"A Year And A Half Later, She Was Dead": 29 People On The "Incident" That Tore Their Friend Group Apart
Recently, we wrote about why friend groups fell apart, and members of the BuzzFeed Community submitted their own examples. Here are 29 more stories of how friend groups ended in flames.*
*Along with some answers from the original Reddit thread.
NOTE: There are mentions of sexual assault, suicide, addiction, gun violence, child sex abuse images, domestic abuse, and animal abuse.
1."I was sexually assaulted by a guy at a party in high school. Apparently, one of my 'friends' had a crush on him for years, and it really struck a nerve. She spread countless lies and rumors about me being a slut and throwing myself at him while I was just trying to work through the traumatic experience. This obviously created a friend group divide, and everyone decided to play Switzerland and not intervene. Needless to say, I'm no longer friends with anyone from high school."
2."I had a friend from elementary school through after college. I trusted her completely. I left my dog with her for a weekend while I was out of town. She was excited to have him. I got him back a couple of days later with a DIY haircut courtesy of my friend. He was not in need of one, but she took the liberty, and he had open sores on his skin when I picked him up. There was no water, no food, no AC or fans on in the house, and it was midsummer. She had left him alone to go off and do whatever. I almost called the police. When I went off on her and cut ties, she took our college friend group with her without a single one of them reaching out to me. I don't know what she told them, but it was one of the most bizarre and upsetting experiences of my life."
3."We had been friends for about seven years, since high school. There were six of us, but two girls (L and D) were inseparable. L's mother had a stroke and almost died. She was in the hospital in a coma for several months — close to a year. During this time, C and I (who were pretty close to L) went to visit her mother a few times in the hospital. D was always invited, and she always said she would come, but she didn't visit once. She always missed the visits due to being either hungover from clubbing the day before or visiting her girlfriend (who lived 20 minutes away WALKING DISTANCE from the hospital where the mother was), and she didn't bother to make the trip. The other two friends of the group visited as well. This led to our friend group breaking."
"C and D went their own way, and the rest of us stopped talking. I have a coffee with L from time to time, and a year after the mother recovered, we were having coffee, and she told me that D not only didn't visit but also never even WROTE a fucking message through FB/Instagram/WhatsApp to ask how L was. When she needed her best friend the most, D just vanished from her life."
4."One of the group shared a screencap of his laptop in the group chat. He hadn't closed down his porn tabs which included searches for children. I called him out on it, he went fucking ballistic. Calling me nonstop and shouting abuse, sending hundreds of messages a day. After I blocked him, he got new numbers to do it all over again. I had to report him to his local police station with the screencaps, which apparently wasn't enough evidence for them to act. Afterward, he threatened to find me outside my office (we live in different cities). I had to report it to the police (and I fucking hate the police) and get a restraining order. I have no idea why he would want to attract police attention to himself. After chatting to some old acquaintances from college, it turns out that similar things had happened with him before. After that, the group just petered out."
5."I had a friend who liked to make up ridiculous stories about boring events. It was annoying but never that bad until it was suddenly REALLY bad. She was sitting in a corner at a birthday party feeling bored and ignored, so she made a post on FB accusing another friend's boyfriend of hitting his kid and other kids, which was a blatant lie. She blocked everyone at the party from seeing the post, but she forgot to block a few people who weren't at the party, so they sent screenshots, and things blew up fast. I haven't seen or spoken to her since, and neither has most of that friend group."
"The thing is, things were somewhat contentious with his kid's mom at that time, so this could have really caused him some big problems if the wrong people had seen it. So it wasn't just a mean thing to say; it could have had serious ramifications, all because she wasn't the center of attention."
6."A member of my friend group served five years for distributing porn, including child sexual abuse images. When he got out, some members welcomed him back, saying he'd done his time, paid his debt, etc. I have children and asked that I be told if he'd be attending an event so we could stay home. I walked in one night, saw him, and walked us all right back out. Nobody had warned us, although several people knew. They thought I'd 'get over it.' Some women were uncomfortable, so they and their husbands began to stay home. It tore apart the group, but my kids come first. It's my job to protect them."
—Anonymous
7."A few days after I gave birth, one of my best friends (and her baby — she was pregnant) suddenly passed away of multiple blood clots. She'd been having headaches for a couple of weeks, gone to the ER, was told it was just pregnancy stuff, went back two days later and was admitted, then two days after, she was put into a medically induced coma, and the next day, she was brain dead. Her mom is taking legal action against the hospital for blowing her off the first visit, but I'm not super in the loop about it. The seven of us hung out twice after: right after her funeral and once more to pass out jewelry her mother gave us (some from our friend, and her mom also had bracelets made for each of us). I'm still very close to three of them, am friends in passing with two, and don't really talk to the last. It's hard sometimes, but we couldn't all be together without really feeling that she wasn't there."
"My kid is almost four now, and I miss her every day."
8."I had a friend group that was based around racing motocross bikes. We raced, went to the gym, repaired the bikes, and hung out together basically every night in the workshop, drinking, partying, and just enjoying life and dirt bikes. Then the the partner of one of group's members was arrested for stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of stock from her workplace. She was selling it on eBay from multiple accounts under the names of everyone in the friend group."
"After that, no one trusted anyone, and we have never talked again. I see them at the motocross track on race days, but we have never talked to each other since."
9."A friend of mine broke up with her fiancé after he hit her. He lost it and posted nudes of her online. So she pressed charges against him for both things. He had been to jail previously. She knew this but believed him when he said it was petty stuff. It was not — it was things like aggravated stalking and terroristic threats. He was afraid of going back to jail, so he kept calling and messaging her, saying if the police found him, he would shoot himself before he would go back to jail, so she needed to drop the charges."
"She never replied to him; there was a protective order, and she wasn't supposed to, and she was also just over it. She was in a group chat with all of us, talking about how exhausted she was by it all. Then she went quiet for a while, came back, and told us all that he had shot and killed himself when the police showed up. It was awful. She blamed herself, his family blamed her, she got harassed by people who barely knew him and wanted to be part of the drama, and it went on and on. The local media obviously hyped it for all it was worth, and that didn't help either. We rallied around her as best we could, but she had to work through a lot of it on her own. Luckily, she has a very supportive family, and she was able to get into therapy early on."
10."Junior year of high school, a new girl joins our friend group. We had a solid core of friends who'd known each other for years, as well as a bunch of new kids who'd come in each year. She quickly became a huge focus of attention. Super chatty and friendly with everyone, but after a few months, things got really toxic. She'd been listening hard to anyone who had a bad day, finding out the dark shit they'd been through, and one day started talking about all of HER shit. Which just so happened to be exactly what every person had been through but worse. Someone in the group got sexually assaulted; now she's got a story about being gang-raped. Someone found their friend's body after a suicide; now, she witnessed a family member die by suicide. On and on, adding details to make herself more pitiable, until the group had fractured into people who recognized the bones of their events under her dramatized retellings and those who bought her BS."
"Those of us who were hurt wanted her out of the group. Her flunkies wanted to devote all our time and energy to 'supporting' her. Eventually, we called a group meeting and confronted her on her lies, pointing out inconsistencies in her stories and how she'd stolen and warped actual traumatic events from the group for her benefit. She denied it all, and that was the end of our group. We split off, and there was no contact between the groups. Friends who'd known each other their whole lives now just glared across hallways and classrooms. She moved away at the end of the year but strung her followers along over Myspace and texting. Last I heard, she was 'living on a pirate ship in San Francisco,' making music albums for the biggest labels (when she couldn't carry a tune in a bucket) and doing top-secret black ops (cause she'd been a child spy) while ruling as a queen in the astral plane. The friendships she blew apart never reformed, and I'd bet, given her dogged determination to keep up her claims from literally thousands of miles away, she's pulling the same stunts wherever she is now."
—Anonymous
11."We played D&D together with W. Then one day, the morning after a game, his wife messaged us from his account saying they're getting divorced and he's just gone. Turns out W had decided to sexually assault one of his kid's preteen classmates on the regular. He's dead to us now."
12."I broke our friend group apart. I got hooked on drugs while everyone went off to college, and I felt stuck at home. And when they came back and wanted to hang out, I was too far gone. They offered to help me out of my addiction, but I couldn't accept help then. I wish I could go back and apologize then, but all I can do is apologize now and message them every once in a while."
"I still miss them, and I've never made friends as close as them because I have a neurodivergence, and making friends is really hard for me (part of why I started using in the first place). But I've gotten more comfortable with myself over the years, and I'm happy now, even though it took a long time."
13."I was in a big friend group made up of the people who stayed 'townies' after high school for whatever reason. My ex (who I had stayed friends with) introduced me to his best friend, who had gone to a different school, and we started dating, which led to me bringing my friend group into the mix, which formed a few new couples. For a while, it was great — until my boyfriend started abusing me. I was very young, and he was very good about putting up the front of being a sweet guy who just lost his temper sometimes. He was also exceptionally good at hiding/convincing me to hide any evidence of our 'disagreements.' After a year of physical, mental, and sexual abuse, I finally had the courage to leave him. The entire friend group turned on me, even the ones who had been my friends first."
"When my ex began stalking me and I filed for a restraining order, they gave written statements that I was unstable and a liar. Then, they started harassing me too. I eventually moved out of state to escape the toxicity. It's been many years, and I'm happy and healthy now, but it was a crushing time. Years later, I heard my ex had been married and was getting divorced amid accusations of abuse."
—Anonymous
14."My girlfriend has stage two cancer, and her best friend was seemingly very standoff-ish towards her for months after the diagnosis. I thought it might have been because said friend's mother died of very aggressive brain cancer, so maybe being around someone with cancer sort of triggered her to where she wasn't comfortable. Nope. Turns out she resents my girlfriend now because of how 'privileged she is.' My girlfriend still lives at home with her parents, who pay her $40/month cellphone bill (she's on their family plan). That's it. All this stems from my girlfriend being unable to work for the past year — she was told by friends and family to make an Amazon wish list so that friends can anonymously send her goodies. It's mostly art supplies so that she can craft. This is what triggered this now ex-best friend."
"She thinks my girlfriend has it 'so good' that she shouldn't seek assistance from others...despite others telling her to do so. I say good riddance."
15."One of us found religion. The guy who coerced his girlfriend into a threesome with his cousin stalked numerous girls, including following one to another state. ... The guy who came to visit me after my Mum passed and after I said, 'Well, I guess she is in a better place now,' had the guts to say, 'Well, maybe…' I almost laid him out. He got chased out of a church for being inappropriate with the pastor's daughter, yet insisted it wasn't his fault. He became a right winger, irresponsible gun-owning (No training, no proficiency practice, no safety precautions, carrying a gun in his kid's diaper bag to Chick-fil-A…), and denying all the past shenanigans he had initiated. I get it; people change — religion can be a chance for a new start, but seriously, don't be a jerk about it. My ex (who I am still good friends with) always said he was creepy…she was right."
—Anonymous
16."There was the time one guy's girlfriend broke up with him on St Patrick's Day, and he got kicked out of the bar for trying to fight the bouncer. And then he sat on the corner of the street for 20 minutes crying, decided to walk eight miles to go fight the other guy the girl left him for, and was tackled by his dad (after everyone that knew him gave up trying to control his behavior and called his family). The cops brought him back to his apartment hours later and gave us all business cards to call in case he had a breakdown again."
"There was the time the same guy got off work as an armed security guard and came home to where we were all pre-gaming and decided it was a good idea to pass around his service firearm. A woman one of our friends brought squeezed the trigger and put a hole in the wall, and the cops came to talk/lecture us on gun safety because she left about two minutes after the gun went off. They didn't even stick around to see if the people downstairs were okay.
And who could forget when the same guy, still pissed off at the other guy for stealing his girlfriend a year later and after they broke up, decided it would be a smart idea to make an 'anonymous' threatening phone call to tell the other guy he's still mad and is going to shoot him — from one of our roommates' cellphones. About 10 minutes after I got home from work, I had a very unfriendly swat officer forcing my face into the very dirty carpet after I'd just taken two bong hits straight to the dome.
We stopped talking to him after that, and it was a very tense three months until our lease was up and we graduated."
17."My friend group went out to the club one night. I wasn't there because I had to work early the next day. One of our friends got roofied and told the rest of the group she was sick and needed medical attention. They thought she was drunk and proceeded to drag her to another location, leave her unattended while they went to screw some guys they met at the club, and then drop her off at home afterward. My friend took herself to the emergency room in the morning and was tested for drugs, which were found in her system, and she never spoke to any of us ever again. I don't blame her. I never spoke to anyone involved again, either. Who needs friends like that?"
18."A friend married a guy after a few years. The guy was integrated into our friendship group. The guy and our friend divorced after the guy said he no longer wanted kids. Then, the guy and his ex-wife's best friend hooked up nearly immediately (the best friend was also in our friendship group). Both the guy and best friend dropped out of the group; a few years later, they had a baby."
19."On a Tuesday evening, a couple of hours after school, we (our group of 16-year-olds) met at our friend's kitchen table, like we did almost every day that year, to chuck a couple of beers and wait for the day to be over. Their parents and two grown-up siblings were also present and already deep into the hard liquor. The doorbell rang, and the police entered, asking where the horses were. Then, they arrested my friend and his dad after a couple of questions. The horses get liberated from the meadow, and minutes later, the police came back to arrest another friend."
"Turns out they were abusing/molesting/fucking the families' two male horses, filming it on S-VHS, and then selling/uploading it over dial-up on some sort of website. That was a fucked up day on so many levels. It shattered our group. No one saw it coming. ... Our group never got together again, not even without those two 'friends.' We basically drifted apart within days, and once it became public, any association became toxic, so most families up and moved rather quickly.
The last I heard, the 'horse-lovers' were both married, one with kids. It's been some 30+ years now. If tomorrow someone were to come and tell me that one of them kept another family in a cellar, Josef Fritzl-Style, it would not surprise me at all."
20."One night when we were teenagers, we went to the lake. There were four of us, and we ended up at this party. Nothing happened at the party — we drank, and like idiots, the older of us decided we were going home, and we left. We were probably 15; none of us could drive except him. He was 18. As we're curving around the lake, we come up on the campground that had these women at it. I'm guessing they were between 18-20. There were three of them, and they were alone. We conversed with them for a brief minute and then went on our way. We get about a half mile from them, and the 18-year-old that was driving ... says, 'We should go back and rape those chicks.' He was not joking. He was dead serious."
"At this time, I was in shock. I didn't really know him that well and had only hung out with him a few times. The people I normally hung out with were very much hardcore people, and I'd seen some shit by this age, but this shocked me.
I pulled my pistol out from my waistband and, in my head, said, if he turns this car around, I'm going to let him pull into the campground they are at, and then I'll know how serious he is, and I'll shoot him in the fucking head. (I was in the backseat directly behind him.)
Thankfully, no one in the car other than him was on board with that bullshit, and so he played it off like he was kidding. I know he wasn't. Who says that? Who but someone fucked up enough to do it.
I never talked to or saw him again, and I wonder if he ever went on to do something I could've stopped that night. I don't know his last name, and I know that I could get it if I really tried, but part of me is afraid, afraid to see what may have been.
That's my incident, and it's stuck with me ever since. I'm in my forties now, and I can't go camping or drive by a campsite without thinking about it, even if it is a brief, fleeting thought. I just hope he never did anything we could've prevented, somehow."
21."We got in a car accident while we were driving to the airport. Nobody got seriously hurt, but I was one of the drivers and had to follow a police officer to the police station. None of my friends stayed with me. They took their (our) plane and left. I was young, scared, and alone in a foreign country for a few days while dealing with that shit."
22."One of the girls ('Melanie') in our friend group got together with a guy ('Richard') who was adamantly opposed to LGBT issues and drove a wedge by trying to prevent her from attending the same-sex wedding of two of the guys in our group ('Joseph' and 'Daniel'). We didn't know this until Joseph and Daniel's wedding when Melanie showed up by herself. She wouldn't say why, but one of our group was friendly with her younger sister, and that's how we found out what had happened. Until then, we'd assumed Richard was ill or too busy with work. He hid his bigotry well right up until then."
"While the rest of us wanted to kick out Melanie and Richard immediately, what's interesting is that Joseph and Daniel begged us not to because 'Melanie showed up, and that's who counts; plus Richard might come around one day, and kicking them out might have the opposite effect of binding Melanie more closely with Richard. Let's at least keep a line of communication open.' Daniel also privately confided that he sensed that Richard was controlling Melanie in other, more subtle ways and that Melanie might need us one day if/when their relationship collapsed (Richard was pretty open about wanting to get Melanie pregnant as soon as they could save up enough to get married).
As it turns out, Joseph and Daniel's gracious response had the effect of driving Richard wild once he found out that he was only being invited to things thanks to Joseph and Daniel's kindness. He gave Melanie an ultimatum to ditch our whole group or lose him. She chose him.
I sometimes wonder if Joseph and Daniel actually played the long game (either intentionally or unintentionally) in helping us ditch a bigot by driving him away with kindness, but considering how painful the incident was, I don't think I should reopen that issue by asking."
23."There's this one girl I met through work who we all refer to now as the Common Denominator. She introduced me to all her friends and my now-current boyfriend, who introduced me to all of his friends, so I am grateful for that. However, after about a year, her boyfriend would walk around saying how much he really disliked her and was planning on breaking up. None of us really understood why until we witnessed her get raging drunk and attempt to push him down the stairs to their flat in front of us all. On top of this, they would have screaming arguments whenever we all went out for drinks or dinner together."
"She cannot hold a job, and it turns out he was funding her entire lifestyle/flat/nights out and obvious weed problem. When she got wind of her boyfriend asking us all for advice, she systematically isolated him from us all and tried to turn us all against each other, even though (the boys especially) had been friends since primary school. She did this by creating multiple group chats but excluding one person from each chat to create this sort of narrative for herself, as well as really obviously messaging us all from his account, too.
We've all remained solid friends and maintained our relationships with each other and our respective partners. From what I've heard, ... he's lost all his childhood friends.
We are all aware this is an abusive relationship and have tried and tried to reason with him, but he will just not break up with her. We have, however, always said we will be here whenever he needs us, but he's stopped reaching out to us no matter how hard we've tried. It's all a bit sad, but yeah…fuck you, common denominator."
24."The biggest 'incident' was my dumbass HS best friend. We went off to college (this was like 25 years ago) at separate colleges, and my school had a fall break in October, so I went to visit him and party at his school. The whole trip, he was such an asshole, like he was big-timing me and trying to look good for his college friends. Long story short, he took me to an off-campus party and ditched me there (like 15 miles out in the farmland) to go have sex with some girl from his dorm."
"When I finally managed to walk and hitchhike back to campus and get someone to let me into the dorm (I didn't have my car keys since I didn't think I'd need them and all my clothes and stuff were in his room or else I'd have just left when I got back to campus), I banged on his door at like 6 a.m., and he was still naked with the girl. I cursed him out, grabbed my stuff, and drove off, and I literally have never spoken to him again. Oh, and I called his long-time girlfriend, who was also one of my best friends, and let her know what was happening, and she broke up with him."
25."It was a group of five friends: my best friend (F), my best friend's boyfriend, his sister, my boyfriend (who was my best friend's brother), and me. I was the new one in the group, and we would go out a lot. My boyfriend cheated on me for months, and my best friend failed to let me know. Her boyfriend pushed her to tell me the truth, but she refused since it was her brother. Her boyfriend gave her an ultimatum to tell me, or he would tell me himself. My best friend and her boyfriend broke up for good due to longstanding issues they never resolved, and he called me the following month to meet up. He spilled the beans. I confronted my best friend and boyfriend, and they both denied it. I dumped my boyfriend when his side chick confessed. That broke up our group for good. My best friend's ex reached out to me, and we will be celebrating our 18th anniversary next week."
—Anonymous
26."I had a group of friends in high school, and I got married and had a child shortly after. My wife and I struggled a bit financially, and I was starting to become stressed out and depressed about it. Us guys got together, and I talked a bit about it to get it off my chest. The entire group came to the conclusion that the best way to fix the financial issues was to abandon my wife and daughter. And it wasn't joking sort of stuff, either. They really meant it. Needless to say, I do not associate with them anymore."
27."There were about eight of us living together: the core five from high school plus a couple of girlfriends (and myself with my boyfriend at the time). One of the couples got pregnant and then engaged — we were pretty stoked for him because he'd been through the wringer with girls in the past. But during the engagement, she became overbearing with him: clingy, temperamental, jealous, etc. A few of us brought it up with him, but he was in love, so it was no good. They organized a fancy baby shower and invited everyone and their dog. So we all got dressed up and arrived to find it was a secret wedding — but the bride was having a meltdown and decided that the girls were no longer invited."
"So we were all standing at the entrance, invitations in hand, all dolled up and being told that we weren't welcome to our own friend's wedding. It was so fecking humiliating, the groom didn't even know about it and thought we had abandoned him. The group never really recovered, even after they divorced. She created a divide between the men and women that was never there."
28."My best friend found out I told her little sister I was a little concerned about her drinking (that was literally all I said: 'I'm a little concerned about her drinking'). My best friend stopped speaking to me, and then the rest of the friend group followed suit. And then a year and a half later, she was dead."
29.And finally..."We found out that a former friend in our circle had gone full QAnon and was in the January 6 riots. So that's fun."
What caused your friendship or friend group to fall apart? Let us know in the comments or via this anonymous form.
Submissions have been edited for length/clarity.
