Unfortunately, some friends don't always have your back like you think they do. One thing is for sure though, fake friends always find a way to expose themselves.
Let's take a look at some of the moments people realized their friends weren't actually their friends.
All posts have been edited for clarity.
Fake Friends
1. “When I slowly realized I was only around for chores and errands. For example, rides to the airport, picking up furniture, helping them move. Anything social always resulted in either last-minute cancellations or showing up forty-five minutes late and bolting after ten minutes. I thought they were busy, but no.”
2. “They stopped inviting me to hang out. They would ask me to drive them to parties, but not invite me to go to the parties. They basically ghosted me for a while.
They were once such amazing and important friends, but they gradually became really arrogant. It took way longer than it should have to give up and find other people.”
3. “The group of friends I gave up on would use this guy we knew. They would invite him to hang out only so he could drive us.
One time they didn’t let him into the club so I decided to stay behind with him and watch movies at his house. He even had the decency to go back for my friends when the club closed.
I’m no longer friends with them but I am still friends with the guy and he even helped me get together with my boyfriend. I don’t give him enough props.”
4. “Back in my first year of college, I used to have a group of friends. We always hung out together and we used to have a group chat where we discussed anything from class subjects to random things. After a year, I noticed that one of the guys kept being excluded. He was not invited to or informed about any group hangouts while they would talk smack behind his back. The unofficial leader of the group actually made a whole new group chat, inviting everyone, myself included, except for the guy without his knowledge.
I know what it feels like to be left out, I experienced that in middle school and it’s really awful. I stopped hanging out with them and I started hanging out with the guy. He’s quite eccentric but a very good person at heart. We’ve been friends for more than six years, and he still got my back.”
“Hi! Good to see you!”
“When I was married we had a friend group of three couples from our street. We went to football games, trips to the beach, and spent holidays at each other’s homes. After the divorce, I went traveling for a year then moved to a condo downtown in our city. I had lunch with the wives after returning from traveling. I thought we were still friends.
I was sitting on the second-floor balcony of my new condo one night at about eight o’clock and saw them walking down the street.
I shouted, ‘Hi! Good to see you!’
They had all been out to dinner and were headed to another couple’s apartment who had moved downtown while their house was being renovated for a quick drink.
I was excited to see them and asked them to stop by on their way back to where they had parked. I tidied up my place and anxiously awaited seeing my old pals. I was texting with one of the ladies during the wait.
About nine o’clock, I saw them walking and chatting back towards my place. They couldn’t see me. When they got close to my balcony they stopped talking and walked quickly and quietly by. Then started laughing and talking after they passed.
The one I had texted with while I waited sent me a text an hour later saying they were just now leaving the other friend’s place and it was too late to stop by.
I replied that I had seen them when they left. I never spoke to any of them again even though they tried to be ‘friends’ on Facebook.
I wasn’t hurt that they couldn’t stop by on short notice. It was that they made me a joke and it really hurt.”
Friends From School
1. “Once high school ended, I heard about all the rumors they made up about me.”
2. “My ‘friends’ from high school all unfollowed me when I graduated college. I’m the only one who no longer lives in our hometown.”
3. “One friend stopped replying to my texts right after we graduated from college. Like the same week we graduated. So I was pretty much just a study buddy that they kept close to keep me helping them.”
4. “I was friends with so many people during college and the last three weeks were an unpaid work placement which we had to go back to the school to hand in our paperwork, not one of them spoke to me or would even answer me if I said something to them. It became clear that I was only valuable to them when I was helping them. The class awards had me down as ‘most willing to help classmates.'”
Gold-Digging Friends
“I used to be a well-off, successful executive for a very well-known international company. I lived abroad, used to travel a lot, and only came back to my home country every once in a while. When I did, everybody was eager to meet me, they invited me for dinner and drinks and loved to spend time with me. My weekends back home were so full I could hardly find the time for everybody.
Then I got an offer from another company. On paper, it was a really interesting job but it turned out to be a dud. I was still making good money, but the company was full of lies. I left it after less than two years out of sheer frustration. I thought my experience would help me find something else in no time. I was wrong. I ended up unemployed for almost two years and depressed. I also lost a ton of money, and while I never had any serious economic issues, I certainly couldn’t afford the lifestyle I was used to anymore.
My ‘friends’ slowly started to fade away. Invites became texts. Texts became just holiday and birthday wishes. In some cases, even those disappeared. Funny enough, since I had come back to my home country we could have met much more often than we used to; instead, we never did. The sad part was counting my two best men among the ones who almost completely disappeared.
Now I have a job again. It’s a much more down-to-earth position for an okay company. I’m not making that much, and quite frankly I could find something better. In the meantime though, I was lucky enough to find out who my real friends are. They were the ones who stayed and decided I was worth their time even when I wasn’t exactly the funniest buddy to spend time with. The others are still gone but they are still here.”
Wedding Invites
1. “My best friend since fifth grade invited me to his wedding as a guest. I expected to be a groomsman since we basically stayed the night at each other’s houses every weekend all through high school and I set him up with his wife. We were still close for long-distance friends too after moving to college. I would come to visit and spend the weekend with him and some mutual friends a few times a year, we did fantasy football and texted pretty frequently.
At the wedding, the bride and groom each had about eight people in their parties. The groom had his brother and seven friends. I didn’t make the top seven. I knew pretty much everyone on the bride’s side but only knew half of the guys up there with the groom. That opened my eyes a bit.
I took a step back and analyzed our friendship after that. I realized I always texted first or made plans, always visited him but he never visited me, etc. He basically put in no effort. So I stopped texting for a while, as a test, and I haven’t heard from him since. It’s been about eleven years.”
2. “I was invited to the bachelorette party for one of the friends in this group. While at the party, I figured out that I was the only person not invited to the wedding.
I had been invited to the party because they needed another person to chip in for expenses.”
3. “My best friend of ten years called on my wedding day to say she couldn’t make it because she was just so sad about her recent divorce.
It turned out, she just had a date.
Our whole friendship was fake, it just took me to that point to realize it.”
Sobriety
1. “I shortly realized after quitting illicit substances that a majority of my ‘friends’ only kept me around so they could feel better about their own habits.
I was heavily addicted and setting myself down a path I never once thought I could or would take. I stopped for my own benefit and health, and was treated like a selfish piece of trash for doing so. The next months ensued and not one of them checked in to see how I was doing, but instead, my high school best friend started sleeping with my ex-high school girlfriend. I was with her for five years and actually thought I was going to marry her at one point but she dumped me for doing illicit substances and is now an honorary member of the group I was cast out of.
I was replaced with the person who partially fueled my substance abuse, who dumped me for substance abuse, by the group that didn’t like me stopping my substance abuse, so they could all abuse substances together.
It’s now been over a year since I quit, and honestly, I couldn’t be happier. I got rid of an illicit substance problem and a lot of fake friends but it was an eye-opener to say the least.”
2. “When they stopped contacting me when I stopped drinking.”
3. “When they thought it was ‘lame’ that I decided to get sober.”
4. “When I stopped drinking and became sober for a two-year period. I discovered I had a wide circle of people only because I enjoyed drinking with friends, and I often paid as I usually had more money.
The second I stopped buying drinks I received almost no invitations to go out or do anything.
The people that still wanted to see me for coffee or shopping dates are still in my life.
I cut everyone else out and it was so liberating.”
Mom Friends
1. “This friend had kids the same age as mine. We got together for play dates pretty often and our kids would sleepover at each others’ houses for weekends. I liked her. We would often visit and talk while our kids were playing.
One weekend, her kids had stayed at my house. The older one called her mom to see when she was coming to pick her up.
I was in the room, and the kid put the phone on speaker for some reason.
She told the kid what time she would be there and added, ‘You had better be waiting outside. If I have to go in and spend the next hour talking to her, I’m going to be really angry.’
We didn’t spend much time together after that.”
2. “When I was babysitting her kids things were going great. We would hang out all the time, have movie nights, and just talk and chill. But the second she no longer needed a babysitter was the second I got kicked to the curb.
No explanation, not even a text back.
Some people will act like your best friend until they no longer need you.
Their loss though.”
Messy Divorce
1. “I flew out to support a friend going through a messy divorce. While I was there, she left me in the apartment to meet up with her boyfriend that I didn’t know about.
He turned out to have just been released from prison for manslaughter.
Once she told me that, I told her that I didn’t want to spend time with him, especially considering the circumstances of my visit. The next night, I woke up in the middle of the night to find him in the living room.
She said that she thought it wouldn’t matter since I was asleep.
The next day, she invited her soon-to-be ex-husband over without telling me and then asked me to meditate their conversation once he got there.
That conversation turned ugly fast, and she ended up storming out.
He broke down and asked if I thought it was salvageable, and I told him that she had already moved on.
Maybe not the best idea on my part, but at that point, she had shown me how vile of a person she is.”
2. “This was quite a few years ago. My ex-husband and I were really friendly with another couple. We did a ton of stuff together. Then they moved, not far, and fairly shortly after my ex-husband and I separated. They hung out with me for a few months but then stopped calling.
A few years later, I ran into both of them at a race, an ultramarathon, and they both pretended like they didn’t know me. That was actually a really painful moment.”
3. “After my divorce. We were couples friends not individually.”
Post-Divorce Friend Group
“I started with a core group of close friends who had all met in our late teens and early twenties and one of them introduced me to the woman who I would ultimately marry. Well into our forties they were what I considered to be my family but when the divorce happened things spiraled.
My best friend stuck with me, but his wife was the one who orchestrated things in our group and she was best friends with my ex-wife. I was expecting the two of them to insulate for a while and I knew it was painful for my ex-wife to be around me, so it was no surprise when I stopped getting invitations to cookouts, etc.
But then I noticed that the other members of the group were also avoiding and ignoring me. I would see on Facebook that one of them came into my town to go to a concert for a band that they knew I liked and hadn’t so much as texted me. Birthdays rolled around and nobody would call. When my parents both died within a few months of each other and not one of them reached out I knew where I stood.
My best friend needs to get credit though. Alone from all of them he made a consistent effort to stay in touch and see me regularly. He was there when my parents died and through everything else even though his wife clearly disapproved. I think finally after the nonsense had been going on for several years he told her how ridiculous it all seemed and that entire friend group tried to reconcile. I made it clear right from the start that there was no guarantee that I would ever find space for them in my life again.
They are having their first big party for the first time in over a year and I’m invited. People are coming in from all over the country and the only one I care about seeing is my buddy.”
Feel-Good Friend
“I’ve had a couple of these, but the one that stung the most was my best friend who kept me around to feel good about herself. Things I didn’t realize until she ghosted me after nearly seven years of friendship. She always had a guy, a job she loved and was constantly getting promoted, and a fancy apartment. I was always single, had a dead-end job I hated, and while my apartment was nice, it was nowhere near as nice as hers.
Fast-forward to me getting in a very solid, serious relationship, renting a nice house instead of a small apartment, and having a really good and secure job. I had also gotten medication for my anxiety and I was feeling a lot better.
The last I spoke with her, we had made plans for her to visit me. When that date got closer, I texted her to see if she still planned on coming and she never responded. I reached out to her a number of times over a couple of months. Nothing.
From her perception, I was no longer the friend to feel sorry for, the friend you could compare yourself to and feel better about your life. Therefore, I was no longer needed. It broke my heart and took me months to get over.”
Hometown Friends
“I wasn’t popular in school at all. I had a reputation for being a freak with an attitude problem, but I performed well in academics and sports and was often seeing the same people within that high-performing group. I got relatively close to the girls I did sports with since we spent so much time together at practice and at meets, we even had lunch together sometimes but when it came to anything social, I was never invited.
They went to parties every weekend, they even threw the parties, and didn’t even invite me.
Sometimes they had the excuse of, ‘Oh there were just too many people,’ but most of the time they didn’t bother explaining why I wasn’t included even though we spent a lot of them with the same people.
I ran into some of the girls I was closest with a year after graduation and they acted like they barely knew me when they said hi.
I was also the only one from my ‘real’ friend group that finished college. During the time where I was away and each of them were understandably struggling to figure out what to do next, we obviously struggled not to grow apart. It wasn’t that bad until they started dating these guys from our backwater hometown.
I tried to be happy for them, but the guys gave off a really bad vibe.
After a particularly bad night, I made my feelings about them known because my feelings were hurt and honestly I thought my friends deserved better.
After that, they barely answered my messages, stopped including me in their plans, and actively made up stories when I tried to make the plans first.
We used to hang out every day when we weren’t at school or at work so the behavior didn’t go unnoticed to me. Then, my dad got really sick and spent the entire summer I was home in the hospital.
I was really stressed and struggling and they knew, and barely reached out. That’s when I knew despite everything we had gone through they were fake friends. We had a fight and I never spoke to any of them again.
My only consolation to this day is that they stayed in that dead-end town for those guys, they had plans about moving down south and doing other stuff and never fulfilled any of them, and I have done all the things I said I was going to do. However, I don’t consider it much of a consolation because despite how they treated me I didn’t want them to live terrible lives. But oh well.”
Friends From College
“I threw myself a nineteenth birthday party while I was in undergrad and invited a small group of friends. I knew it would be a bit awkward because my friends from college had yet to meet my best friend, but I figured if we got along, they would manage to get along with her, too. The plan was to go out to eat together and then go back to my dorm for the party.
My best friend came from an hour away to celebrate with me and brought a present, just something to show she cared.
When I chose what restaurant I wanted to eat at, the rest of my ‘friends’ forced me to eat at the restaurant beside it instead, the one where the only thing I liked to eat was rice because I’m a pescatarian.
They didn’t talk to me the entire night and did nothing but mock my best friend and her significant other in the days to follow. They made fun of how they pronounced menu items, accused her boyfriend of being weird because he tried on one of my hats, talked about how boring my friend was because she didn’t have an alt style like them, etc.
Then, when we returned to the dorm, they ate desserts, got cake everywhere, and immediately left. They didn’t stay for the party. They didn’t carry on a conversation with me or try to get to know my best friend. They didn’t clean up after themselves. Every single one of them just left immediately after they ate cake.
One of them gave me a present, and it was the most narcissistic thing I had ever seen. She drew herself as my favorite characters. She put her face on the bodies of all of my favorite characters and expected me to hang them up in my room and thought she was being benevolent. This was a passive-aggressive attack because she frequently insulted my artwork and wanted to show me how it should be done.
My best friend ended up staying until three o’clock in the morning, and we had a wonderful time together exploring buildings on campus and watching crazy YouTube videos.
She looked at me and said, ‘These people are not your friends. You don’t deserve to be treated like this. I don’t know why they even bothered to come.’
I am happy to say that not a single one of those friends is still in my life except my best friend.”
“When I Traded In My Truck”
“When I traded in my truck for a smaller more eco-friendly vehicle. Communication plummeted now that I can’t haul furniture around, assist with moving as much, dispose of garbage, etc.”