What stories do you have of former friends who changed completely until they weren't your friends anymore?
Posted by Equivalent_Ask_1416@reddit | AskUK | View on Reddit | 21 comments
When your friends change all of a sudden for seemingly no reason, it can make you question yourself. I don't know whether it's life stresses or friend influences or something else that causes people to change. I had a friend who I've known since I was a kid. We reconnected last year, and I thought we were great friends until March when she messaged me saying she was going to unfriend me on Facebook because we didn't have enough in common. When I've seen her out and about she has blanked me, but for some reason it doesn't look as though she has unfriended me at all-so I'm left thinking what is going on with her.
Necessary_Tour_5222@reddit
The narcissism epidemic pretty much explains mine. Even last week, I have a friend who claims our other friend ‘betrayed’ her because he invited someone she doesn’t like to his wedding. And a 15 year friendship ended just like that. And this friend refuses to do any perspective taking, because its ‘gaslighting’ and ‘invalidating’.
People weren’t this petty and shallow in our parents time. Its fucking ridiculous.
I’m now putting distance between this friend and myself as I’ve had a bad habit of giving the benefit of the doubt, overlooking many red flags in people.
Valuable-Wallaby-167@reddit
Lol, they absolutely were
Imperator_Helvetica@reddit
Yeah - lots of family stories about some minor slight, along the lines of 'X didn't invite Y to the wedding' or 'What our Sharon said about our Rita...'
Less counched in therapy-speak, but also far easier to sever - no social media. I'm only from a small family, but my ex used to tell me about their large extended family which was full of 'A doesn't speak to B, everyone has to pretend C doesn't exist around Grandma D, F got disowned, E blanked everyone and changed her name to G.' Exhausting.
SwimmingOdd3228@reddit
My dad maxed out his income on the mortgage for a large house. This was when people were earning more 20 years ago than now. It was a huge money hole. My dad also sent back a lot of money to family in our country.
We had other problems too like huge family arguments constant guests and lack of privacy.
My cousin was a child a single mother home in social housing. Possibly some financial hardship, but few visitors and his own room
I was recently talking about having no money in my teens and all he could say was BIG HOUSE. I just gave up telling him halfway and brought the story to a weird close. He thinks his poverty was real and mine wasn't
West_Category_4634@reddit
1 friend kept forgetting his wallet or only (supposedly) carrying AMEX for years.....and I end up paying for stuff every time we go out. Even though he's is richer than me.
Eventually, I thought what a c*** and ghost him.
SwimmingOdd3228@reddit
Used to have a friend working in a warehouse. We laughed and joked a lot His dad was just average wealth but locally well known and respected for his job. Came back from holiday to find he'd moved into working in the shop(cushy gig) after his dad rang the owner. He's kind of insufferable now, miserable and whining even tho it was a good decent income to get him where he is now while the less connected of us languished
Infinite_Bed8560@reddit
I have lost out on a load of friends because I’m single.Apparently having a single friend when nearly everyone is a couple is just not on.Just want people to go out with , have the craic with. Apparently until I’m part of a unit I can’t do that.
cgknight1@reddit
Is this the same friend you posted about before or another who did exactly the same thing?
psychopathic_shark@reddit
Very much older person here with an older than me friend. This guy was an amazing person and for 7 years of my life he was one of the most influential people in my life he taught me so much mentally. I also helped him out all the time but we always had a laugh.
He changed almost over a few weeks, he became emotionally detached, I asked if there was something going on and supportive all the time but he kept saying things were fine. He has a wife he adores and two grown up lads who are doing great and a grandson who is his world. I tried to work out what was going on but every conversation became negative. Simple things would turn into a full on drama like someone parking in what he dedicated to be "his" parking space on the street. We initially joked about it being parking wars but it just got super intense. His neighbours were noisy and that used to annoy him and enrage him. They appeared to just be speaking loudly which annoyed him and everything started to revolve around these peti little angers. I made a break from him after getting really frustrated with him about the constant negativity. I actually hurt because of it but after a few weeks I started to feel free and a lot happier. He was an awesome guy. I loved him to bits because of how important he was to me but he dragged me down and I didn't really see it. I feel lighter now but I do still miss the person he was before he became super negative
baronsameday@reddit
Could that not be signs of something more serious like dementia. I know a friend's father had a similar change in personality and became very apathetic and tuned out to be early-onset dementia.
Might be worth speaking to his wife if he won't address it himself.
inside-outdoorsman@reddit
One day, out of the blue, my best friend on the whole of Inisherin island Colm tells me he doesn’t want to be friends anymore. No fight, no warning—just done. I didn’t understand. I tried to make things right, but the more I tried, the worse it got. He said I was dull and wanted more meaning in his life and to focus on his music.
Every time I tried to talk to him he’d stick a finger on my door. It was confusing, sad, and honestly kind of heartbreaking. My sister was the only one who really understood me, and then she left the island too. By the end of it all, things between me and Colm had changed forever.
I still don’t know what exactly happened… but I know I’m not the same.
VideoNo82@reddit
I see what you did there!
KingThorongil@reddit
?
AChurchForAHelmet@reddit
The banshees of Inisherin
Madwife2009@reddit
I lost a really good friend that I'd known for 20 years when she and her husband became religious. Not just a belief in a god, etc., but full-blown zealot. Every conversation revolved around her religion, her husband went around saying, "Hallelujah!" all the time. Every time she saw me she asked if I had accepted Christ as my saviour.
I'm an atheist. It became deeply uncomfortable for me so I noped out of it all. I used to see her in my local town centre, handing out religious tracts whilst her husband "preached" to those going past.
From what I've heard, they are not kind people anymore, they hate anything and everything that doesn't fit in with their interpretation of things and seem to take bits from different religions to suit themselves and their bigotry.
Nah, I'm well out of that relationship.
ClarifyingMe@reddit
We all change, sometimes it's one way, both ways. Endless stories of this though. One person tried to re-enter my life after cutting me off but I just have no desire for it, especially as I have changed and can't tolerate their personality now anyway, which is a shame. It was a Golden Girls type of friendship.
mightbeyourpal@reddit
Got close with a guy during our apprenticeships, we'd meet for lunch, watch England football matches in the pub together, shared a similar taste in music.
He had a child and fiancee at 18 (I very much did not) so we ended up losing. We reconnected years later on Twitter and had some good chats while catching up. Over the next few years, I watched as far right nonsense poisoned his brain and corrupted him into a contrarian racist troll. Or maybe he was always like that and he just got tired of hiding it.
Anyway, I unfollowed his now nothing-but-hate account and noticed a few months later he'd been banned from the platform. From TWITTER. Fuck knows what he's doing now. Don't care. Fuck you and your abhorrent opinions, Dan.
ConfusedMaverick@reddit
I lost a friend to the conspiracy rabbit hole.
I used to be able to talk to him about anything, pretty much, but now he believes virtually all of the conspiracy nonsense you can find on the Internet, and it's impossible to have a meaningful conversation with him.
He thinks he is a really well informed "conspiracy researcher", the rest of us poor sheeple just being gullible fools. Reality is, he has none of the intellectual machinery required to evaluate these ideas, and so his mind is like a landfill site.
Wonderful-Cow-9664@reddit
My childhood best friend decided to turn to heroin when she was 21, because her boyfriend did. That pretty much ruined our friendship. We got back in touch several times in the years since (we’re in our 40s now) but we have absolutely nothing in common anymore-it’s sad in a way, because we were like sisters-lots of “in jokes”, same sense of humour, same interests and we could spend hours or days together just the two of us, laughing endlessly. The last time we got back in touch was about 6 years ago-we were worlds apart, two completely different people-and we just kind of both decided not to keep in touch without actually verbalising it
lavayuki@reddit
I had a Chinese friend who lived in Singapore and came here for uni. We were great friends and even went on holiday together, until one day she decided she didn’t want to be my friend because I liked Japan, sushi and anime. I had loved this stuff since I was a kid, and she was well aware of that, in fact we even went for sushi ones. I think she must have hid it along with her hatred for Japan and then just decided to call it quits.
I had no idea, I am not even Japanese albeit I did live and study there and so speak the language, plus there lots of Chinese there. So her hatred never occurred to me since she never said or hinted it for the best part of three years that we were friends.
Apparently she became a successful surgeon anyway, but I was pretty taken aback at the time because it was against something I simply liked rather than what I am.
It was the only time where even looking back, why did she become my friend in the first place
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