21.
When I broke up with my long-term boyfriend, the guy I thought had been my best friend of 3 years gave me 2 weeks before saying “is it my turn, yet?” F*****g garbage.
22.
Like I suspect for a lot of people, getting divorced was a real eye opener. I started with a core group of close friends who had all met in our late teens/early twenties and one of them introduced me to the woman who I would ultimately marry. Well into our 40s they were what I considered to be my family but when the divorce happened things spiralled.
My best friend stuck with me, but his wife was the one who orchestrated things in our group and she was best friends with my ex. I was expecting the two of them to insulate for a while and I knew it was painful for my ex to be around me, so it was no surprise when I stopped getting invitations to cook outs etc..
But then I noticed that the other members of the group were also avoiding/ignoring me. I’d see on facebook that one of them came into my town to go to a concert for a band that they knew I liked and hadn’t so much as texted. Birthdays rolled around and nobody would call. When my parents both died within a few months of each other and not a one of them reached out I knew where I stood.
My best friend needs to get credit though. Alone from all of them he made a consistent effort to stay in touch and see me regularly. He was there when my parents died and through everything else even though his wife clearly disapproved. I think finally after this nonsense had been going on for several years he told her how ridiculous it all seemed and that entire friend group tried to reconcile. I made it clear right from the start that there was no guarantee that I’d ever find space for them in my life again.
This is all very apropos right now because they are having their first big post-covid party in a couple weeks and I’m invited. People are coming in from all over the country and the only one I give a s*** about seeing is my buddy.
23.
This friend, I’ll call her Mary, had kids the same age as mine. We got together for play dates pretty often and our kids would sleep over at each others’ houses for weekends. I liked Mary. We would often visit and talk while our kids were playing. One weekend, her kids had stayed at my house. The older one called her mom to see when she was coming to pick her up. I was in the room, and the kid put the phone on speaker for some reason. Mary told the kid what time she would be there and added, “You had better be waiting outside. If I have to go in and spend the next hour talking to rivertam, I’m going to be really pissed.”
We didn’t spend much time together after that.
Here’s what happened after I overheard my friend say that to her child:
I simply stopped initiating contact and wasn’t as available to do stuff for her. When we dropped off or picked up the kids, I smiled and waved. I let the kids make the plans for play dates. I no longer had time to help her with her garden or watch her kids while she went out with another friend (they were into long distance running, which is not my cup of tea). She never contacted me unless she wanted something. This had always been true, but I had not realized it. The “friendship” eventually fizzled out on its own. So, I guess it had never been much of a friendship to begin with. I just didn’t realize it until she opened my eyes.
24.
When I was in school, all my friends and I did different A levels.
Despite us all having different lessons to each other, they would wait for each other to go to lunch together, but they would always always forget me. Like I’d come out and they wouldn’t be there, so I’d have lunch by myself.
And then they’d come back and tell me they thought I was with them.
I was the only one they didn’t wait for.
I’ve only seen one of them since we left school. She had forgotten my name.
So that sucked.
25.
When they ghosted me after 17 years of close friendship. I still have no idea what I did wrong, and for extra salt in the wound, it was right after I spent a week eating instant noodles because I donated every cent I had to one of them for her cancer treatment GoFundMe.
Hurt more than any relationship breakup.
Edit: for all those asking, yes she definitely has cancer, no she didn’t die, and given that it was more than 1 person who ghosted me and that the cancer friend still maintains an active social life with everyone else but me, it’s probably not for reasons related to her ordeal.
26.
One “friend” at university tried to steal my Animation coursework, claim it as his own and get me kicked out for stealing his work.
However I had help setting things up by one of my Tutors/Professors, for me to film the coursework, so he instead got expelled and blacklisted from the University and any other University in the UK doing the same subject (The people running all the Animation degrees in every University in the UK, back then, knew each other and talked to each other regularly as it a small community. I think there were less than half a dozen Universities with Animation degrees back then)
This was 20ish years ago now.
27.
Once high school ended, I heard about all the rumors they made up about me.
28.
When they didn’t wait for me whilst I did my shoelaces
29.
For me it was when I got in some deep trouble and they all just cast me aside without even giving it a second thought, I realized this when I invited all of them to go to the movies with me and they all said they couldn’t go, I then found out through one of them that they went to see that movie the same day and when I asked then why they didn’t tell me they were going they said: “We just wanted to go together” s*** broke my heart
30.
After my divorce. We were couples friends not individually.
