Ever lost a friend or been the lost friend over something seemingly trivial or silly?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Inspired (read: “ripped off”) from an interesting thread on my triathlon forum, I thought I’d bring it over here.

Have you ever had a friendship end because of some strange event, exchange or seemingly minor comment?

I had a friend no-show at my wedding. My last contact with him was perhaps 2 weeks before the date. We were very close. The last time we spoke, we had a phone conversation in which he observed that I spent a lot of time with my (then) g/f. I replied that I thought that was what relationships were all about. He took this as criticism of his own relationships and broke off all contact with me. At the time I was only guessing what his reasons were as he didn’t explain. It had simply been the last thing I said to him before he rapidly ended the conversation. He was one of my best friends or so I thought.

A few years later, I bumped into him and directly asked him what the heck and he confirmed the above. By then I was over the hurt of the abandonment of the friendship and more disappointed and confused by his actions. In hindsight it made sense. He had had lots of tales with different friends of his in them, but none of the people in any of his stories were current friends at the time he was telling them to me. I came to realize that he had an MO of having fallings out with his friends and then moving on. I really liked him and he was a good person when he was my friend, but it was a quirky critical flaw. He’d eventually take offense at something and burn bridges.

Even a few years more after that chance encounter, a common friend of ours died in an accident. This friend had moved away and then moved back, so Mike, the ex friend in question, had never had the time to have an actual falling out with the deceased. We saw each other at the funeral, and Mike said we should hang out and do something together. I think he was feeling remorseful about having ditched me the way he did and had judged himself to have been wrong. However it was too late, water under the bridge etc. Besides, I figured he’d eventually take offense at something again anyway, so I said “sure”, and then never called.

Other tales of strangeness?

2

Certainly not a general question. Moved to IMHO.

samclem, moderator

3

I had a friendship for many years (10+) that I ended just like that one day.

We’d had several feet of snow overnight, so much that I was literally trapped inside my house. I couldn’t make it to the car (not that I could have gone anywhere anyway), couldn’t make it to the chicken coop to feed the girls, and god forbid if something would have happened to me, an ambulance wouldn’t have even been able to make it to my door. There was no way I was able to dig out from it. I’m not a fan of snow and being literally snowed in is one of my worst nightmares and not something that I’ve ever hidden from my friend.

My friend sent me an email that morning. She lived about an hour away, but hadn’t gotten hit as badly with the winter storm. She started her email with a flippant “Are you dug out yet?” and continued with the soup she was making that day. Instead of asking how I was, how much snow I’d gotten (something she most likely would have know because that’s all that was on the news), if I’d been able to check on the chickens, or any of the other billion “How are you?” questions, she gave me “Are you dug out yet?”

I realized it was symbolic of how our friendship had evolved and that I was more of a sounding board for her life than a part of it. She didn’t really care about me or my situation, and likely wasn’t interested in hearing about it. The relationship–whatever it had become–ended that day.

And yes, another friend came by later that day and her husband used a snowblower to plow a path from my house to my garage, and to the chicken coop, and cleared the spot from the garage to the street. And eventually the several feet of snow melted.

4

I’d say everyone has, mostly because “trivial” is often in the eye of the beholder. I had a friend that was always late to meet me - half hour, an hour. The last straw was when she was supposed to meet me to see Titanic - she never showed, and finally fed up I went ahead and went into the movie. Three hours later, I came out and called her apartment to check on what happened and her roommate answered. I explained she was supposed to meet me for the 1:30 showing of a movie and never showed. “Seriously? She said she was meeting you for a movie, but she left like 20 minutes ago. Are you sure you had the time right?” She showed up ten minutes later doing a John Belushi (“There was an earthquake! A flood! It wasn’t my faaaultttttt.”). I ended things and from her perspective yeah, it was because she was late to a movie once.

Reversing that - a friend of mine stopped returning my phone calls about three years ago. No idea why. We last spoke shortly before I moved out of state, when I told him a relative had passed and I was going home for the funeral. During that trip, I decided to move back to the area and called to tell him. Never heard back or from him again. I wasn’t shocked as he had a history of this and lost most of his friends this way, and his wife always praised me for ignoring his silences until he got over whatever it was. I told her I was moving out of state and wouldn’t be able to keep that up anymore. I’ve still no idea what set him off.

5

I’ve had a few friendships which abruptly ended for various reasons.

One ended because “I never keep friends for more than a few years, I’ve grown from our friendship, it’s time for me to move on.” This came from who I called my crunchy-granola friend. Never heard from the person ever again, nor did any of our mutual friends.

What I considered a minor disagreement with a longtime friend exploded into my being XYZABC-I-wish-you-were-dead. This was over 30 years ago and I still have yet to figure out what I’d supposedly done to have set off this person.

There have been a few others, reasons of which I can’t recall right now. I do know that some of them were mutual and a couple were on my end, aka “I don’t think we should be friends anymore because of X”, X usually being a significant other I couldn’t stand for one reason or another (I was a bit of a self-righteous prat in my youth which evidently made some people consider me insufferable). I basically couldn’t stand to see my friend being ruined by X so in my mind at the time, better to end the friendship than for me to literally knock sense into my friend’s head.

I think a lot of my issues with friendship has a lot to do with my being an only. As I kid I demanded being the center of attention and other kids didn’t take kindly to it. I didn’t know I was that demanding. Over the years I’ve learned to keep to myself lest anyone is annoyed with my presence :frowning:

6

I had a couple friend (all of us lesbonians) who were extremely generous. I was an adult in college and money was tight; they were both professionals with a lot of money.

The couple really wanted me to accompany them to a Palm Springs resort for a few days. I didn’t have a spare dollar to my name and was uncomfortable with an all expenses paid weekend, but they finally wore me down.

One of the women, “Susan,” was a very lovely person who had some mental health issues. In retrospect I would say she had borderline personality disorder with a touch of bipolarity; there were hints of this before our Palm Springs weekend, but no real weirdnesses or blow-ups. “Ingrid,” her partner, was fiercely and unhealthily (IMHO) protective of Susan.

So, we arrive, have a great dinner, go for a swim, and retire to our hotel rooms. The next morning I go over to have morning coffee in their room. They’re both in bed, so I sit in the armchair next to the bed and we have what I thought was a nice coffee klatch. I eventually leave and get suited-up to meet them at the pool.

I get settled in a pool chair and am waiting for them to emerge for quite a while. Suddenly, Ingrid barges out to the deck and begins screaming at me about “disrespecting and hurting Susan’s feelings” and how I’m such a nasty bitch. :confused::confused:

It turns out that Susan was deeply, deeply offended that I sat next to her to have morning coffee rather than on the bed next to her. WTF? I couldn’t even summon a reply!

Long story short: Susan was so hurt and angry and her partner was so crazily enabling that they packed up and took a chartered flight from Palm Springs back to San Diego. They left their car there for me to get back to San Diego. I drove back, parked the car in their driveway, and we never spoke again.

I’ll never know if this bizarre event was spurred by Susan’s perception that I had rejected her (maybe she had a crush on me?) Her mental health issues, or Ingrid blowing things waaaaay out of proportion to protect Susan.

Or were they planning a menage a trois that I had no inkling about? (Shudder, shudder, and ICK!)

7

I had a major best friend who kept me going when I was totally down on my luck. Fed me, took me places, just made me feel much better.

Then I got a job cashier in a store owned by gasp Jewish people.

She went totally off the deep end when I volunteered to work Christmas Day. She spent that day with her family and never invited me. I had no problem with that, but she couldn’t stand the fact that “those people” made me work on that day.

I later found out my Boss had gotten a phone call complaining that they forced people to work so they could be open on Christmas Day, which was an outrage and should not be allowed. I’m pretty sure it was my (now ex) friend.

8

I had a very close friend. He and I always got along fine but he didn’t treat his wife well. He had cheated on her on several occasions (before I knew them) but she had always taken him back afterwards.

When I knew them, it was several years after all of that and they now had children. But he reverted to old ways and had another affair. He actually got to the point where he was spending nights at his girlfriend’s apartment but he expected his wife to just ignore it and wait for him to come home. But she decided instead that she didn’t want to go back to the old ways. She told him she was moving out with the children and would be filing for a divorce.

My friend got irrationally upset by this. He said his wife was completely wrong for breaking up their marriage and refused to accept any responsibility. He really believed that because she had ignored his affairs in the past he was now entitled to her ongoing acceptance. Being as I was his friend, I heard all of this. Finally, in an attempt to get him back to reality, I suggested that maybe he should consider he was partly responsible for the problems in the marriage. (I was equivocating due to our friendship. In reality, he was entirely responsible for the problems in the marriage. But I figured baby steps.)

He did not handle it well. He said I was taking his wife’s side and therefore our friendship was over. He never spoke to me again.

9

I recently ended a friendship after spending a few hours with a friend of several years and realizing that not once, during several hours, did she ask one question about my life or how I was doing.

10

I had a friend in college who I was attached at the hip with; everyone thought we were sisters, we had an amazing friendship and I just adored her. She broke off our friendship because, when she was in the middle of a rant about her home state’s current election, I asked a clarifying question (along the lines of “please remind me who Mike is in this field of 10 candidates”- literally trying to keep all the names straight). Apparently I was more interested in her story than being supportive. :dubious:

The other half (and me by extension) had a falling out with a coworker who was also a close friend of almost 2 decades. I’m talking executor of his will, hang out almost every week at friend’s house, host friend and his family for a week while they were looking for a house level of friendship. I talked about it in the Pit while it was happening, because we were SO CONFUSED. One day the invites to the house stopped, and the excuses started (“oh, the new puppy is keeping the place a mess”). Then friend started dodging OH at work. Then he became openly hostile at work toward OH. After what felt like forever, friend asked OH to meet him at a local bar so they could hash things out. Turns out friend had convinced himself that OH wanted to have sex with (friend’s) wife. Which, if you knew all the parties involved, was possibly the most ridiculous thing ever- to the point where OH kept saying ‘no, seriously, why are you really mad?’ because it was so unbelievable. Considering how drunk friend was, we realized he was telling the truth. So no more hanging out with them, and the wife has no clue why. In friend’s mind it certainly wasn’t a small or trivial thing, but everyone else who knows the story was so :confused::confused::confused::confused: about it that it comes across that way to anyone who isn’t in friend’s head.

11

Some of the above is not so trivial or silly. My wife dropped a long term friend for not inviting her (or us, but I’m pretty sure it was nothing to do with me) to her son’s wedding. That’s not so trivial IMO, pretty strong message given how ostensibly close they were. However it must have been something pretty subtle which caused the friend to do that. I believe my wife when she says she has no idea. They’ve spoken a couple of times since when they ran into each other, even exchanged some kind of general regret ‘for whatever it was’, but the friendship is history.

12

I did that with my mother last year. Several hours with her at a crab fest, listening to every single detail about my brother’s life, his kids, and his wife (whom my mother despises), with Hallgirl1 (whom she hadn’t seen or talked to in over a year) and never did my mother ask how either of us were, what we were up to, or even introduce us to the various people who came by our table.

It was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

13

I had a friend that I knew for years since elementary school and we lived in the same neighborhood, even after we lived further away from each other, we still talked on the phone almost daily and would meet up with each other. I remember we had a routine conversation on FB and we took a couple barbs at each other which was pretty common in our conversations, it was just light-hearted. And then, out of nowhere he said something truly vile about a family member of mine, that was so totally beyond the emotional level of the prior part of the conversation, I was truly shocked he said that. I don’t care to disclose what he said, and it wasn’t trivial to me, but deep down I know he didn’t really mean it, I know it was something just off the cuff, that he typed without thinking and probably regretted as soon as he hit send.

I immediately deleted and blocked him, and deleted his number and I’ve never spoken with him since, and that was about six or more years ago I think. I’ve hung out with mutual friends we’ve had since then and one of them even related that he wanted to reach out to me afterwards, but didn’t think I would answer him, or forgive him and he didn’t know what to say. He’s probably right that the first couple years after it happened I wouldn’t have, but a lot of the anger has subsided and sometimes now I wish it could be different but it doesn’t keep me up at night and I almost never think of him, but I feel like he should be the one to reach out to me and since he’s never tried I must conclude that he’s not that broken up about it, I’m over it as well I’m ok with the fact that our friendship ended. Friends are important but they come and go in life.

14

I was close friends with a college classmate for 35 years until I made a comment which offended her. I tried to apologize, but it seemed to make her even angrier. After a couple of days back and forth, she replied with the kind of cutting remark that only someone who knows someone really well could come up with. We’ve had no contact since.

I miss her, but what I said was unintended, and I attempted to apologize. What she said threw our entire history in my face.

15

I’m sure the person I cut it off with thought what she did was trivial. She was a work friend who absolutely adored my baby son. We moved when my son was 2.5 years old and I was preg with my daughter. We had a big health scare about my daughter during my pregnancy which I told her about. She was born perfectly fine and I sent this friend the classic hospital baby picture.

Her response to me?
“Well, they can’t all be as beautiful as your son.”

Who says that to a new mom about her baby, especially one that we were worried had major health problems? I thanked her for the gift and never spoke to her again.

16

I lost a friend over Bernie Sanders. I made no secret on social media how much I despised him and it only got worse as Sanders continued his campaign with no realistic chance of winning. A friend, who I don’t see often, but enjoyed hanging out with when he makes his rare appearances in the city, unfriended me and wouldn’t respond to a message I sent.

17

Not a friend but a coworker that I used to be chaty with.

His boss wanted me to relay a message to him. When I relayed the message, he didn’t like it and started get’n all pissy with me, all I said in response was: “Hey, don’t shoot the messenger!”

I had lterally put it out of my head 5 minutes after it happened. But after the day, he never spoke to me again.

18

Thanks for all the replies.

There are some very interesting posts here. A lot of them seem to be “the straw that broke the camel’s back” type situations, others just bizarre. My attitude toward a friendship breakup is that if the person has some quirk that’s going to come out, it’s better sooner than later.

19

That’s terrible IvoryTowerDenizen I certainly understand your reaction.

20

I had something happen with a co-worker (“WTF happened with my co-worker?” in IMHO) which just boggled my mind. I have a co-worker who I thought was becoming a good friend (she was opening herself to me with a few problems, thanking me for being such a good, honest friend blah blah blah), who, out of the blue, gave me the silent treatment for about two months.

Me? I’m an honest guy, always try to support people. I have no secret agendas (at this time in my life at 57 yrs old there’s no need for ambition), the guy I am at work is the guy I am the rest of the time. This just shocked the hell out of me. I’ve never experienced anything like this in my working life.

All I can say at this point is, why would someone want to end a friendship?

On the other hand my wife and I have pulled the plug on a couple of friendships. One good friend of mine, after leaving his wife, resurfaced as the most arrogant, condescending ass I’ve ever seen.