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con artist
We've all known someone that we cared about and felt incredibly close to. We likely told them every important thing about ourselves, trusted them with our greatest insecurities and secrets, and assumed they shared their lives with us in the same way.
But then something monumental happened, and we realized that we didn't really know that person well at all.
Redditor eCatherineCollective asked:
"What has been your biggest 'I really thought I knew this person' moment?"
A Professional Backstabber
"I tweaked the reporting system for a large payroll system to improve its run time from eight hours to only two. I submitted the changes to the head programmer with all my testing results."
"She took all the credit, used my expertise, and told management I had nothing to do with the improvements after I called her out on her bulls**t."
"I worked alongside her for five years prior and thought we were friends."
- NeutralTarget
The Trash Took Itself Out
"I was with my partner for 15 years. We were high school sweethearts."
"One day out of nowhere he started this fight with me. A fight big enough to make him suggest staying at a friend's house for a night to cool off. The fight was over me buying a male coworker gummy bears."
"The night turned into a week. He blocked my phone and I was unable to reach him."
"He came back in the middle of the night to grab things and told me he wanted to break up."
"I was so confused and felt blindsided."
"I ended up finding out he was in a 10-year relationship with a girl he met on a roleplay Discord server. He was living a double life. When I would go to sleep at night, he would be on the phone with her."
"He flew out to get engaged to her the week he blocked me."
"The kicker is she was married when they got engaged. This was a year ago. She is still married and my ex is still in a relationship with her."
"I reached out to the woman's husband over the phone (he lives in Texas and I’m in Pennsylvania). He asked me to send proof. I sent him texts and screenshots. Six months after I talked to him, he caught my ex in his house via cameras in his garage when he was out of town. This was July and he is still living with her and married."
- Impossible-Ad9073
Beautiful in Every Way
"I turned up at a party. A buddy of mine was there. He's a bodybuilder (he+e was taking steroids at the time). He was also door security at a rough Liverpool club. A hard bloke that you would not want to get the wrong side of."
"He was wearing a charming dress, impeccable makeup, and drinking a cocktail."
- Shashi2005
The Last Person in the World You'd Expect to Hurt You
"When my wife cheated on me. That sounds really stereotypical but she was the last person on earth I would have thought would do something like that."
- themorganator4
"I can relate. I just honestly didn’t ever see my ex-husband doing that."
"I was busy taking care of our one-year-old daughter and he couldn’t handle not being the center of attention anymore. Meanwhile, I trusted him to give me the room to learn how to be a mother and grow alongside me as a father."
"He just didn’t have the potential I thought he did, and it was pretty rough to come to terms with that."
- Enragedy
The Cheating Parent
"When my parents divorced, my dad introduced his girlfriend to my sister and me THE NEXT DAY. It obviously meant he was cheating on my mom. I never forgave him for it."
- nonameuser21
"Oh wow, at least my dad had the decency to wait two weeks after the divorce to introduce me to his new wife (apparently mistress of five years). He was so proud to show off their wedding photos with his three new daughters, not taking into account his own children, who didn’t know about any step-family or wedding at all."
"His new wife kept the house clear of any photos of us, and when I pointed that out to my dad, he claimed he never noticed, yelled at his new wife about it, who said, 'Calm down! They’re in the console drawer! They’re not good photos! FINE! I’ll put them out!'"
"He worshipped her. I had no idea who he was anymore, or ever, for that matter."
- SonicBoris
Behavior Only Karma Could Love
"I met a guy in college. We were both dating other people at the time, so we would hang out together instead of going out to parties and getting wasted. He was my safe buddy, always a gentleman. We stayed friends for seven years but were always dating other people."
"Finally, we were both single at the same time! We talked every day and decided that I would take a week off work and fly cross country to see him."
"My flight ended up being diverted to DC instead of Philly. He told me to take the train up and he'd pay me back for the train ride. So I had now spent 600+ dollars for a flight, 120 dollars for a train, and I was losing about 1,000 dollars taking off a week from work."
"I got to 30th Street Station... and he didn't pick up his phone... and he didn't pick up his phone for five days! He left me stranded at the train station, even though we had been texting all day!"
"I cried, I panicked, and I called a girlfriend from college who was able to pick me up and house me for the week."
"When I finally reached him, I laid into him. What kind of person does that?! All he said was, 'I don't know what to tell you, people suck, lesson learned.'"
"What the f**k?! After seven years! Guess I didn't know him after all... F**k you, Sean!"
- NoRoots4Me
"I knew a guy like this. He did something similar to a friend of mine. His reasoning later was that he wanted to 'teach her a lesson for leading him on for years.' He was a real piece of work."
"She never had an interest in dating him and genuinely viewed him as a good friend. Little did we know, he was quietly fuming that she didn’t view him as a romantic interest."
"For anyone that applauds that logic, I want you to know that he is still single, and has turned to hating all women. He generally only posts about hating his life and how he’s owed attention by women."
"My friend, on the other hand, is married with kids now and her husband absolutely adores her. On a side note, her business is doing really well too."
"People like that guy and that Sean guy above seem to get consistently pummeled by karma."
- waitwaitwait_NOW
All Talk
"Minor compared to all of you, but I dated a guy who bragged about how smart and successful he was and made me feel like an id**t for sticking with one job for more than five years. He said I was too financially conservative and not enough of a risk-taker."
"He talked big about his salary and how important he was. It turns out that he was continually job-hopping due to performance issues, bad decisions, and boredom."
- penndelnj
Increasing the Stigma Against Invisible Disabilities, Yet Again
"My ex's best friend stopped talking to her on a dime. I thought it was strange, but the best friend wasn't the most stable person."
"Two happy years of our relationship later, I found out why. She got drunk with her best friend and admitted that her endometriosis, the illness around which we organized our lives, was just... made up. Fictitious. Done for attention."
"We went to fundraisers and awareness events. She was pretty well known as a vocal activist. She'd had exploratory surgery to find adhesions; perhaps unsurprisingly, nothing was found."
"Suddenly a lot of little things clicked into place. I corroborated a few things, contacted some people about this and that, and every suspected lie was backed up by the testimony of something."
"It took me a couple of days, but I worked up the gumption to toss her a**. No asking questions, no hearing her side, just tossed her aside."
"Zero f**king regrets."
- ibiacmbyww
How Low Can You Go?
"My sister has always been selfish. She was spoiled terribly by my parents. It seemed as if things were better as she grew up and had her own family."
"She called me upset because her son’s Cub Scout pack was accusing her of stealing money. She claimed they were terrible at keeping accurate spending records and she could prove that and that she in fact helped them get the books straight."
"She lied. She stole 10 thousand dollars from children because she thought no one would notice. She’s a terrible human and I went no contact eventually."
- KingsRandsom79
Never Mess with Animals
"This happened back in June. I went to Europe with my family for two weeks. A friend of mine told me she’d watch my dogs and cat."
"I got home and found out that she hadn’t been there in days. They had no water, no food, and one of my pups has severe allergies and she hadn’t given her her medications. She had eaten herself raw. She was missing tuffs of hair and had sores everywhere."
"Suffice to say, we’re not friends anymore."
" Oh! Forgot about the best part. I paid her 400 dollars to take care of them and instead, she spent that money on alcohol... everything but my dogs."
"I’ve never hated someone so much."
- kbrown423
Now Serving Karma with a Cherry on Top
"I was friends with these two women at my old job. I was about 25 and they were late 30s and mid-40s. We got on pretty well and hung out after work too so I thought we were cool."
"It got to the week of my birthday which was on a Friday and every day, they were doing a full-on countdown, hyping it up, telling everyone that came into the kitchen about it. Bear in mind, I never brought it up, I don't really do office birthdays, but they'd found out off Facebook and decided it was a big deal."
"I didn't expect much, to be fair, like I wasn't hoping for presents, but it seemed obvious they must have something planned."
"NOPE! They'd done all of that just to make sure I kept my calendar open... for nothing."
"Not even a card, not even a happy birthday."
"I came in on that Friday, and they wouldn't even look at me. They just kept glancing over and giggling at each other. Then the end of the day came, and as I walked out, they had a crowd around their desks, still no happy birthday or even a goodbye. As it turns out, they'd invited our entire team out to the pub on my birthday and not invited me."
"Obviously, it was very upsetting but also completely baffling. Like, where did this come from?"
"On the Monday after, they were asking how my birthday was and acting like my best friends again, but I just couldn't bring myself to bother with them anymore."
- viviaana
Harmful Secrets to Keep
"I called my husband's best friend, pleading for help for his opioid addiction that I thought just started about a year before."
"This friend lives on the opposite side of the country and grew up with him. I told him about the situation and he said, 'Oh s**t, he’s into that again.'"
"AGAIN?"
"I had no idea. I thought I knew this man through and through. We were best friends for eight years before we even started dating. We are now divorced. Safe to say I have some trust issues."
- mholly2240
Emotional Labor to the Max
"My husband rolled over and went back to sleep after I got a call saying my Dad was dead in the hospital. I had to drive myself."
"I always thought he'd step up when I needed him in the ways I stepped up for him."
"Turns out he thought I 'should have asked.'"
"He's not a heavy sleeper or depressed. Least depressed man alive, in fact. He just didn't understand why I would need him there, he'd worked late the night before and said he'd meet me after more sleep."
"He was not remotely close to my Dad either. Just thought 'if it's important to her she would ask!'
"It was in hindsight the very moment I decided to look for a job out of state."
- MoreThanABitOfFluff
Our Moment in the Sun... Or Encyclopedia Section
"This is a funny 'how did I not know this about you' moment."
"Several years ago, I was flipping around on the television and came across something or other about the band Disturbed. Just like that, out of nowhere, my husband started giving me a biography of every member of the band, as though it was all common knowledge."
"We had been together about ten years at this point, and I had no idea he even liked Disturbed, much less knew so much about them. He'd literally never talked about it before! Surprised the heck out of me!"
- EducatedOwlAthena
"My wife found this out about me regarding the Disney' Haunted Mansion' when we watched the newest film. She just fired it up as something fun to watch and every time I pointed out some Easter egg in the film referencing the ride, she looked at me a little weirder and weirder."
"By the end of the film, she shared that she had no idea I was such a 'Haunted Mansion' fan."
"I guess it had just never come up!"
- Charboy
These examples of not knowing someone as well as they thought they did really left us shaking our heads. From dark and twisted examples to straight-up bullying to, fortunately, a few wholesome accounts, these examples truly ran the whole gambit.
It's just a great reminder that we don't know what's going on inside someone else's head, or what they do every day moment-by-moment, unless we're living their life ourselves.