How many friends have you fallen out with/cut out your life? (Or had it happen to you)

[elevenspowers]

I’m asking about friends because we choose those and we can’t choose family.

I had a childhood best friend, born two months apart, lived on the same street and our mums were best friends. She was however exceptionally snobby and I saw her cut out friends one by one, until it got to my turn. I guess because I didn’t live up to her standards anymore, I never got an explanation, she would just make excuses when I asked to meet up - so I stopped asking.

Then the friend I cut out was a compulsive liar. She used me a lot for money, lifts and then started lying about an illness. She told me she was in hospital when she was actually having her eyelashes done.

Two, one I cut out after she did something horrible to me and joked about it behind my back, one who cut me out in a similar situation to you, never found out what the issue was but no love lost!

Three

old school friend - fell out over misunderstanding of a man and this was a shame.

newer friend - dropped me completely when got into a relationship and suddenly stopped responding /ghosted me completely, this upset me as I'd been there for her a lot during another breakup. I'm not a needy friend and had no issue with new boyfriend or anything like that? Very odd.

another newer friend - fell out with me as I refused to let her be a leader . She was trying to control the friendship group as was getting very jealous of others . She fell out with a few of us.

Retirement was so uplifting.
So many fair weather colleagues/friends just vanished.

No more coffees with superficial people.
No more angst with drama lamas.
No more bitchy gossip with the gossipy types.
No more subsidising the ones who 'forgot.'

Liberating!

Never and I’m 42. I read all these threads on mumsnet about people falling out with friends or family in shock. It’s like an episode of Eastenders and I had no idea people actually did all this shit in real life.

Friend from uni. We moved in together and for many reasons she was a terrible flatmate! A shame as we'd been friends for more than 7 years and at one point considered each other as best friends.

More recently 2 mum friends whose children kept hurting my young son and they just didn't care. One of them seemed to think that because her child has special needs then that makes it ok and she's not interested in trying to do anything to help her child other than say 'don't do that' which never works.

I've also had friendships that ended due to just drifting apart but with the above 3 there was a definite clear cut end which obviously feels different. No-one

Ignore the 'no one' don't know where that came from!

Haven't ever purposely cut anyone out but have had quite a few close friends over the years that I have just drifted apart from or lost touch with for one reason or another. That's just life I suppose. Still have a few that I have been friends with since childhood that I am still very close with today.

None. I’m 46

Fallen out with / deliberately cut out, none. However, I’ve had friendships that were circumstantial and which faded over time but I think that’s normal, no hard feelings. If I saw them again I’d speak to them, maybe even strike up the friendship again.

Quite a few. I have plenty of very good friends though. I'm very loyal as are they. Love my friends. They're more like sisters. I'm very pro women though.
Jealousy is one of the reasons people seem to fall out. It's ridiculous when grown women and some men, get jealous of others.
I've just told a long time male friend I can't have contact with him anymore. He's always been odd but I coped. He's gone really strange now and only had me left. He thinks he's the normal one and everyone else is wrong. No drugs or drink just the way he's ended up. Sad really.

I don't tend to fall out with people. One girl I went to school with decided that she didn't want to be friends with me any more. I had no idea what I had done wrong, but many years afterwards a mutual friend told me that the girl who ended the friendship was jealous of me because I had basically got my life together - work, boyfriend, friends etc, and she hadn't.

I moved away shortly afterwards.

2 wives of in-laws.
Very little fall out because they were monsters and the relationships with my bil and fil ended shortly afterwards. Did make me wonder what I was marrying into 😬

Best friend from uni cut me out about 2 years after we graduated. Until then we had met up several times, had fun, went to her hen do/wedding...then her replies to messages took longer and got very monosyllabic. I have no idea what happened.

Another friend I had known since school dropped me in our thirties. It hurt but i can see that we grew apart, we had little in common by the end.

It scares me a bit that you can be so close to people and then nothing. I do have other long term friends and think our friendships are going strong. Hope so anyway!!

I’ve had 2 friends cut me out ( by which I mean just avoided meeting up until I just stopped contacting them as I had got the message). It was when my youngest was a baby and I was in the midst of PPD. I suspect I wasn’t very nice to be around becausr much of my conversation at that time was about how hard I was finding things, how difficult things were etc. Pretty boring and negative to be around.

I ceased meeting up with 1 friend a couple of years ago as I started finding her controlling. She was also incredibly rude one evening and I just decided then that I didn’t really want to spent time with her.

im ceasing contact with another friend now because she keeps letting me down when we’ve made plans, then ignoring me, then asking to meet up again after a few month (on repeat).

sounds dramatic but actually all the above were just as low fizzle out….with a final decision from one side or the other not to meet up again.

Yes. Looking back it seems so very silly and we eventually reconnected. I wouldn't have blamed her for never speaking to me again.

One friend I fell out with who I had to block entirely in the end. She kept asking to borrow money saying it was for various essentials, food, electric etc. Eventually I had to start saying no because I couldn't afford to give away any more and she never paid me back when she promised to. Even then she still kept asking for more until I blocked her. It hurt me to do it but my suspicions were confirmed when her sister then contacted me and told me she was a drug addict and had been spending it all on that.

I had a friend group of about 3/4 people who I fell out with when they treated another mutual friend appallingly. Mutual friend had invited us all out for a meal for her birthday but they all said they couldn't make it. I unfortunately had to work. She was sad but understanding. Then on the night of her birthday meal they showed up IN THE SAME RESTAURANT and all sat on a different table and had a meal without her, didn't even go over and say hello. They knew she was going to that restaurant too, it seemed deliberate. She rang me afterwards in tears to tell me about it. Actually even talking about it how makes me really angry, she's such a sweet and lovely person and had absolutely not done anything to deserve them being so cruel. I haven't spoken to any of them since.

I don't have many close friends now and sometimes I get a bit lonely and wish I did but having no friends is better than having friends who treat you badly!

One. We were best friends from age 6. She was my bridesmaid when I got married, and godmother to my 1st DC. She got married a few years later and had a friend she made at Uni as bridesmaid. They’d only known each other 5 years, we had been friends for over 20. I have tried so hard to let it go
over the past 20 years, but I cannot. I know I sound like a spoilt child, but it really hurt me and spoiled our friendship for good.

nobody....I have lost touch with folk or ways have gone in different directions but I have never chopped anybody or been chopped.

Had someone cut everyone from their life before leaving the country.
They returned without informing anyone before dying alone well before their time from covid - body not discovered for weeks after their passing.
Left a lot of people damaged. Consequently, I have little sympathy with people keen to exclude people from their lives.

I’ve never needed to “cut” anyone out. I’ve just distanced myself quietly, at best.

I have been ghosted, though, practically overnight. Really weird thing to happen.

Two.

One where we’d been friends almost twenty years but it had just run its course; our lifestyles had grown apart and in the final year or so we just fell out repeatedly out over a load of really odd stuff. I think we made a mutual unspoken decision to cut things off, really; one day there was just a text exchange which turned out to be our last. I do miss his friendship - but the friendship we shared before the final stages of it where the friendship wasn’t bringing either of us much happiness.

The second was more difficult to come to terms with than the other because it was so sudden and also so very odd: she began moving very fast in a new relationship with a new girlfriend, following a long string of short term girlfriends who’d all been bad news and made her unhappy; when I expressed concern that she was moving very fast and that I thought she should be a little cautious so as not to get hurt again, she accused me of being jealous of her happiness and of secretly wanting to be in a relationship with her myself. I was in a relationship with my now fiancé - a man - at the time, had never expressed any interest in her in that way at all, and had always been very supportive of the previous relationships she’d had which were actually good. Until the day this conversation happened we’d had a great friendship. But in her case I am at least glad that I know through the grapevine that she and the girlfriend are still together several years down the line and apparently happy.

I've drifted apart from a few friends I had in my late teens/uni years - but I have never actively dropped a friend.

In my adult life, only o e and that was decades ago.
I found d out she was sleeping with my biyfeiendcwho I moved 60 miles from my home town to be with.
I had my suspicions but nothing I could prove. Back in the days pre mobiles I phoned her for a chat and the line was engaged, I phoned him who was in our house and I was at my mums. That line was engaged. I kept trying for an hour. Her line became free, I hung up tried our number, that line was free. Rang her back andcsaidid been trying to call her for an hour, she went a bit quiet. I said ' so what's John had to say for over an hour then? She tried to lie. I kicked him to the curb next morning and never spoke to her again. That was 36 years ago. Unfortunately I had to speak to him while the house was being sold but good riddance to bad rubbish.

1. Was my school best friend. She lied all the time (can’t believe how gullible I was 😬) and made snide comments that undermined my confidence. I felt so much better when I stopped seeing her.
2. Was my university best friend. She was always putting me down and trying to get me to break up with DH. Eventually after she slagged me off to a work colleague, we had a row and never spoke again. Yay!
3. Was a work colleague who desperately wanted to be buddies with me. I tried to be nice and had lunch with her for a while but she was horrible company. After a while I ghosted her 🙈
4. Was my first real ‘mum friend’. She was so much fun, way cooler than me, I felt lucky to be her friend. But when her kid started school she went back to work and dumped me overnight.

Two....one called me a f......g, c...t....got drunk...chucked a kebab at me...tried to punch me....met at uni...

the other was an ex colleague....extremely needy....always a daily crisis or a drama...calls and texts at 5 am to tell me her son had a speeding ticket...could i suggest a lawyer....etc etc..all attention seeking nonsense....ignored her ...blocked her...put notes thro my door etc...just an awful self entitled spoilt chaos of a mess....