A best friendship is one of those things where a lot of us think that once we "have" it, we always will.
But just like any other relationship, friendships take work, and sometimes friendships come in for a season rather than a lifetime, no matter how solid they may seem.
Redditor Jackytobacky asked:
"Why did you and your best friend have a falling out?"
The Back-Up Friend
"He found new friends and started seeing me as a backup friend, the mutual respect just wasn't there anymore."
- krakn-slayr
"This is similar to me. I always asked them to hang out and they'd say they were busy or not in the mood. But then they'd be with other friends. They'd also always come to parties/group events, which I found kind of hurtful as they wouldn't spend time with just me. Yet they'd Snapchat me every day and talk through that."
"I didn't invite them to my latest gathering and also just kind of stopped talking to them. I heard from a mutual friend that they were confused about why I didn't invite them, why I stopped talking to them, and what they did. That they wanted to be friends still and had no problem with me."
"We were great friends for years, attached at the hip (people would joke we were a couple and we'd joke they were the third person in my relationship, lol), great roommates. Probably would've lived together for a long time, but I had to move back with my parents, and then I lived with my partner."
"Some of it is probably unintentional, but it gets tiring to constantly invite someone to hang out and them never making an effort..."
- middle_one_32
Poor Communication
"We went from best friends to roommates, and we had terrible issues with communication until resentment built up so much that we had an extreme blowup over the phone."
"About a year later, I was feeling a lot of regret about it, so without my knowledge, my girlfriend actually reached out to him to see if he would be willing to talk to me."
"He seemed amenable to it, but after I apologized for my end of it, and he took the opportunity to unload on me even more."
"I honestly felt a weight lifted off my shoulders and didn’t feel any more regret. We were meant to part ways and that was that."
- successadult
Unreciprocated Friendship
"I was doing all the work. Initiating conversations, making the plans, driving, paying (they make almost no money, and I was making good money), keeping the friendship going..."
"I stopped instigating plans. They never contacted me. I knew right then that this was truly a one-sided friendship."
- EnigmaCA
"I always have such mixed feelings about these friendships."
"I don’t want to feel like I’m the one that’s making all the effort, and when that’s the case I question how interested the other person is."
"But on the other hand, some people do really care but just aren’t planners and are used to others doing all the work."
"Some people don’t mind this kind of relationship dynamic and I try not to, because why lose a good friendship (assuming it is good) due to someone not being a planner?"
"But we all have commitments, and trying to shoulder all the work is a lot, and the emotional toll that can come with someone else not putting the effort in can be too much."
- falafelandhoumous
An Easy Way Out
"I 'left town and didn't even tell anyone.' Except I messaged them all for months and even had a going away party that no one showed up to. Looking back they were not very good friends."
- CaptainQuoth
"Reminds me of my goodbye party from the hospital I used to work at."
"I invited about a dozen people. One showed up. One."
"Two genuinely couldn't make it because they were on duty; two messaged me the next day and said they forgot, but the rest... well, let's just say I don't miss them very much, and I'm still good friends with the one that actually showed up."
"Needless to say that leaving the hospital and joining a private practice has been the best career choice I've made so far."
- GuerrillaRodeo
Boyfriends First
"It was more of a 'we stopped talking to each other for good' than a proper falling out, but she was the sort of person who would be close friends with you one moment, but the minute she got into a relationship, that became her entire world and she would stop talking to you for weeks on end."
"The only times I used to hear from her was when she decided she needed a break from her boyfriend and figured I'd always be around to hang out with her."
"My final straw was going on a shopping trip with her and she was close to straight up leaving me at a shop with no transport in place because she was in a rush to get back to her boyfriend. She had driven us out to this place and was prepared to leave me there which would have cost me a lot of money to get back home."
- Kirbzi95
Never To Be Heard From Again
"I realized that all of the effort of the friendship was on my end. So I stopped reaching out first and never heard from him again."
"The only thing I heard through mutual friends was that he was mad that I make more money than him. This is after I tried countless times to help him."
- Onpoint441
Priorities!
"He said, 'Stay in this raid group, or spend time with your wife, your decision.'"
- USNAVY71
"Hilarious. Did he think you'd actually pick a video game over your wife?!"
- Asangkt358
"Bro was salty as f**k that he didn't have a wife, lol (laughing out loud)."
- DaybreakPaladin
Where Loyalties Lie
"Her boyfriend told her he didn’t trust me, so she cut me off."
"I just laughed and moved on."
"Three weeks later, she caught him cheating. Our friendship never recovered."
"She tried to get back in touch. We talked, but it was never the same. She believed his lies and questioned my intentions and values, and I didn’t appreciate it."
"She tried to claim it was for love, but it was what it was."
- ConstantHuman920
Truly Heartless
"She made out that her dad was missing (he wasn't) and said to me in front of our friends, 'No offense, but at least you know where your dad is.'"
"That sounds normal, but my dad passed away a month before this. She was seriously messed up, and I'm glad I'm no longer friends with that psycho."
- bonkersaurs
The Family Man
"He had a kid. I literally never heard from him again after he texted me that his daughter had been born. Every few months or so I’d reach out and ask how everyone was doing. I quit after about a year."
"We moved to different cities after graduating college. He’d always been a super busy, distracted guy with a lot going on so I understood at the beginning. I’m not a needy guy or a needy friend."
"Having a kid is especially hard work and should be his number one priority… but to never hear from the guy again, ever? My best friend? That sucked. That sucked bad."
- VikingRodeo9
"Hah, that's interesting. I was scanning to see if my story was here, but it was the opposite. My friend stopped being my friend when we had a kid, and they had trouble having a kid. It seemed too hard for them to be around our son."
- cbg21133
Too Immature
"She's 30 and still acts like she's 16. All she cares about is drama and dudes who are trash, and I'm done hearing about it."
- No_Step_851
"I'm 31, and I still know people from my high school years who act like they are 17. It's so sad. Most of them are unemployed, too."
- Jackytobacky
Out Of Touch
"We were close, close, close. We lived in separate countries and I had visited her at one point and we had a BLAST and it brought us even closer. It was amazing. A few weeks later she reunited with an old flame and over the next few weeks we started talking less and less."
"She came out to visit me several months later here in the US (her first actual visit) and spent most of the time texting and talking on the phone to her boyfriend when we were out and about. At the house, she was glued to Skype talking to him."
"I had a party and invited mutual friends she had known online for a really long time so they could meet her and she stayed in a back office talking to the boyfriend on Skype for most of the night."
"She ended up having a $1500 phone bill from all the long-distance calls and texts (this was in the early 2000s)."
"By the time it was time for her to go back home, I literally could not care less. We may have spoken once after that and she assured me that everything was good. That was like twenty years ago."
- hilhilbean
Romantic Insecurities
"He got into a relationship with a narcissist. His girlfriend has been alienating his friends from day one. Just found out from a mutual friend that none of his Day One friends are invited to his wedding. I’ve known my best friend for almost two decades."
"I heard the reason why I wasn’t invited was because I didn’t support his relationship according to his fiancée. The fiancée has bumped heads with me in the past, and I was his roommate, but she wanted me gone. I stood up for some ppl in our friend group when he stayed silent while she gossiped about them."
- poet0588
A Terrible Mistake
"He took me to a party at the house of his girlfriend’s friends. I was a piece of s**t and stole from the host, and I was caught weeks later. I paid back what I stole to avoid charges being pressed, and the friendship was rightfully over."
"That was 20 years ago, and it still bothers me often. I’m sorry, Zach!"
- badabinkbadaboon
"I did the exact same thing. In a drunken stupor, I just took whatever I wanted. Returned it all the next day when I sobered up."
- JMile69
"I'm reminded of an old Reddit comment where someone talked about a drunk at a party returning the doorknob he took because he thought it was a cinnamon roll."
- CyptidProductions
When It Matters
"Refused to take a side when it counted. It was especially hurtful considering the situation I was in was caused by the consequences of me sticking my neck out for her."
- 7_Rowle
"Having fence sitter friends, clearly biased friends, or 'It doesn’t involve me' friends is the absolute fucking worst."
- thebigbroke
It's heartwrenching to imagine long-term friendships ending, especially for unfortunate reasons, and some of these stories are so deeply unfortunate. From stealing to a lack of reciprocation, these are all fair reasons why a friendship might never bounce back.
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