Recently over on the Ask Women subreddit, u/Cutiebeautypie asked women to share what caused them to finally cut off a male friend. The comments were filled with women sharing their stories of ending their long and/or meaningful friendships with men because of their toxic — and sometimes completely out-of-nowhere — behavior. Here are some of the most upsetting responses:
1. "After I went through a breakup, my friend of over ten years got mad when I met someone else. He tried to say I should sleep with him because he’s known me longer. Like…I don’t have sex with people based on seniority."
2. "He told me a mutual friend who had been sexually assaulted deserved it because she was wearing a bikini in front of boys and obviously 'asking for it.' We were in his pool at the time and I was in a bikini.🙃🙃"
3. "When he said about Andrew Tate: 'I get he's not perfect, but media is treating him unfairly. He really opened my eyes.'"
4. "He expected me to mother him and be his sole emotional support while also demeaning me and my own problems."
5. "When they hit on me. And I don’t mean in the normal way. Like, after all that time of being close and being friends, they said something vile and/or entitled that showed they'd been thinking of me as a sexual object for quite some time. I had one protest when I rejected his shocking request. He asked, 'Why will you have sex with other guys but not with me?' 🤢 He had been my good friend for years at that point. I was so disgusted and disappointed."
6. "I've cut off several, and all for the same reason: They tried to make our friendship either sexual or romantic — or both."
7. "There was this very old guy I considered a friend once. I saw him sort of as a father figure. (I had just lost my father.) I confided in him some of my troubles, and he was supportive like a friend would be. Later he asked me to become his lover. He used those words. He got mad when I said hell no, and as a sort of 'revenge,' he said, 'I was going to leave you half of my severance package.' The disgusting little old man. My skin itches just remembering it."
8. "When I heard that he said, 'She must have internalized misogyny. Look at the way she dresses' about me behind my back. That was the moment I cut him off. He’d also tell me to my face that I was his 'favorite person' and would tell others that he hated me but found me sexy at the same time. It shocked me to hear the way he’d feel these things for me apparently simultaneously — hate and sexual attraction — and it wasn’t until later that I realized it was incel-like thinking."
9. "He was an online friend I had known for ages. We talked about the idea of visiting, but one day he sprung on me that he had bought a plane ticket and would be here the next day. It made me uncomfortable, but I didn't feel like I could abandon him in a city he didn't know, so he stayed at my place for a week. The first night he kept trying to be touchy and huggy (I hate physical contact, he knows I do) so I asked my then-boyfriend to tag along for the rest of the visit. My friend was sulky and quiet most of the time, and on the last day, he snapped. He was mad that I wouldn't reciprocate his attempts to touch me and shouted that since we had been friends for so long, he should be allowed to touch me. Nope. Not how it works, buddy. He left for the airport, and I haven't spoken to him since."
10. "We met up for drinks, and he told me he cheated on his girlfriend. He was very unapologetic about it. He got drunk later on and started making weird, trashy, and creepy remarks about women. I haven't seen him since."
11. "A close friend whom I saw all the time told me that there was tension in his marriage because of me. I thought his wife was my friend, too. Neither of them spoke to me again. I loved that family, and I didn’t even get to say goodbye to their kids or their dog. I’d bet a million dollars that now, three years later, there’s still tension in that house. I wasn’t the problem."
12. "He kept calling me his best friend in public but made no effort to actually hang out with me. I felt more like an exotic accessory for him to parade around (I went to a primarily white school, and I'm not white) than his actual friend anymore. So I stopped trying to meet up with him and stopped responding to his texts. He got mad that I wasn't giving him attention and social clout. I told him I was done being friends, and that was that."
13. "When they started flirting with me while married or in a relationship. This happened twice. One tried multiple times over the course of a few years off and on. The other immediately gave up after I called him out the first time. Now the only male friends I have are my husband's friends."
14. "The last one was a friend from work. When I quit, he asked if we could stay in contact. I said sure. I didn't know him that well, but he was nice, married, and had a couple of kids. It turned into him texting me all hours of the day and sending me sad faces when I didn't reply immediately. It just got weird."
15. "I had a male friend I’d known for about six years. I introduced him to my best friend (whom I’d met about a year prior), and they hit it off. They started dating, but then she came to me saying he was getting weird and clingy. She showed me how often he texted and called. It was a lot. She told him she wanted to end it, and he flipped. He wasn’t violent, but he started following her around, showing up places he knew she’d be. I told him to cut it out and leave her alone. The last straw was when she and I went out of town to visit a friend (someone all three of us knew), and surprise, surprise! Suddenly he decided to also take a trip to visit this same friend. That was the end of it. We told our mutual friend what this guy was up to, and he, thankfully, sided with us and asked stalker-friend to leave. That was the last time I ever spoke to that guy. He left her alone after that."
16. And finally, "He fell down the incel rabbit hole. For some reason, he respected me but not any other woman. I put up with a lot trying to keep him from circling the drain of that miserable delusional way of thinking. Obviously, it didn't work. The straw that broke the camel's back was when he told me he 'hated all females.' I pointed out that I was a woman, and if he hated me, I'd be on my way. He backpedaled, but it was too late. I was done."
Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.