with her phone to let me know she wasn’t interested in what I was saying, I ended up in the kitchen almost in tears I so wanted her to leave. I honestly believe that if she was comfy and had a glass of wine she could sit and talk about herself for eight or nine hours straight, barely pausing for breath.

The worst thing was how f-ing boring she was. She’d never read a serious book, and had no interest in art, literature, film, music, animals, nature, history, politics, sport, space…nothing. Imagine someone who can talk non-stop for hours on end but isn’t actually interested in anything!

Over the years I’ve ditched quite a few friends. Don’t miss any of them one tiny bit.

This friend was always quite draining & exaggerates a lot, doesn't have many friends at all but could be good fun & kind hearted. Things drifted as I moved further away for work. I was happy to let things drift as she'd never been a particularly close friend and I realised recently it's 3 years since we've seen each other tho we have kept in touch sporadically over that time.

About 3 months ago I received an invitation to her son's wedding next year. I've met her son about 5 times at most and never met his fiancé. Cue the friend WhatsApping me nearly every day, gushing about how much she loves me, I was always her best friend blah blah. Full on, non-stop contact. Until I finally sent the rsvp saying I can't make it to the son's wedding. I knew what would happen, there's been no contact from her since the rsvp and I doubt there ever will be again. She just wanted somebody, anybody to look like friends on the wedding photos because she has so few.

A real friend would say "oh that's sad but let's meet up on x date instead". Her? I'll never hear from her again.

Oh my God that's absolutely horrendous. I'm so sorry. The betrayal must have been devastating.

Person 1

Because she thought it was ok to repeatedly go behind my back and NEWSFLASH it wasn't

Person 2

Reinvented herself and pushed me out because a) I knew too much and could see through the bull and b) because she heard a truth she didn't like

Thank you @SalsaLights I learned a lot from this. I did remarry eventually and that has recently ended after I found out he'd been lying to me about his financial situation for months and was on his final chance with that. The sad thing is I would have stayed with him only I was diagnosed with cancer (luckily all sorted with surgery) and he moved out and told me never to contact him again after almost two decades of marriage. I clearly have more to learn about why I'm settling for men who don't deserve me. Luckily my friends are brilliant and I am feeling quite positive about the future surrounded by people who care about me and treat me well. Friendship has to be two-way, and the more both parties put into it, the more they should get out of it. I definitely am less tolerant of bad behaviour in my friendships now!

God, my comments seem fairly simple compared to the batshittery some PPs have had to deal with from friends, but here goes:

Friend 1: Friends for about 4 years and had become quite close. I’d supported her through various (self-inflicted) dramas. She then started to cancel every time we arranged to meet up. No good reason as far as I know. We hadn’t fallen out. After about the 5th time I stopped contacting her and we haven’t seen eachother since. I haven’t got time for that level of flakiness and won’t chase a one-sided friendship.

Friend 2: Friends for 20+ years. I came to realise some time ago that this friend is very self-centred and only bothers to maintain friendships with people that are serving a purpose to her at that particular time. For example, she’ll become best friends with the other parents in her DS’s football team- go on nights out, weekends away, put all her efforts into them. So if you’re not in that group, you’re off the radar. Or she’ll do the same with her neighbour because their older daughter has started babysitting her DCs for peanuts. As soon as those people stop serving a purpose (e.g. her DS moves to a different team, the neighbour stops babysitting) she drops them like hot potatoes. I obviously don’t serve a purpose anymore because she doesn’t bother to contact me. I still send her a text to wish her happy birthday. She never sends me one on my birthday. There’s no ill feeling- we’ve occasionally bumped into each other and get on perfectly well. I’m quite happy to keep her very much on the periphery as I’ve wised up to her modus operandi. It does make me feel a little bit sad as we were super close once, but it’s just the way things go.

Yes they have. Friend of 20 plus years ended a friendship.

Can’t blame her , tbh and I still cringe about my behaviour.

Would you be okay sharing what you did? Did you apologise?

@Cldnsnsna it won’t go down well on mn.

I admire her morals.

I had a close friend who I'd always thought of as quite classy/posh. Over the years (yes it took years - I'm the loyal type 🤷‍♀️😂) I realised she was actually just a massive snob. She held herself to a very high standard, I never once heard her swear nor tell a naughty joke. I've always felt borderline guilty for ghosting her, but typing this (and realising what a judgemental bore she was!) I really ought to not feel guilty.

I've had a couple of other friends I've slow faded because they were piss heads (getting drunk on lunch dates and such like).

I had a friend who always was fucking up her life and i was always helping her. Anyhow, she had an affair and let her husband and kids. I tried to encourage her to see her kids. Unfortunately, she wasn't consistent. She'd go weeks without seeing them. She was to busy drinking and going out with her new man. Eventually, their was a custody hearing and she decided she wanted the kids. She tried to paint the Ex as unfit and wanted me to go to court as a witness. I told her I'd go but I wouldn't lie. I went to the first hearing but was unable to go to the second. Apparently, I'm the reason she lost custody of her kids. I refused to ever speak to her again despite lots of apologies.

Another friend who I was incredibly supportive of talked shit about me to my husband. Apparently, she can say what she likes to him because he's her friend as well. I was the one supporting her, cooking for her, doing her laundry, visiting her in hospital, etc. I was so upset she'd talk about me to my H I challenged her. She said she'd say what she likes to whomever she likes. That day I packed up everything she had at my house (spare pj's, tooth brush, toiletries, her house keys ect) and took the to her. I've never spoken to her again.

My longest standing friendship is 35 years and my shortest is 6 so I'm not fairweather friend but I'll cut you off and never talk to you again if you fuck me over or take the piss.

I’m so so sorry.

I’ve made lots of friends/acquaintances in recent years but have dropped the majority of them overtime due to flakiness/cancelling meet-ups at the last minute/being really late and not apologising etc. One told me she kissed her friends husband while her friend was sleeping upstairs! That was the last time I ever spoke to her.

All of my close friends I’ve had for years, and I do sometimes wonder if I’ve shut new friendships down too quickly, or if I’ve just got wise to bad behaviour/value my time too much. It’s hard to get the balance right. I try to give the benefit of the doubt, but if you’re cancelling twice without a good excuse, I won’t be rearranging.

That was a couple of years ago. Recently I heard she'd died and I felt terribly guilty for being horrible to her, cutting her off like that!

I get why you feel guilty, but honestly, you shouldn’t. At the risk of pointing out the blindingly obvious, everybody dies! She just died young, which is what I suspect is making you feel guilty. It’s easy to sanctify people when they die young. Ask yourself if you’d feel guilty about never making up with her if she’d died at 80. If you wouldn’t, let yourself off the hook 🙂

@TudorWeasel I'm so glad you have nice friends who value you. Life is far too precious and short to spend it with arseholes who don't deserve your time

First one - she appeared to deliberately knock my toddler over (she admitted to it initially whilst laughing, but subsequently denied it was deliberate when I challenged her about it which wasn't immediately as I was slightly shocked and preoccupied with a crying child) - this was following a lot of jealous behaviour, unsolicited advice about my ex and new partner and negativity about good news I had. I realised I had been accepting a lot of poor behaviour for far too long out of a sense of misplaced loyalty due to length of friendship and her lack of support network.

Second one - he had been acting distant yet reassuring me every time I asked if things were OK between us, final straw was him blatantly ignoring me when I arrived at an event. I subsequently found out that he had been spreading quite vicious lies about me at the event when he was drunk. It was game over at that point (and I had to do a lot of setting the record straight with third parties as they took his lies to be the truth due to believing we were still close).

People are wild.

The perpetual victim. Sad to say at first I bought into the “poor me” thing. But the more I got to know her the more I realised that nothing was ever good enough, and she had to have it so much harder than everyone else.
She didn’t earn much. Okay, that must be tough. But I later found out her outgoings and was gobsmacked. Thought maybe she had some debts and that’s why she was “skint” all the time. Nope. To this day I cannot fathom where her money went each month working full time in an over minimum wage job, with no children, no debt, no dependents and minimal outgoings. Like seriously, where did it all go? It certainly wasn’t on buying a few rounds when we went out because she “didn’t really drink” until it was someone else’s round at least…

There were many more things until I was done with it all. She crossed a line too far where I realised that she was just a horrible person through and through who was able to get away with it because she just looked so mild and meek.

Friend who was so negative and down about everything.
I hired a cottage for two weeks, invited her to stay for for the first few days. She seemed excited to do it. I drove us there, gave her the better bedroom. Drove us to several different places then drove her 60-ish miles home then I went 60-ish miles back. She gave me £10 for petrol , didn’t so much as buy me a coffee and three weeks later moaned “ oh I shouldn’t have gone” though she could give no reason at all.
Constantly complained about being ill, would go to doctors then throw away any prescription she was given as what do doctors know……….