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.

Same here. And I'm half as old again.

A few. Been unlucky.
Most extraordinary was DH's big birthday. Last summer as restrictions were relaxed but Covid numbers quite high. He invited 30 people to a weekend away but asked everyone to do LFT beforehand.
3 of the invitees were my oldest friend, her DH and their son. Close friends. They messaged to say they don't agree with LFTs on principle (we knew they were anti vaccine) but we didn't imagine they'd have a problem doing a LFT. They said if we insisted on LFT they wouldn't come. We did say it was necessary out of fairness to everyone. They blanked us from that day on. Have ignored us ever since.

Would you never reach out? I think depending on the circumstances if someone reached out to me, took accountability then I would 100% be open to it.

I think the guy one is probably quite obvious. Either the girlfriend wasn’t comfortable with him having a female friend or he felt it wasn’t right to be texting/emailing/meeting up with another woman (no matter how platonic).

I don’t think it’s anything you did. But as a friend he should have at least enough respect to let you know.

I have and I’ve apologised for how things ended and how it ended was not her fault. She said she appreciated it and that we were young when it all happened honestly it was a pleasant exchange but reading between the lines I think that’s kind of how it will always stay. I do feel better for having said my piece but ofc nothing will ever be the same I don’t think but I do get it and understand. I wasn’t brave enough to ask for a catch-up or anything because I think after so much time that should be her call to make you know and if that’s where she naturally wants to leave things that’s like completely her choice. Also I have a massive fear of rejection and would think about it forever if she blew it off after working up the courage to finally say sorry ha. But tbh sometimes that’s just how things go and I’m glad for eking that apology out and have maybe our last exchange be a pleasant one!

I have dropped 2, life moves on and I realised I had little in common with them. One fun friendship has drifted.I feel sorry I no longer see this woman but I guess neither of us cared enough to make the effort to see each other.
I was dropped by a friend of 20+ years. I miss her a lot but she made it pretty plain she didn't want to stay in touch. In the past couple of years one of her DS's has achieved an amazing sporting success and I would love to tell her how happy I am for the family because, when she was pregnant, there were a few concerns for his development and I lived that stress alongside her, but it would look like I wanted her to get back in touch and I understand she doesn't.

@AllKnowingGerbil I could have written every word of this myself 😞 lost two people I thought I had solid relationships with, makes me very sad.

Two cut me off, one was a relief if I’m honest.
I have drifted apart from a couple more over the years as well.

Two of my closest friends withdrew after I told them I had been diagnosed with a serious health problem. Although I was tempted to reach out to them, because I missed their company, I really didn't think it was unreasonable to expect them to take the initiative, given the circumstances. So I decided to wait for them to contact me and they never did. It's been about 2 years now. It hurts very much, because I know, and they know, that if they were unwell I would have been there for them.

Confessional... just one, who I had such a solid relationship with and I regret the loss regularly.
I'd moved away for work. Had two kids. Still kept in touch.

Some years later was invited to her wedding, several hours away. Was far along in my third (difficult) pregnancy. Said yes, never wondering how on earth I would make it.

And in the end I didn't make it. I never fully explained about my birth injuries and pnd. She never had children and there just wasn't the space for that conversation. We met one more time then she ghosted me. I don't blame her but I still regret all of that.

I fell out with 2 friends separately in the same year!

one was a close friend and she shocked me by making a very rash, dangerous decision. She didn’t tell me because she knew it was wrong. When I found out, I was so angry with her. I knew it would damage her kids, that’s the last thing I said to her about it begging her not to do it. sadly I was right and it did damage her kids. I walked away and was glad - I didn’t respect her anymore. I was sad for a while about it but felt like I didn’t know her anymore

the second friend was a slow decent into a toxic friendship. It was a quite intense but fabulously fun exiting friendship over many years when I started seeing a side of her I didn’t like. She would tell lies and started seeing 3 men at once and using me to lie to them. Then it got messy as I was also becoming friends with 2 of them (though her!) but also knowing she was cheating which I hated. I called her out on it many times to make a choice, so she started ditching me off. If I ever liked a guy, she would shit stir about me and put him off me.

My final straws were she didn’t come to my birthday for the 5th year in a row and she then rang me on holiday while I was with my kids lamenting about one of the blokes she was having an affair with, whilst he was texting me about her. I yelled at them both to stop contacting me. She eventually started a rumour I was sexually attracted to her 😡 and all our mutual friends stopped speaking to me. I was fucking furious with her about it, the absolute cow.

i know through other people she finally chose one of the blokes and had a child with him but he doesn’t know he was one of 3 guys for a few years and I feel sorry for him. I would not tell him, I’m not evil but I am glad we aren’t friends. Sometimes I miss the person I thought she was. If you are reading this you will know who you are. The audacity! 🤣 I was a bloody good friend to you for way too long!

I've had quite a few, being on Mumsnet has made me realise what a people pleaser I am e was de and how poor my boundaries are.

Girls from school, got wendy-Ed by the new girl who later fell out with the rest one by one.

Girl from uni, kept lying, lots of broken promises. Ended up out of pocket by thousands of pounds.

Best friend (our mums were best friends and we grew up together) ended up being very one sided. On a number of occasions I travelled over an hour to see her only for her to text me to say she was too hungover to meet up. Planned a day out together, meet up she needs to go food shopping as she is having friends over, then stop for a very quick lunch and she says bye. Finally call her on it and she tells me if I question her again she'll never speak to me again. We never spoke again.

Friend for over a decade asks me to travel 50 minute round trip, twice a week in the evenings indefinitely as she wants to change careers and wants me to train her. DS was 6 weeks old. She was very pushy when I said no and the friendship never recovered.

Genuinely shocked by people who have never had a falling out - are they just exceptionally lucky?!

Obviously had the drifting apart thing which is normal. Never been cut out but I have two I cut out effectively but don't want to give details just in case.

I have a friend who falls out with people all the time and never thinks she has done anything wrong herself which is not healthy or normal. However I am starting to realise that I don't just have to stay friends with people because our paths have crossed. Some people are draining and it's fine to drift away and have firm boundaries.

I think it depends what you do in life. My school friends I walked away from in my early 20s as frankly they were boring and would just harp on about the past (no I don’t care about which teacher you had for maths in year 10). They would also make snotty comments about any new people I became friends with.

But they are all still friends.

My friends boyfriend is still friends with his group from school and none of them have friends outside of each other.

I think the more you branch out and meet people from different backgrounds chances are they won’t all work out amazing.

Many i have drifted apart from.

Only 1 I have consciously cut out. A friend who had serious mental health issues. I supported her greatly over months and months putting her needs before mine.

She basically asked me to choose between spending time with her, or my dying parent. My dying parent was always going to be my choice. She hugely rebelled against boundaries I put in to protect myself and cut contact.

I have no regrets here looking back. I really hope she is ok though.

I don’t think I’ve ever fallen out with anyone. I’m a people pleaser as was my mum and Gran. I bet my sister’s never fallen out with anyone either.

My husband, on the other hand, has fallen out with every friend he’s ever had except one. That one got lucky and moved to another country before their fallout happened (which it would have done). They communicate only by txt now which is pretty safe. None of these fallouts were my husband’s fault of course always the “friend”. 😂

💕 I hope you’re in a better place now

Two former school friends in my mid 20s (a bloke writes). Some of the friendship was of course still based on nostalgia. One followed a trip to Rome, we got on okay but there were two nasty flare-ups from nowhere, I saw a different side to him. Last day I lent him some money - not much, £65 or so - plus a cheap camera and a book. He never paid me back or returned them, played a silly game on the phone about how he'd made to write the cheque but forgot to send it - I was poleaxed or slow to catch on because he just wasn't that kind of guy, he was a straight-talking, slightly cynical working class bloke and also employed as a teacher so no skint or anything. I gave up phoning him to let it eat into his conscience, he simply never called me so that was that. I remember him chortling at a line in The Sun funnies: 'Always been nice to your enemies - in case your friends turn out to be a bunch of rat bags!' and I guess that was prescient.

But the other guy I ditched, sort of ghosted. He had changed his personality completely since I first met him - nothing wrong with that, but he went from being this nebbish, bookish, quiet fellow to being hypersonic, very physical, tactless guy. He'd done better than me in life and it was awkward. I did latterly get the sense there was a touch of The Servant about it all - someone who latches on to you a bit, then once they've done better the scales tilt in their eyes and they've moved ahead of you. We were 'bosom buddies' but I'm not sure that's a good thing, like Lennon & McCartney the falling out can be brutal. I declined to meet up with him really, making an excuse, largely I didn't know how to tell him I just didn't get on with him anymore and it did seem vice versa. I should have actually said, 'Hey, I think I need a break to recharge our batteries' or something - like John & Paul should have done in hindsight! - but I felt any criticism of him would meet with 'Yeah, but I've done better than you so your opinion doesn't count' or words to that effect. If someone has done better than you, you don't have much leverage in the relationship. But I do think he originally looked up to me and once the scales shifted, that was that, you could almost see him thinking 'I don't need to suck up to this guy any more, I've moved ahead' which was not terribly appealing.

You can argue that if you spend too much time with any one person you start to see the bad stuff in them, though sexual relationships are meant to have some kind of polarity which creates an in-built distance, still even that got tested during lockdown.

Two. One has just gotten back in touch actually. She thought it was entirely her fault that I'd blocked her and wrote a huge long apology about how much she'd set the rot in our group of new mums and how she couldn't forgive herself for her behaviour (our babies are now 8). I wrote one back, explaining my reasons for blocking her and also apologising profusely for my behaviour in running away rather than trying to work things out. We were just two very tired, very overwhelmed new mums and I took the easy way out because I moved counties and didn't want to deal with trying to reach through the anger to the obvious anxiety underneath. Actually ended up being really nice, we're hoping to meet up and have a bit of a reunion this summer with some of the other babies!

The other one stung a bit more except it also sort of didn't. We'd been friends for about 6 years. And super close. The kind of friendship where you think you'll probably get adjoining rooms in the nursing home and secretly hope a couple of your children get married so you can be officially family. Told each other everything. She messaged out of the blue and said she couldn't really deal with my sad stuff or anything difficult to do with me anymore (literally nothing going on with me at the time) and that she only wanted to do fun stuff when we met up and she was going on a social media break. When I explained that that didn't really work as a friendship as I didn't fancy editing myself whenever I was around her she said I was too co-dependant. Also discovered that she wasn't on a social media break she'd actually blocked me on absolutely everything except txt message as well as any possible mutual acquaintances plus any friends of mine she hadn't met. The level to which she'd gone to try and cover her tracks on top of the attitude of 'I only want to be your friend if you'll be my entertainment' kind of did it for me and I didn't bother to reply when she texted 'hi' a few months later.
I thought I'd be devastated but I ended up feeling strangely free. Turns out on reflection that the friendship was fine as long as everything was done her way and I agreed completely with her opinion. I don't miss her nearly as much as I thought I would which is only sad because I thought she was such a very close friend-seems like I'm actually just a shit judge of character. My ex husband was a wanker too which I only realised when he left me, it's never me calling time first 😂

I became so fed up of friends simply not putting in effort yet still expecting it that I created a rule for myself, if I notice I'm only ever starting conversations then I'll give them around 3 months to reach out if they don't then I will just cut them off. If we talk equally but then I reach out and they just don't respond in a month I send another message if they ignore me again I cut them off. If I feel someone is using me or beginning to cause trouble directly impacting myself or not, I cut them out of my life.

Loads recently it seems. I’ve become completely intolerant to trying to be a decent mate to people, trying hard with them and being treated like an absolute mug. Something in me just snapped recently so I have cut a few out, which is sad I guess, but at the same time I don’t care.

Rather be on my own than treated like that! True friends are so hard to find so cherish them when you do! Too many people are selfish or sly in some way and don’t give a shit!

Some we have drifted away from having moved Countries.

We have been cut off by DH's half sister, I suspect through our loyalty to half bro (step family situation, DH is related to both of them) bio mother still alive and is an absolute cow.

We have just cut out a local couple over a business transaction not keeping up their end of the deal with us still paying the agreed amount until year end. We could have got through most of it, however they took the discussion to a very personal level telling DH he should read everything I write, as a grown adult I don't require DH's approval to write.

WhatdoIdonow
I was in your position last year. I noticed one particular 'friend' got into the habit of only contacting me in response to messages I sent her. I decided to stop contacting her- it has been well over a year now.............

Another 'friend' messages once/twice a year and I have always been the one to suggest meeting up which she accepts. My reasons - we have dc of similar ages and I wanted to encourage their friendship. I decided it is not a good enough reason and stopped suggesting lunch/stay and play type places. You have guessed it- we have not met up once!

Scurryfunge
I agree it is better to have few good friends than one sided friendships. They only serves to make you feel shit and to question why so called friends do not value you.

And I think I have been cut out by a o/s based cousin. She visited all of our side of the family a few years ago, then dropped out of FB as she said she couldn't handle ''someone's'' perfect life on FB (I thought she was referring to her Sister but who knows), split up with her BF and then various subjects would come up she also didn't want to talk about, so conversation started to become very limited.
I strictly stayed away from the things I knew she didn't want to discuss, then she would reply spasmodically, always ''busy'', I have emailed twice sticking to subjects that I think are safe to discuss, but haven't received a reply at all.

Pings me off a bit as I kept confidences to myself that really her Mum at least should know about. My other cousin feels the same way too and no longer hears from her.