The Most Brutal Friendship Breakup Stories
Last night’s episode of “Girls” depicted a pretty brutal friendship breakup, basically reminding us all how they can be even worse than relationship breakups.
Some friendship breakups happen for the better, and others for the worse, but they all hurt just the same. Your friends are supposed to be your loyal af day-ones and always there for you, so when they’re not, it’s really hard to accept.
So, inspired by “Girls,” we collected some of the worst friendship breakup stories.
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Out of Line
Okay so basically I was BFFs with this girl, let’s call her Rachel, since she came to my college as a freshman (I was a sophomore and her “big” in our sorority). We partied together, I visited her family in Puerto Rico, etc. We moved in together my senior year and thought it was going to be so lit, but I actually just realized how unmotivated, spoiled, and messy she was.
I stopped partying a lot senior year cuz I was working a bunch of jobs and trying to get my life together, and she got mad I wouldn’t black out with her on the weekends and didn’t have time to be around while she sat in the apartment watching Netflix all day.
She moved out after six months and we basically only saw each other in groups. When I was visiting NYC one weekend and made plans with my other BFF, she urged that I reach out to Rachel because Rachel was stubborn but she knew she missed me. I didn’t want to, but did anyway and we all went to lunch where she invited me to her birthday the following weekend in Philly. The next weekend we all went out to the club and I wasn’t drinking because I was having really bad anxiety/depression. She was pissed I wasn’t drinking and started telling me she thinks that I’m depressed because I’m not happy with my boyfriend, which I saw as totally out of line because she didn’t know anything about my relationship since we didn’t talk anymore.
Then, later in the night she asked if I’d be drinking the next night where she had bought a table at another club. I said no because of my anxiety, and she said that since she had to pay $40 per person for alcohol (actually her parents’ money, she’s never had a job in her life), maybe I shouldn’t go. It was at that point that I realized I had been trying to keep things civil for way too long and I really couldn’t have toxic people in my life like that. Hopefully I will never have to see her again.
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The Beard
I met Kyle when I was in 6th grade, and our friendship was the stuff of movies. He was pretty much the cutest boy I’d ever seen, and I couldn’t believe he would want to be friends with me. I had a crush on him the first few years of our friendship, but we agreed we’d work better as friends.
When we got to high school, we got even closer. Kyle was basically my only friend while I buried myself in books trying to get good enough grades to get myself out of the South.
He was my way of staying semi-relevant in high school. Everyone loved him, and I was vicariously popular. During one of our trips to Florida for spring break, Kyle tweeted, “You know it’s a good night when your lips are numb,” and tagged me. This was in reference to how drunk we were, but when break ended, the entire school was buzzing with the rumors that we had slept together. I had become the school slut, all because of his tweet.
And this is probably why our senior superlatives were “Best Couple Who Never Was.”
What no one knew, and mostly still don’t know, is that he was gay. Our friendship lessened the suspicion of his parents, who would have kicked him out of the house if he came out, and I was just about willing to do anything to help.
Fast forward to when we went to college. He had a long-term boyfriend that he was hiding from his parents, so when he finished school and moved in with his boyfriend, he told his parents he had actually moved in with me instead. His mom was sending me mail, and at one point a package got lost. I was so stressed out about his parents finding out. It was awful, and he never once thanked me for taking heat for him.
He and I had several arguments over the span of the year we were “living” together, most of which were over the pettiest things like communication and who said what. I had recently gotten a tattoo that meant a lot to me, and he told me, with an unnecessary amount of snark, “Well I wouldn’t put that on my body.” I could feel the end coming.
Story continues below…
Then one weekend while my mom was in town, and Kyle texted me asking if we could set up something so he could see her. I didn’t text him back for an hour, waiting for my mom to tell me what her plans were, and he texted me back, “Well I at least deserve a reply.” I couldn’t swallow it anymore. I fired back, telling him all the things I have done that I probs deserved something for too. I was so over having to constantly put him first. The next day we went out for brunch, and he didn’t look at me once, and we haven’t talked since. It upset me so much that I hit a pretty deep wave of depression and ended up in therapy.
I still miss him all the time, and I probably will forever, but when someone takes such a negative toll on your mental health, you have to put yourself first.
Backhanded
The worst breakup I had was with my high school best friend Anna. She came from this big, close-knit family, was whip smart, and everybody liked her. I was over at her house so much she felt like family.
But I was jealous of her and lied to her about losing my virginity even though I told every single other person I was friends with that I’d lost it. And then told them not to tell her. I kept her out of the loop for the entirety of that relationship and then I started becoming physically abusive.
At prom, I showed up late because my dad yelled at me for breaking my camera and then bought me a new one to say he was sorry — I was so frickin spoiled — and she tried to comfort me because she could see I was upset and I pushed her. Not to where she fell on the ground or anything, but still, it wasn’t okay.
And then on graduation, when more or less the same thing happened, I slapped her. In the library. In front of everybody. Somehow nobody saw what went down, but in most of the pictures afterwards, her face is red from where I slapped her and her eyes are full of tears.
I was a monster.
And yet, we kept on being friends throughout the first year of college.
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But then, without any warning, she unfriended me on Facebook. And she didn’t respond to any of the many apology messages I sent her afterwards.
A few months ago, I found out that she’d gotten married from my mother and I couldn’t help it, I just started crying.
We’d always planned on being each other’s maids of honor and even though we hadn’t spoken in years and I’d given her every reason not to ever let me back in her life, I couldn’t believe she’d had this major life event happen and I had to learn about it from my mom.
All those years later, it still hurts. And it’ll probably never stop hurting.
Because it was all my fault and those are the kind of scars that never heal.
Day and Night
This friend breakup begins with a classic mistake: trying to turn a night time friend into a daytime friend. I had met this girl through boys we both hung around with. We realized we had fun raging together at the same parties, and we happened to both need a place at the same time, so we decided to move in together. But she turned out to be a total mess. We became really tight for a few months, but with time she got more and more out of control. She was always a slob and would avoid washing MY dishes and mugs for so long, they got so moldy she’d just throw them away.
She started dating a guy who had kicked a heroin habit a month prior, so clearly not the most stable person. I think the two of them were doing a ton of coke together, because her behavior became more and more erratic. It culminated with her breaking into my locked bedroom to “borrow” an air conditioner out of my window while I was on vacation. She accidentally dropped it out the window onto the sidewalk and lied to me about it. Someone could have died!
She also let a bunch of random dudes sleep in my bed while I was away. Gross. We decided to part ways when I got back from my trip, and it turned out she owed a ton of money in back rent to the landlord. We almost got evicted until her parents finally swooped in and paid off her debt. And then, as a grand finale, she trashed me to everyone we knew, saying I was a bitch.
