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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

... wondering about the worst thing done to you by a so called "friend" *Content warning added by MNHQ - just flagging that some of these are quite upsetting*

331 replies

PieRSquared · 05/08/2022 18:20

Waiting in the airport to collect my DD from her flight (seriously delayed!) at the end of a great trip she's had travelling abroad with a close friend of hers.

It brings up some very unpleasant memories for me. The plan was to travel for a few weeks in south east asia with my long term best friend, first time I'd ever travelled there. On the 3rd day of our trip she met someone "special" and went travelling with him instead!! It really caused me a huge amount of trouble and stress, traveling alone there was not easy, a few bad incidents, trying to make some other friends along the way. It was also a bit more expensive not sharing a room, and deciding on some safer/more expensive locations.

We're not in contact any more, but I'm feeling angry and agitated as I write this, and think about it again. No more coffee for me!

Any other bad things done by friends were relatively minor for me thankfully.

OP posts:
SomeCleverUsername · 06/08/2022 09:02

CherryBlossomAutumn · 05/08/2022 23:05

I have a group of long term friends who I value more highly than any others. But I now realize that they do not really care, and because they were such good friends for over 30 years I think this has hurt me more than any other.

It all started when I had my second child, who has severe autism and disabilities. I don’t think any of my friends would want to admit this, but despite me still being just as good a friend, visiting, making time, listening to their lives and not pushing my own as much (it can just be too hard for others to get it) - I think they just cannot cope with being that near a level of severity in disability. It breaks my heart, I wanted my child to be accepted with their families, to be included. They would be horrified to think I feel like this, and are left leaning, ‘aware’ and very pro being supportive and yet when it comes down to it, they just can’t handle it and have slowly, but surely, squeezed me out.

@CherryBlossomAutumn

Can I ask how old your DC is? I made a group of 'mum friends' who made all the right noises about accepting my DCs' severe disabilities but as they got older I feel quite unsupported and left out. I just slowly let the relationships die because I felt like a burden / embarrassment and now only move in SEN friendship circles.

sweatyannie · 06/08/2022 09:10

Made a complaint to my then employer about a jokey comment I made about work whilst in a private dwelling with her .

Dropped her like a brick. Still can't get my head round it.

GETTINGLIKEMYMOTHER · 06/08/2022 09:14

@Ladyof2022 , that really made me 😱! What sort of person could do that?

londonlass71 · 06/08/2022 09:28

This reply has been deleted

This message has been withdrawn at the poster's request

Wow. And the "hope your daughter is ok though" at the end...just wow.

MmeMeursault · 06/08/2022 09:33

@londonlass71 Yep I was taken aback with that response too. What a wholly unnecessary and unpleasant thing to say. I wonder whether they are in fact the friend's mum?

Original poster
PieRSquared · 06/08/2022 09:36

@CanaryShoulderedThorn sorry that happened to you, it was uncannily similar with me. I had a few more weeks on my own to get by with no support.

OP posts:
FrancescaContini · 06/08/2022 09:42

PandaBearBear · 06/08/2022 08:06

Friend since 11 years old and into my late teens, when I look back at it now it's like I was in an abusive relationship.

She always had to have a worse life than anyone else. She lied about a cancer scare, a pregnancy and subsequent miscarriage and being sexually assaulted.

She was kicked out of her family home, and stole from everyone who put her up until they kicked her out too.

She was racist, she would introduce me to knew people as 'this is Panda, she fucks black guys'.

But the absolute worst thing she did to me was setting me up to be sexually assaulted. I got very very drunk one night, she put me to sleep in her bed and the last thing I remember hearing is her telling a guy 'you can have sex with her but use a condom'. She then shamed me for it the next day, laughing at me and joking that she had a video of me and this guy. I now understand that she needed me to be so ashamed of that night that I wouldn't speak about it - or the fact she had slept with a friends boyfriend that same night.

It took me getting pregnant with my first child to realise I had to completely cut her off.

Your penultimate paragraph is truly shocking. I’m upset for you reading this. So sorry for you 💐

bythebanksof · 06/08/2022 09:43

Looking back I think a lot more bad things happen because teenagers/young adults don't have the maturity and awareness for true friendships. I was certainly sometimes cruel and bitch with friends from time to time, but not in the scale of some of these posts. But who knows what impact it had on others?

Also, working in the legal area, you see that what is a small non-issue for the criminal is a huge impact for the victim. It's totally asymmetrical. That goes for burglary, rape, insurance fraud, etc. I've been involved with many such cases and the criminals never clearly accepted or understood the damage they have done. They feel entitled to do what they have done.

AclowncalledAlice · 06/08/2022 09:48

This happened many years ago now but I was friends with a woman I worked with who was having an affair with a married colleague who worked in a different dept. I told her that I wouldn't be her alibi nor did I want to hear what they had been upto/gone etc. His wife (who also worked for the same company but in on a different site) found out he was seeing somebody else but didn't know who she was. During a works "do" my "friend" told the wife that it was me her husband was sleeping with. It all kicked off and I was hauled into HR the next day and "encouraged" to resign, but surprise, surprise he was not disciplined at all. I was told later that the "friend" had also bragged about the affair to someone else who then informed not only his wife, but also the company, but at no point did I get an apology off of either the "friend" or company for the hurt and damage they had done to me.

HashtagShitShop · 06/08/2022 09:57

I was bullied for being a thief for most of year 11.

My crime?

I told my best friend that her boyfriend of less than a week had sexually assaulted me (15 at that time) and had tried to force me to do stuff when I was at his house with another friend who was dating his friend (that was also over). The other two disappeared... And he struck. We had been part of a friendship group so I hadn't been worried spending time alone with him.

I told her... I had to have the next day off school for a hospital appointment coincidentally and then she spread it round that I was off because I'd stolen from her and the police had "arrested me." I reported it to the teachers who essentially dragged us both into a room a d told her to stop it (she didn't....) and that was that.

I was bullied for the entire year, despite speaking out about it. It was more 'fun' to others than the truth so they still kept spreading it. Still affects me now when I see people from school - particularly if they'd been in my form and one of those who had hissed stuff every lesson where it wasn't a mixed year group lesson.

Embarras83 · 06/08/2022 09:57

I was in year 10 at school and I was ‘going out’ with a lad. My BF (best friend) at the time were in the year above / as he was. I didn’t realise that she fancied him.

For months I was getting letters/graffiti around the school. Lots of bad gossip about me and the boy going about (like I had slept with him etc). It ruined my ‘rep’ I was labelled easy by other people. Anyway someone warned me to look at people closest to me and then I worked out it who it was - turns out it was by BF from the year above. Anyway it turns out she fancied said boy BUT get this - he was also in on it! Manipulating her to do/say this stuff about me!! Got rid of them both fast, couldn’t wait til they left!

TimeToGoUpAGear · 06/08/2022 09:58

@georgarina your poor cats, did they acknowledge the gravity of forgetting?? So many of these are awful but todo that to defenceless animals, shocking!!

SurfBox · 06/08/2022 10:02

I was certainly sometimes cruel and bitch with friends from time to time

we all were, none of us here are innocent. When posters say 'she turned on me for no reason' there likely was a reason but people are either oblivious to their bad behaviour or just dismiss/minimize it.

SurfBox · 06/08/2022 10:07

*Made a complaint to my then employer about a jokey comment I made about work whilst in a private dwelling with her .

Dropped her like a brick. Still can't get my head round it*

I had a colleague I regarded as a friend too. We would go for drinks and everything and became close. I told her confidential stuff over issues I was having at work and with the mgmt (nothing illegal or safeguarding etc and nothing to do with her) and she went to the boss about what I said. Complete bitch but you just can't trust people I learned.

TitaniasAss · 06/08/2022 10:12

Rang me at work (in the days before mobile phones), said she had an emergency and could I pick her two kids up from work. I left work hours early and picked them up. She rang again to say that she'd have to be away a few days to sort out the problems. Her kids had to stay with me in my flat, they had no relatives nearby and their dad was in America for work. I had to take time off work to get them to school and pick them up.

She came back a week later with a beautiful tan saying it was just sunny where she had been. Well, yes it was, she'd buggered off to Spain with her boyfriend leaving her two gorgeous girls with me and not knowing when their mum would be back. This was in the 80s and it still pisses me off so much.

Summersnearlygone · 06/08/2022 10:12

I went off to university at 18 and my friend slept with my long term boyfriend, these were innocent times and I'd never even slept with him despite going out with him for 2 years. It's amazing now when I think of that innocence.
I come home and he's very off with me, eventually finishes with me and I cry all night.Next morning I go to visit her and she doesn't say a word about it. Decades later I'm still devastated by it and I really did love him.
The ex bf and I had an on/off relationship for several years and never recovered from it. Looking back he was from a very wealthy farming background and that's what it was about for her

Ladyof2022 · 06/08/2022 10:14

GETTINGLIKEMYMOTHER · 06/08/2022 09:14

@Ladyof2022 , that really made me 😱! What sort of person could do that?

When she was packing to move out she told me it was partly my fault. She'd been forced to make up the story because I was so shit-hot about everyone in the house obeying covid regs.

bingotime · 06/08/2022 10:14

Kleptronic · 05/08/2022 23:57

I disclosed that I had bern abused by a family member to my best friend in year 12. She told everyone, and told everyone the word the abuser called the abuse. Everyone called me by that word until I left school at age 16.

This is one of the worst things I've ever read. How did you survive that?

ArtixLynx · 06/08/2022 10:15

ghosted me because i had the audacity to fall pregnant and give birth 3 days before her wedding. last time i saw her was when she showed me the wedding photos.

bullied/phyiscally abused me all the way through school.

cheated on me with my exH

yeah.. i can pick them alright. glad current bff and friend group are absolute diamonds who i trust with my life.

SurfBox · 06/08/2022 10:19

My childminder slept with my new boyfriend

yea but she wasn't a friend, just your employer. The threads about betrayal from friends.

Gelpennen · 06/08/2022 10:21

This reply has been withdrawn

This message has been withdrawn at the poster's request

Hotpaws · 06/08/2022 10:24

Not a friend but a flatmate. Let a bloke into my room when I was basically unconscious (drink likely spiked) who I believe raped me (found condom next to bed next morning). Then laughed about it with her friends.

A nasty girl at school pretended to be my friend so she could pass gossip to a group of girls who bullied me.

ridemesideway · 06/08/2022 10:25

I had a very close friend during those important teenage years from 14 onwards. We were inseparable.
I decided to take a year to travel at 21 and she decided to follow me a few months later. It all went pear shaped when she arrived, she was constantly picking arguments, wouldn’t contribute to the kitty we had going in the flat and refused to come anywhere with me and the friends I’d made.
It later transpired that she had been ringing home and the place where we both had worked, telling total lies about how I’d left her to fend for herself on the other side of the world. Her behaviour was so strange that I ended up coming home sooner than planned simply to get away from the toxicity. It was only then I realised what she’d been saying about me, and I lost a group of friends who had believed her lies.
I cut contact but a few years later she got in touch and I thought things might have changed so out of curiosity I met up with her. She spent the entire evening putting me down. After that I knew any hope of reconciliation was gone.
I know now that her life hasn’t turned out the way she’d hoped and she’d lost a lot of other friends over the years. I guess karma might have had a say.

workwoes123 · 06/08/2022 10:31

Best friend all through school, from 11 yrs. She was always a bit selfish (I can see that now) and would often dump me when she got a boyfriend, but i always put up with it.

After Uni my sister and I were living with two other friends in a flat that my parents owned. I was planning to go abroad for a year, and my friend was moving to the city to do a Uni course, so it made perfect sense for her to take my room for the year.

As far as I knew it was all going fine. She’d write to me that the course was going well, she had a new boyfriend. Blah blah. Then eventually I spoke to my sister and the truth came out !! Within a month of moving into our flat she moved her boyfriend into her room. He was actually sometime she’d been with before moving, she just hadn’t told me they were still together. He was a total scumbag: didn’t work, dealt drugs for money. He basically hung around the flat all day while she was studying / working, annoying my sister and friends, smoking dope etc. Every time they tried to tell her that he had to leave, she’d start crying and saying that she would have to leave too.m and she’d fail her course etc. And because she was my oldest friend, they didn’t want to send her off with this total deadbeat. But eventually my dad had to step in and literally escort him (and her) from the premises, there was no other way to get rid of him.

to make matters worse, her mum then called up my dad shouting about how he kicked her out for no reason! She hasn’t even told her mum about the boyfriend 🙄

She eventually got pregnant by him - and they spilt up. She sorted her life out eventually, but we aren’t in touch. She just told so many lies to everyone, and all for this stupid dick of a man.

MaisyMary77 · 06/08/2022 10:34

Mine slept with my boyfriend when I was pregnant. We were only kids, both 15. I was sofa surfing because my parents had kicked me out. I just needed my friend and she did that. I stopped talking to her, eventually we had a very delicate sort of friendship reforming. The she committed suicide. Even now, 30 years later, I’m torn between the pain of the fall out and the blame I feel for her death.