Friendships are an invaluable part of our lives.
But they can take some real work to maintain.
Sometimes things go bad really fast, though.
Redditor Jrose798 asked:
"What instantly ruins a friendship?"
Secrets Are To Be Kept
"Telling secrets that aren’t yours to share"
-Redditor
"Yeah this is a big one for me! My life ain't yours to tell! If I've trusted you with something personal, I expect you to keep it to yourself! ESPECIALLY when I ask you to keep it a secret.."
-xnash_
"It's absurd how many times I've shut down someone trying to tell me about someone else's abortion. It's not a topic of casual conversation WTF"
-mad_fishmonger
Communication Is Key
"Lack of communication. I’ve had plenty of really solid friendships crumble because either myself or someone else couldn’t say I’m sorry or admit what’s bothering them"
-theghostspartan
"Same, though this completely backfired on me when I tried to communicate what was going on for once. Completely blew up at me when I called them out on something that was bothering me in a professional and kind way and they didn't even care to understand my side of the story. I'm always the one in the wrong, it couldn't possibly be them. Been friends since childhood, so much for that."
"Not that I'm saying communication is bad, it's certainly the best way to go, just be sure to start with good communication and understanding. I've found introducing it later on could bring hellfire. Please be careful with who you trust your time and energy with."
-Blundering_Dragon
Money Screws Things Up
"Money. Don't lend your friends money. Either give it to them or say no."
-MissPiggysS*xTape
"Let a friend of 20+ years use my card to buy door dash once. He then waited three months and took my truck payment out to pay for a feast for his family. I guess twenty years of friendship was worth a few hundred dollars to him."
-__________lIllIl
"For me it ended up being that I made more than her (even though we’d never discussed it). She kept making “joking” snide remarks about me being rich or loaded. When she told a waiter that at dinner one night, I knew it was done."
-JunkMale975
Friendship Is A Two Way Street
"Using your 'friend' as your audience, always talking about yourself and never asking what's going on in their life."
-nakedonmygoat
"Legit straw that broke the camel's back, conversation I had with a 'friend' earlier this year:"
- hey how s it going? Me - X passed away and so did A.
- ah well, -proceeds to talks aboit herself and her wild parties as if I had said nothing-
"Now she wonders why we don t hang out anymore."
-PunResistance
Gossip Kills The Vibe
"Lying and gossiping behind the other one’s back"
-yellow_starrz
"I have a friend like this. We were on a road trip and we stopped for a while for one of us to buy something while the rest remained in the car. Right f*cking after the guy left the car, this other guy started gossiping about him and stuff, right until the guy came back and then everyone pretend like nothing happened."
"I talked to the gossiper in private that that wasn't cool, and he berated me that people who don't badmouth their friends behind their backs are just goody two shoes who are too afraid to look bad."
"What the f*ck?"
-SpecialChain
That's Not An Excuse
''You don't understand what pressure I'm under to have a second child because you have an excuse.' My 'excuse' is that I'm infertile."
"I hope one day she is able to not only recognize that she needs therapy but also get enough of it to realize she needs to apologize. As of right now, the death of our friendship is 'my fault' because I suggested that she needs help."
-Probonoh
You Gotta Help Each Other Out
"When you make them a priority but you're only an option. Finally ended a friendship after she wasn't there for me during a really difficult time. It was hard but necessary."
-Motor_Relation_5459
"This has happened to me way too much, I go out of my way to be there for my friends whenever they need me but most of them can’t be bothered to do the same"
-eliteroald
"Yeah, my best friendship just became a one-way street. More than that, he became cruel to me."
"And I beat myself up for it all the time because I let it happen twice (once when we were teenagers, and re-forged a friendship in our early 20s, then again now in our 30s...)"
-Caruthers
Board Games Are Dangerous
"Monopoly"
-Serious_XM
"There are worse games. There’s a Game of Thrones game me and my friends played for a bit. It’s an extremely long, complicated, mentally challenging, brutal, strategic war game. The rule book is 30 pages long. It doesn’t help we would drink the whole time and it’s like a four hour game, but yeah I had to stop talking to these friends for like two moths after one game."
-mynewnameonhere
"This sounds like Risk, which is a game where I almost ruined my friend’s relationship after playing with him and his girlfriend where he and I conspired to team up and defeat her because she was originally winning. All that matters though is that I ended up winning after 4 hours of being the third wheel observing dirty looks and arguing the whole time."
-lil_layne
2020-21 Has Been Eye-Opening
"Getting vaccinated, apparently. Casually told my best friend over the phone one day that I got the shot, and he immediately hangs up on me, blocks my number, and unfriended me on Facebook."
"I was confused as hell until I saw his mom's page and it was full of antivax lunacy."
-CaptainPrower
"It wasn't getting vaccinated specifically, but I lost a lot of friends when the pandemic began. Apparently, since the pandemic was just a big "liberal conspiracy," I wasn't worth spending time with since I was taking it seriously."
-crono09
Gay Doesn't Mean Interested In You
"I’m a lesbian, sometimes when I make female friends they freak out when they find out because they think I’m ‘checking them out’, then when I tell them I’m not attracted to them they get all offended."
-BranwenTheRiveter
"How hard is it to understand...'I have a type, and you're not it, which is why you're my friend and not my ex.'"
"Geesh people, get over yourselves."
-BLlTSON
Lots of things can end friendships, but good communication can help avoid many of them.
Talk to your friends honestly and things will go a lot smoother.
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