Warning: This article contains mention of abusive relationships.
In my experience, I've heard plenty of stories from my lady-identifying friends who had to cut off men in their lives for a plethora of very good reasons. But then I started wondering about guys who had to distance themselves from their bros. So, I asked men in the BuzzFeed Community to share times when they had to cut off a guy friend because of their trash behavior. Here's what they said:
Note: Some responses have been edited for length/clarity. Some responses are also from Reddit.
1. "This guy I was friends with seemed totally fine and didn't really show any red flags. I was there for him during his breakup with his long-term girlfriend and gave him advice when he needed it. He seemed nice and was overall pretty chill, but quiet at times. Well, he met a girl on Tinder, and they started dating pretty quickly. Me and my wife were super supportive of them both...until we heard he started being super controlling."
"He would constantly yell at her, tell her what she could and couldn't wear, told her she wasn't allowed to smoke anymore, made her feel bad for talking to her friends that he didn't like — extremely toxic stuff. At that point, my wife and I started distancing ourselves from him, until I eventually called him out for his behavior, and he completely blocked all communication. I haven't talked to him since, but luckily, she ended up breaking up with him. Sometimes you think you know people until they show you a different side."
2. "It happened slowly over a few years. I had moved away from my hometown, and we kept in contact via a group chat. There was a weird competitive vibe that started to show up during the pandemic, which is when my career took off while his business tanked. When we saw each other for his birthday a year later, he made a couple of racist jokes in which my race was the punchline. Both I and another attendee called him out for this, and he didn’t apologize."
"He did it again when I saw him several months later, so I took a step back. When I ended it, he didn’t apologize and was completely dismissive of my feelings. That just validated the decision. I occasionally hear from a mutual friend how he wishes we were all together still, but that just tells me he hasn’t reflected on why he is no longer part of my life."
—Anonymous
3. "One guy complained about how he has to keep creating new profiles, because every one gets deleted for his stalking women."
4. "A dude I was friends with in high school decided it was a good idea to bring three truckloads of his dipshit friends I'd never met to my family's land and trash the place."
"I was out of town at trade school, and this place has been in our family for four generations. I told him the rules, and he broke them. There were 25 square yards of broken liquor bottles and other shit I had to clean up. When I confronted him about it, he outright lied to me, saying he didn't know anything about it."
5. "I ended a 10-year friendship with my best friend who I will call RJ. He was a total perv and narcissist. We'd hang out at parties or in group settings with guys and girls, and he would always take pictures of the girls' butts or cleavage when they bent over. I called him out on it, and he just brushed it off like it was no big deal."
"I started to distance myself from him after that for a few years, so I would only see him at other parties or in passing. One day he invites me out to lunch to catch up, and he wanted to see why we had drifted apart. Before I could answer, he asked if I still kept in touch with anyone from high school, and I told him I did. He proceeded to question why I still hung out with those 'losers' and asked how come I can't find better friends. He then went on to brag about how much he paid for his new watch, clothes, and leased car. RJ always cared about his image. After that lunch, I completely cut him out of my life."
—Anonymous
6. "An old high school friend just never seemed to change. Seeing him over a decade after graduation was always exactly the same as seeing him in high school. Still living with his mom, still playing video games all day, still jobless, still misogynistic (and alone)."
"His idea of hanging out is eating Hot Pockets in his room while showing off his porn collection, as if he were proud of an accomplishment. Many of my old friends have grown in different directions, but I respect their growth. I cannot respect someone who is the same person at 30 as they were when they were 18."
7. "I recently went on a roadtrip with my friend (a woman) and our good friend (a man). The ENTIRE trip — and I really mean the entire thing — he showed off how many girls were matching with him on Tinder/Bumble, he talked about sex and made sure to mention the positions, and he flirted with every girl we encountered, only to be like, 'She’s really not that cute' after she would leave our presence (WHY FLIRT WITH HER THEN???). But I would say the worst thing was the way he spoke about women TO women."
"From saying how he never noticed how spacey his best friend was after she gave birth to her son (it was a difficult pregnancy), to saying he wants another one of our friends to work as his secretary (even though she has a full-time job as senior manager at a pharmacy). Over the years, I’ve realized this is not someone I want in my life. I grew up, and he never did. I like to surround myself with people who don’t tear others down just to make themselves feel better, and I can only imagine if you’re saying that about people I know AND don’t know, what are you saying about me?"
8. "We had to remove a couple guys from our gaming group. One was a womanizer who started espousing homophobic and anti-Semitic views. Seeing as I'm Jewish, the group was OK with not continuing to invite him."
9. "When I was pretty new in my relationship with my now-wife, one of my friends came over because we had planned to do karaoke that night. When he showed up, he was already wasted, and he immediately started an argument with her about gun control, and he got pretty threatening."
"I told him that he was out of line and not to talk to her that way, and she ended up leaving to go back home. He then said, 'Now that she's gone, let's go to the bar and sing.' I told him that I was gonna go after her, and he replied with, 'So you're going to choose her over me?' And I said, 'Yeah, that's right.' I've only seen him once in the following eight years, and only briefly."
—Anonymous
10. "What really did it for me was when he said it was 'so scary to be dating now' because 'any woman can just say whatever they want even if it’s not true and men will get in trouble.' Yeah, the only people who say that are the ones who are doing shit that should be called out."
11. "A friend from high school went off the deep end with his political views. It isn't that political views matter to me, but when it is all you talk about, it makes it hard for me to want to associate with you."
"It isn't even that his views are juxtaposed to my political views, they are just on the extreme end. There were a number of other things that had him on the fringe of my friend group to start with; now our only interactions are the occasional text message or Facebook comment."
12. "I had been friends with this guy. I'll call him Stan. He is a 36-year-old guy. I'm 43. We hit it off when we first met. He is just incredible to be around. Handsome, funny, very outgoing. Owns the room when he walks in it. We were connected at the hip for seven years. I am a homosexual man. Stan is straight. Everyone thought we were together, and it was obvious why, we were so close. Even his mother thought we were together. Also, that is where Stan lived. In his mother's basement, which is a red flag I didn't see. Fast-forward to two years ago. I buy a home, and Stan moves in with me. I figure out quickly that Stan has no respect for me or my home, and is terrified of responsibility."
"After cleaning up after him for a year, including all the trash he would leave on the ground outside, I decided to talk with him about cleanliness because his room was starting to smell up my house. He blows up and leaves, and I don't hear from him for days. I ended up having to kick in his locked bedroom door to get the smell out of my house. His room was piled with dead mice, trash, and gallon jugs of piss that were leaking into the floor. Takes me a week to clean the room, had to cut out part of the floor and subfloor to get the smell of piss out. I had to cut my losses as well as him from my life. His mother was devastated by the news. Mainly 'cause she didn't want him back in her basement. Which he is. And he probably will be for the rest of her life. It sucks 'cause he has such great potential in so many ways. All wasted."
—Anonymous
13. "He slept with two of my girlfriends. I had texts and a video to prove it. And I confronted him about it on both occasions, and he said 'it wasn’t me' like he was Shaggy."
"Look, if he would have been a man and admitted it to me, I would have been OK with it and moved on because he was one of my best friends. But, because he continued to lie to me, I cut him off. Now after 10 years, he randomly decided to come clean. Like, fuck you, you had your chance."
14. "My best friend from childhood became a white supremacist. I’m not white. Even his family had no idea what happened to him."
15. "He thought he was too popular for me. I introduced him to all my friends, and I invited him to all the parties I threw. People finally started to acknowledge him, and all this ‘newfound fame’ got to his head. He started acting all cocky to me and to everyone else."
"I was at lunch with my other friend once, and he was there. He was making plans with the other friend for a lunch on Friday. He looked at me dead in the eye and told me not to come. That really was my final straw."
16. "We were great friends in junior high and part of high school. Into early adulthood, he ONLY called me when he needed something. I quit taking his calls."
—Anonymous
17. "He asked me if I could send him $700 after he moved out of state months prior. He gave me a sob story about having a rough time since he moved. Problem is, this wasn't the first story he's given me. I had also sent him $50 a few weeks earlier. Despite his promises to pay me back a few days later, I was ghosted."
"That $700 was the last straw. I was done. He moved back to town a year or so ago. He tried a few times to contact me. I've never replied. I hope he's doing better, but fuck him."
18. And finally, "He developed a sour attitude in life about how he couldn’t get ahead. He slowly got jealous of the success that groups of guys we hang out with had, and he got mean-spirited. We ALL tried to help him, get him jobs, interviews, hired him, etc. to get him experience, but the fucker wouldn’t work hard at all."
Now I'm curious. If you've ever had to cut a guy friend out of your life, tell us about it in the comments.
If you or someone you know is in immediate danger as a result of domestic violence, call 911. For anonymous, confidential help, you can call the 24/7 National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 (SAFE) or chat with an advocate via the website.