12 People Who Clearly Missed the Memo on Being a Good Friend

Friendship is a lovely and genuine relationship to have with people. We turn to friends for comfort and strength during life’s most challenging times, hoping they’ll stand by us with empathy and loyalty. But sometimes, reality doesn’t meet those hopes. These people share their stories of how their friendships fell apart.

• Worked on a short term business project with a friend of mine lasting about a year. They contacted us through him because I was smarter and more organized and he was the better talker. The project seemed to be going fine although the work was going slow after a certain point. I kept asking him what was going on, and he told me not to worry about it and that he had it handled. Finally, I got fed up with him and met up for a meeting with our boss. He was all mad at me and told me how I just disappeared and haven’t been doing any work for him. Then I found out that this friend of mine had been telling him that we had been working on parts of this project for months now without even telling me about it. He wanted to do it himself and get all the credit but was too lazy to actually do the work. He ruined my reputation with a lot of people, and because of it, I lost some good friends in the business and ended up moving cities because my reputation was ruined. If he had just told me what needed to be done, I would have been fine and finished it quickly. © Unknown author / Reddit

• This is probably not going to sound too terrible, but when I was 13 years old, I had a friend group of 5, including one who I considered my best friend was my neighbour. Each morning, we would walk to school together. One morning he told me to go on ahead whilst he tied his shoes.
  I did so, then we walked a different way to me so he didn’t have to walk with me. This happened for a week until we left school for summer. On the night after we had broken from school, I got a message from my group of friends who are all at the same house. It said ’We don’t want to be friends with you’. I had no friends all summer. © MongBalls / Reddit

• As a teenager, a friend found my diary at my birthday party and proceeded to read it aloud to everyone in the room.
  As an adult, she started a relationship with a guy she knew I had a huge crush on and then asked me for advice on how to break up with him 8 weeks later when she got bored. (She actually asked me to proofread the breakup email she was going to send him.) © Unknown author / Reddit

• This one time, I wasn’t feeling well. As good friends, they stayed with me and called a cab to go home—their home. I woke up in a cab, with the driver asking me to pay for the ride. I had to pay for two rides (that one and the other to my home) and got a lecture about what friendship is and how they were awful friends from the cab driver. © coiso / Reddit

• Convinced my boyfriend to dump me 2 weeks before prom so he could take her instead, using info I told her in confidence. When I confronted her, she called me selfish for wanting her to be unhappy. I couldn’t find another date so I didn’t go. Ruined my senior year. Hate her. © Spare3Parts / Reddit

• I had been friends with her for almost a decade. When I got engaged, things started to change. She knew right off the bat that she would be the maid of honor and wanted to help plan things and all the good stuff. A few months before the wedding, she started to get “shady.” She was always busy, wouldn’t answer her phone, or would be late when she decided to come somewhere. (For reference, I was a very laid-back bride; I by no means was a bridezilla.) Well the week before my shower, she texts me to say she couldn’t come to my final dress fitting. So. I was upset because she hadn’t been doing anything at all and didn’t have the courage to call me and explain instead of just texting. Things got worse, and she basically went off about me hating her boyfriend blah blah blah. Then, she stopped talking to me less than a few weeks before the wedding. She also decided it would be super nice of her to text my finance’s sibling to tell them that I hate his mom and all this nasty stuff. So I find a new maid of honor and go on with my life. Well, here’s the kicker: she got engaged around the same time we stopped talking. Less than 3 months before her wedding, she called it off, it was just too stressful. © Jinglebells12 / Reddit

• When I was in my sophomore year, my friend and I were supposed to move in together at the 2nd semester. During the holidays, I went home, and he promised that he would keep me updated with the house hunting. A few days after I leave, he finds himself a new girlfriend and asks if it’d be ok if she lives with us. I said sure.
  He rarely kept me updated with the house hunting, and a month later, he tells me during a LoL match that his girlfriend found a place just for both of them and he’ll be moving in with her. Mind you, this was just a few days before I’m returning, so I was freaking out. He placed a month’s rent at his old place so I could stay there while I find my own place. I thought that was almost fair.
  The day I returned, I was supposed to meet him at his old place so he could let me in. He was nowhere to be found, and his phone went straight to voice mail. After waiting for 4 hours while extremely jet-lagged, I ended up travelling to another state so I could stay at another friend’s place. © playwriteweb / Reddit

• My ex-best friend convinced me that my girlfriend was cheating on me. He was right. She was. With him. © supernintendo_frank / Reddit

• Three-week holiday in a foreign country on the other side of the world. One—nearly two weeks in—she woke me at 6 in the morning with her bag packed and left. This was after she had threatened to leave pretty much every day since we got there.
  Now I’m seen as the bad friend because I let her go home. It annoys me just thinking about it. © Jennimess / Reddit

• Met the love of my life and got married. He got all butthurt because apparently he had spent a lot of time planning the next 10 years of our (and the rest of my friends’ apparently) lives, and the fact that I got married made him start screaming at me about how selfish I was and that I wasn’t thinking about him. We don’t really talk much anymore. © Draklawl / Reddit

• I had someone I considered a good friend go behind my back and take some of my work documents to our boss to get me in trouble/fired. She claimed she was “concerned” about my performance and abilities. Our boss ended up praising me and supporting me through it and then this friend found her contract not renewed the next year (not because of this instance, but she had issues with EVERYONE in the department; she was a bit crazy). It isn’t that big of a deal since it all turned out ok, but I still remember just how betrayed I felt that a friend smiled and said good morning to me and asked how my doggies were doing and then walked into my boss’s office to get me fired. © IdPreferNot / Reddit

• When I was younger I had friends who would just randomly run away and hide from me or leave me behind at random places. They thought it was funny, but to this day (10 years later), it still affects me. I can’t help but be paranoid that my friends will just up and leave me and ill be alone. I can’t be alone. © Unknown author / Reddit

These experiences might be heartbreaking, but some lessons have been learned. To switch gears, check out these amazing friendship stories with this link.