Note: This post contains mentions of disordered eating, seizure, sexual assault, and depression.
A few weeks ago, we asked the BuzzFeed Community to share why they decided to ghost a friend for good. And a lot of people's responses resonated with readers.
So to expand the conversation, we rounded up even more stories that explain why some people had to ghost their friends, even after trying to make things work. Here are their reasons:
1. "When my beloved mother died, the only two friends I had in a chat saw my message and said nothing. I cannot forgive it."
2. "My so-called best friend decided to abandon me 9 miles from my home at 3 a.m. to chase after a guy who had coke. I'm disabled with multiple chronic pain disorders and autoimmune diseases. I did manage to get ahold of my daughter, who came to pick me up, but I ended up walking 3 miles before she was able to get to me. Needless to say, I was nearly bedridden for a week afterward. My 'friend' texted me the next day to apologize, and I ignored her."
"A couple of years later, she texted me asking for money. I didn't even bother to answer her."
3. "My friend told me that my fiancé tried to have an affair with him but he declined. I wasn't mad at him about that; I was upset that he kept it a secret for about 10 years and decided to tell me a couple of days after my fiancé died."
"At the funeral, he complained to others that he was being treated like he was just a friend. I guess he thought he should have been treated like a sister wife or something."
4. "I ghosted my best friend I had all through high school. I'm a gay man, and she dated this guy who was super uncomfortable with this fact. Eventually, I found out about the nasty things he would say about me when I wasn't around, and I refused to be around him. She was into this relationship very much, and I saw her less and less. I also caught on that she never stuck up for me or called him or his friends out for their homophobic bullshit."
"When she came to visit me our first year of college (we attended different schools), I decided to cut ties with her after realizing that absolutely nothing had changed and that I'd much rather be around my new friends who were accepting of me."
5. "I ghosted my best friend of 28 years after she completely changed while planning her wedding. First she asked me and her sister to lose weight before the dress fitting and said we should do a shake diet. She knew I had put on a bit of weight and I was really insecure about this. Second, I planned the bachelorette party, and three of her work friends didn't pay me for their share. She said I was selfish for bringing this up."
"Third, I broke my wrist in a car accident five weeks before the wedding, and when I called her to tell her what had happened, the first thing she said was that I best not have a cast on for the wedding day. The wedding day went fine, but a week after the wedding, she texted me asking to meet up. When we did, she said I tried to make the wedding about me because everyone was asking how I had broken my wrist. I told her to have a good life, got up, and walked away. She texted me a few times after that, but I haven't spoken to her for seven years now. It hurt at first, but I’ve realized we had just grown apart. It’s sad, but it’s part of life."
6. "My best friend of 20-plus years decided that it was acceptable to make fun of my husband, who had just been sexually assaulted, and then allowed herself to tell him to 'be a man' and to swallow his misplaced 'little' male pride. I have quietly erased her from all my social networks, blocked her absolutely everywhere, and warned my entourage that the first person who spoke to me about her would suffer the same fate."
"You can tell me whatever the hell you want about me, I don't give a fuck, but don't you dare make fun of my husband, and don't try to invalidate his traumatic experience."
7. "During my first year of college, I'd had a lot of past trauma and a difficult home life, and I never had a lot of friends. I was hoping for a fresh start. I ended up making friends with my roommates. It was everything I hoped it would be: watching movies, going out to eat, celebrating birthdays, staying up late, and just talking. I'd never gotten to do any of those things before. About halfway through that year, I got sick, schoolwork piled up, and there was a family crisis."
"I started struggling, and I didn't know how to ask for help. I thought maybe it was just time to let it all go and close things out, so to speak. I thought they'd be more hurt by me dragging them through all of that. I pulled away from them while I was struggling with everything and eventually ghosted them entirely. I thought it was for the best at the time even if it broke my heart to do it. I never had friends like that again. It still haunts me. I can also recognize that what I did was screwed up, and for what it's worth, I'm sorry."
8. "My best friend of 20 years had always treated me badly. I always brushed it aside because she had a terrible, abusive childhood. She was self-serving and always put me and other people down to make herself feel better. She stopped talking to me when I didn’t invite her to my wedding at the courthouse. I ghosted her when I found out she was telling people that I needed to get over my son's death and that I was just trying to get attention."
9. "I ghosted my childhood best friend, whom I've known since I was born (she's my mom's best friend's daughter), for many reasons. She was always very selfish and toxic, but for some reason, I thought I was the only one exempt from her cruelty — then she stole my boyfriend. I even forgave her for it (the relationship also only lasted a week), but I never trusted her again. A few years later, my chronic illnesses became debilitating, and I became basically bedridden. It was one of the hardest times of my life, and she rarely messaged me and only came to see me once within the first year and a half before I gave up."
"I was already aware that I had to get her out of my life when I went to her family's home for Thanksgiving. I ended up having a seizure on her living room floor, and she tried to change the subject to her liking cake. Her mother and my mother ignored her, thankfully, but that made me feel so much less guilty for doing it. I was heartbroken to realize this girl I had been defending and loving for so long truly was a selfish bitch. She still talks to me two or three times a year, and I've never said anything bad because she's basically like a cousin to me, and I'll always have her family in my life because of our moms — so why make it weird?"
10. "I was in a best friend group with two other girls in middle school and high school. We talked less in college but remained in touch. I asked them to be my bridesmaids. At my bachelorette party, they didn't join any of the festivities and stayed in the hot tub all night, even after I asked them to join us twice. I let it slide."
"Two years later, they found a mutual friend of ours whom we had been looking for since high school. They knew I wanted to see her again, but they didn't tell me and went and saw her without me. However, the final straw was when a close family friend was murdered by her husband, and they both offered sympathy and condolences to everyone in my family but me. I took the hint and blocked them both. I don't miss them."
11. "I ghosted my best friend when I stumbled across her making fun of me on Facebook. She called me a globe, in reference to my weight, and said she wanted to stick continents all over me. I quietly blocked her and haven’t really spoken to her since."
12. "My friend pretended to be very nice, but in reality, she lacked so much self-confidence because she would constantly compare herself with others. To compensate, she would talk about how good a person she was, cling to people very quickly, talk behind her friends' backs, and call you out if you didn’t meet every single friend expectation. She once accused me of wanting to see her die."
"Her family called me the n-word and thought I was entitled. I was dating her brother, but she made herself the third wheel. The whole family was toxic, and I was not perfect, by any means, but I would always be the one to bring up concerns and she would get mad. I ghosted her for about a year, and she tried to communicate with me, but I felt it was way too late and that I would be gaslit. I feel bad, and I know she is still very popular, but I can’t trust her or her entire family after two to three years of feeling the need to walk on eggshells."
13. "I was in a really bad job where the boss was abusive (i.e., yelling, throwing things at us, firing many people without cause), and I was working really hard interviewing for other jobs. I heard from one of my references that a prospective company had called her, and I was almost crying in relief when I phoned my BFF. She replied in a really angry, bitter tone, 'Well, I’m glad something good is happening for someone, because I just got two new projects dumped on me.' You couldn’t be happy for me for one second? Not even one second? I told her I had to run to a meeting, and I haven’t spoken to her since."
14. "This girl outed one of our mutual friends as gay to at least three people when our friend weren’t ready to come out. She didn’t see why it was such a problem. I ended up ghosting her. My other friend she outed cut ties with her and sadly lost another friend in the process too. Apparently she doesn’t know why we don’t talk to her anymore."
15. "She knew I was depressed and insecure about my weight gain about a year ago and that I was in a very dark place. Fast-forward to this year, and she got engaged and asked me to be one of her bridesmaids. We went to her bachelorette party and took a lot of pictures (which I’m not a big fan of doing, but I put up with it for her)."
"A week after we returned, I saw that she had posted a picture of the two of us on social media — except she had photoshopped me to appear slimmer and to her 'standards.' Later, I found out she had done the same thing to other pictures of us from a year ago, and I hadn't noticed until now. Needless to say, I refused to go back to that dark place of depression. I ghosted her, blocked her everywhere, and never showed up to her wedding."
16. "I used to have this close friend from high school. Several years ago, since she became vegan, she started pushing her lifestyle onto everyone. I have no problem with her because I know what goes on in the meat industry; I've also been a vegetarian/pescatarian since middle school. But I won't preach to people about what is wrong to eat; they can eat whatever pleases them."
"The final straw was when I sent her a picture of my cat in a silly Snapchat filter of a turkey. I wasn't really thinking at all, as I forgot she was this hardcore vegan. Her response was, 'Turkey is bad for cats.' And I've ghosted her since that message."
—[deleted user]
17. "The best man in our wedding didn’t show up to the funeral service for our daughter, who died at birth, because he was 'hung over' and it was 'too early on a Saturday morning.' My husband and I distanced ourselves from him after that. A few years later, we totally stopped talking to him when he told my husband he puts up with me because he has to. My husband told him he is released from having to put up with me anymore because he will always choose me and our family over their friendship."
"Their friendship wasn’t deep. It really only consisted of video games, girls, and partying. So when my husband settled down with me, the friend didn’t know how to handle it. My husband grew up, but the friend and friendship didn’t grow with him, and from what I hear, the ex-friend hasn’t really changed much almost 10 years later. Meanwhile, we’ve been married for nine years and have two more beautiful daughters and couldn’t be happier."
18. "I had a friend for over 20 years. We used to date, but then we broke up and eventually became friends. He was the type who would always manipulate people to get whatever he wanted out of them — and I thought he would never do that to me."
"At one point, he convinced me to go on a Caribbean vacation with him that he 'won.' Found out his mom had paid for the trip, and he and his mom hounded me to pay for 'my share,' which was over $2,000. And this was after I paid for everything that was not included in the 'trip that was won.' Apparently, he had already bought the plane tickets and paid for the resort for him and his boyfriend, but they broke up. So he wanted to go with me so he could get the trip he already paid for. I ghosted him and haven’t looked back."
19. "When my 'best friend' of 16 years tried to sleep with my fiancé and then tried to lie about it."
20. "I got COVID and was down for the count for a solid couple of weeks. My close friend of several years didn’t call or text once to check on me. I had made a couple of new friends a few months before who’d check in daily. I wasn't hurt, but it was surprising, as I thought we were on a different level."
"It was because of this that I made a decision to no longer serve any of the relationships in my life if they weren’t serving me."
21. "I had a group of three girls from college who were my best friends for almost 20 years — weddings, kids, you name it; we were there for each other. About three years ago, we were doing our yearly beach trip with our respective families when I had an accident using a Jet Ski. It belonged to one of my friends. I ended up with a broken neck and pulverized wrist. I was in a neck brace for months and had to have two reconstructive surgeries on my wrist. The friend who owned the Jet Ski only contacted me to ask about whether I was going to pay for the repairs to the Jet Ski."
"She even had her mother and husband call because I wasn’t responding fast enough (I was drugged up most of the time, in doctor's appointments, and had one arm in a cast). Another one of the girls stopped speaking to me as I was being transported to the hospital after my accident. The third girl, who had said she was my ride-or-die friend just a few days before the accident, decided that since I rode the Jet Ski and almost died, she could stop being friends with me. So they may have started the ghosting, but I was the one who removed them from my life. I haven’t spoken to them in three years, and the moment I erased them during my recovery, I felt a whole lot better!"
22. "My mother had stage 4 cancer and was slowly wasting away in the other room. My sister and I were college age, so while I was home on break, I was cooking all the meals, shopping with what we had, and cleaning. We were doing everything to keep the house going while my mom couldn't do anything. One day, my best friend of five years called to hang out. I said, 'Not right now, I'm making dinner, but in like an hour and a half, I might be good.' His exact words were, 'Your family is taking advantage of you.' I told him to fuck off and hung up. I never called or texted him again."
"I occasionally saw him in our circle of friends, but I never even attempted to make eye contact. He was an awesome guy to hang out with, and I wish he had the wherewithal to realize he was a horrifically selfish dick and just apologize sincerely, but he never did. My mom found out about it and was also very, very sad because she knew I'd lost my best friend while also losing her. She was the best. Miss you, Momma."