Recently, we wrote about why friend groups fell apart, and members of the BuzzFeed Community submitted their own examples.* Here are more shocking and heartbreaking reasons friend groups imploded.
*We also used some answers from the original Reddit thread.
1. "It was found out that a guy in one of my friend groups was a registered sex offender (his victim was a toddler). Half of us immediately cut the guy off and went total no contact with him. The other half stood by him and said things like 'none of us were there, we don't know what actually happened,' and, 'he says the child's mother framed him because she was angry at him for dumping her and I believe him,' and 'whatever he is alleged to have done is in the past, he's already served his time.' I just stopped hanging out with all of those people in that friend group and focused on other things with other friends."
2. "A guy in our group chat thought it would be a REALLY funny thing to suddenly pretend that there was an active shooter in his school. Like, he led us on for maybe an hour. Some of us already knew he was full of shit, and the other half was scared to death. ... Once he finally said, 'Nah, I'm just joking, sorry,' EVERYONE blocked him on everything and removed him from all our contacts. ... He didn't even try to re-join and say sorry — he knew he fucked up in one of the worst ways possible, and we all have just moved on without him."
3. "A good friend of ours was behind a string of armed robberies in a very affluent suburb. It went on for about two months, and he was the LAST person you’d expect to do something like that. He actually pretended to be shocked when someone brought it up at a party two weeks before he was caught."
4. "During my sophomore year of high school, a guy in the friend group, I'll call J, invited everyone to go target shooting at his grandparents' property. One friend of mine, who I'll call C, decided to take him up on the offer. C was the only one to agree. I knew J never took any safety courses for guns because we were just talking about it weeks before. His parents thought he was mature and intelligent, but he's still an idiot to this day. They went shooting on a Friday. The following Monday came around, and the school morning announcements included C being injured in a gun accident."
"C survived, but it came out that J thought it would be funny to point and pull the trigger after aiming it at C, claiming he didn't know it was still loaded. 99% of the group completely cut off J and completely shunned him. C was the only one to continue talking to him because it was an accident. This was a school out in the countryside; most knew how to handle a gun and the safety measures you take with them. J was never taught. He went to the vocational school in the district the following year because no one except C would talk to him."
5. "Four of us had been friends since I moved to our small town in middle school about 24 years ago. As adults, we had a group chat and talked daily. I had been in an abusive relationship for 14 years (we had two children), and one friend, we will call Sara, had actually been my neighbor for a few years while I was in this relationship. Although the whole group knew what I was going through, as my neighbor, Sara was the person whose arms I cried in. Fast forward seven or eight years, when I found the courage to finally leave him, and he made it hell for me. He'd show up at 3 a.m. banging on windows, yelling threats through the doors, leaving letters upon letters of suicide notes blaming me — it was a complete crap shoot with police involvement and everything. I leaned heavily on the group to get through those horrible days. Well, soon after that, our friend Sara started talking about this guy she met."
"She told our group chat how amazing he was and how good he was in bed. Being supportive, we all cheered her on and were happy that she found someone who made her feel that way. This started before Christmas, and after the new year, my ex came by to pick up our kids for visitation and said, 'I don't want you to be mad at her' (like I'm the unreasonable one), 'but Sara and I have been seeing each other for a few months, and it's serious.' So I said, 'My best friend Sara??? The one that held me when I cried after the s*** you did?!' and he confirmed. I was so shattered. That was the only reason his focus shifted from tormenting me — because she decided to get with the monster. In the group chat, I asked her to go get breakfast with me, and once she got there, I let her ramble about how she and her ex were doing, as well as her kids and life in general. She never brought up my kids' father once. When we were finished eating, I looked her in the eyes and said, 'I think you are absolutely disgusting for what you are doing. You know he is not stable and how bad he hurt me, and you are still choosing to be with him?! Is this the first time, or has it been happening since we were neighbors?' She didn't respond and hung her head in shame. My only response was, 'I hope he makes you happy, and I hope you never need a friend because you are dead to me.' Then I threw money on the table and left. I then opened the group chat and laid it all out on the table as to why I was blocking the chat and her number, and our other two best friends made the decision to do the same. We all drifted a little after that, and Sara and my ex didn't last long. Then, years later, she slept with my current boyfriend. I still speak with the other two friends, but I wouldn't talk to Sara to save her life. Trust is not something I have anymore for anyone."
—Anonymous
6. "We had a guy that was kind of the glue in several friend circles; we'll call him Bagel since it was his college nickname. He was one of my husband's closest friends. In late 2020, Bagel got arrested for possession of CSAM (Child Sexual Abuse Material) leaving work — the same day his then-wife found out she was pregnant with their first child."
"Bagel told only three people in his orbit: three male friends who were also fathers, one of them being my husband. Everyone else he pretended like he made a boo-boo with his marriage, had a potential legal issue, and said, 'He would never hurt anyone, but the optics look bad.' However, my husband had just been told his mom's cancer diagnosis was terminal when he got hit with this news, and it was a blow losing two people close to him.
Because of how sensitive the issue was and with the pregnancy causing his ex-wife stress, as well as her job working with kids, the few of us who did know had to keep quiet about this information.
Now, because Bagel sang like a canary and pled guilty upon his arrest, he only got a year's sentence. A week before sentencing, he got served with divorce papers, and once he was in prison, his wife gave us the go-ahead to blow his cover...And THAT is when my husband and I, full of pent-up rage at having to watch him pretend nothing was wrong in our mutual Discord servers; each told the two biggest loudmouths in the college friend pond so news could ripple out. The fallout was cataclysmic — a lot of friend circles ended because he was a connective piece, and a lot of fun memories within our friends' lives have been soured by him.
It's been a year and a half, and Bagel still won't take accountability for his actions. He complains about why nobody talks to him. He never once apologized to his ex-wife but somehow blames her. Oh, and in the last few months, a few of us pieced together a lot of damning lies he told us, including that he didn't just have a 'few pictures' but an entirely separate hard drive FULL of CSAM. He's also been an absolute prick to his ex-wife, all while he pretends to his coworkers that he's this great father when all he does is spend 2-4 hrs a week being the fun dad who only feeds his kid pizza.
Bagel, if by some chance you're reading this, you'll probably figure out who I am, so here is both a resounding FUCK YOU, and sorry, not sorry your son was happier to see me every time I had to supervise your visits with him."
7. "When I was 12, I figured out I had been sexually assaulted for years as a kid by one of my best friend's grandpa. I told my friends about my sexual assault ... but didn't tell them who it was — they knew it was someone's grandpa. They all said they'd take my side even if it were theirs, so a couple of weeks later, I decided to tell one of my friends in a panic. She promised she wouldn't tell the granddaughter; she was meant to be my best friend, so I trusted her. I came into school the following Monday, and everyone knew."
"She had gone around telling everyone I was lying about being sexually assaulted by my best friend's grandpa for attention. None of my friends believed me because 'I didn't say anything sooner' and 'I didn't have any proof of times and dates.'
I went into therapy for three and a half years and stopped going to school for two years. I lost all my friends except one. ... I'm 17 now and mostly over it but sometimes i still feel that sickening feeling when people came up to me and started telling me how they heard what happened."
8. "My husband had a guy friend (John) from high school. My husband and John had a group of friends with whom we still all hung out when we could. I had a girlfriend (Michelle) from college. I was at lunch with Michelle, and we ran into John. John and Michelle had never met before and were both single. John texted me after I left lunch with Michelle and asked for her number. They dated for five months, and Michelle broke it off. John was devastated. He absolutely thought she was the one. Four months after they broke up, Michelle got back with her ex (the guy she had dated on and off again for four years). John texted me and asked if Michelle got back with her ex. I told him she had. Two months later, John killed himself."
"The high school friend group was rocked. People in the group claimed they were better friends with John than the rest of us and diminished everyone else's grief. Those people also said they didn't like how some of us 'handled' his death, as in, we didn't grieve the way they thought we should (like posting about it all over social media non-stop or hanging out with his family all the time). Nine months after his suicide, we all went camping. It was a tough camping trip because I have an autoimmune disease (we didn't know at the time, and I was in the middle of a lot of testing and awaiting results), which causes me pain sometimes, and, of course, it flared up while camping. My kids were toddlers, and I spent the whole time making sure my kids were behaving and playing games in the tent to limit my mobility due to pain. My husband and I decided to leave early because it wasn't going well, and I felt awful. We hadn't told anyone in the group about my health because I didn't want to worry anyone without having answers. We got home, and it took us a few months to realize we'd been met with radio silence from the group. So we reached out to one of the friends, and she told us that the loudest/most opinionated couple in the group had dubbed us intolerable because I was keeping to myself and wouldn't let my 'kids be kids.' They also said my marriage sucked and that they couldn't be in a marriage like mine. So, I called the wife of the couple, apologized for being intolerable, and asked for clarification on what was so intolerable. She RIPPED me a new one, saying I was a shitty mom and treated my kids awful by not letting them play, that I treat my husband shitty cause I make him do everything for me, AND THEN she said it was me and Michelle's fault that John is dead because I introduced him to Michelle and he killed himself because of her. Needless to say, the group unraveled…especially after I got my diagnosis and announced my autoimmune disease, explaining why we left camping early. Years later, I got an apology, but the damage was done. You know the saying: believe someone when they show you who they are…yeah. Make sure you do. In the end, Michelle married her ex."
—Anonymous
9. "Our favorite high school teacher turned out to be ... grooming all the girls in our friend group and even slept with a couple of them (and promised to marry another). It's been nearly a decade, and we still talk about it and keep tabs on the creep. Of course, the group split in half because some of them wanted to 'forgive' him or even accused his underaged victims of 'seducing' him. I feel resentful towards them, but it's a conflicted feeling because we were all so young, and he was manipulating us all. It's hard to know where to draw the line of how accountable those ex-friends are for their words and actions."
10. "I had a good friend we'll call Bob, who I spent a lot of time with. We were part of the same group of four friends all through high school and college, and we were all practically brothers — you didn't call one without calling the others. Bob was one of the smartest and kindest people I knew. He was an EMT and volunteered constantly in our small community. He was very sensitive and would give you the shirt off his back. Bob was a little awkward and not good with women, but he desperately wanted a romantic relationship. He went through a string of 'project girlfriends' he was going to 'fix' (mostly single moms) who were either really rough or just taking advantage of him."
"One night, my other buddy and I got a call that Bob had allegedly shaken/beaten one of the kids (less than a year old). The kid has major permanent brain damage. Bob claimed innocence, and to this day, I would still trust Bob with my life, but his story compared with the cops' story...I've never been able to decide whether or not I think he did it. I don't know if Bob ended up taking the fall for the mom or what, but something never felt right. The whole friend group dispersed for a while and slowly came back together after that, but we don't really talk about Bob because some think he didn't do it, some think he did, and I can't decide. He was finally found guilty after multiple hung juries and will probably spend a good chunk of the rest of his life in prison. If he did it, he deserves it. If he didn't, then I'm a worthless friend for not being there to support him through the whole thing. Since then, none of us have been as close as we once were."
11. "I (28F) introduced my best friend (27F) to her new boyfriend (28M). I was friends with the new boyfriend. The guy ended up getting blackout drunk and sexually assaulted me. Another friend witnessed this, and together, we reported it to the police, etc. My best friend decided to stay with her boyfriend."
"She was so upset when we wouldn't stop calling him an assaulter. She'd get so angry with me for trying to stop him from coming to group hangouts. Friends in our group started taking sides; it tore everything apart. It turned out, he sexually assaulted and raped multiple women and still does. They are engaged to be married currently. Some of my old friends are going to attend the wedding."
12. "One of our friends, who we had only seen sparsely over the previous years, ended up being wanted by the police for attempted murder, and there was a million-dollar reward for his capture. Apparently, he doused someone with gasoline and set them on fire. We didn't know about the reward until after he was caught. We all agreed we would have turned him in. He got 30 years."
13. "A buddy of mine was drunk driving and came around a bin just a few miles from his house and hit a tree, and it killed his girlfriend, who was a very close friend of mine. ... I'll never forget that call that woke me up. I drove to their house; he was a mess and in shock, and my husband and I took care of him for a few months. He ended up continuing to drink and drive and moved on with a new girl only weeks after her passing. I know he was grieving in his own fucked up way, but it made me hate him, and now I can't stand to see him or anyone who enables him."
"Even the parents of my friend who passed helped him get a car and still invite him to some of their outings. It's always made me sick, to be honest."
14. "We were a group of thirtysomething friends, ... and my buddy was a teacher at a junior high school and also the girl's volleyball coach. One of the girls' moms found a bunch of love letters between him and her daughter, who was 14 at the time. It's unlikely that they had sex, but it was 100% romantic. He lost his job, his wife, his two small kids, and his friends."
15. "Sometime around year 10 (age 15-16), one of our friends started telling our friendship group she had cancer and was probably dying. Now, we knew she had a history of lying because back in year 7, she told everyone her mum had died by suicide, but we then had a sleepover at her house in year 8, and we met her mother. She started making everyone feel bad for her to the point where friends started doing things for her. Long story short, I called her out for every lie she'd told, including her mum, her cancer, a couple of guys she lied about hooking up with, and a whole plethora of other problematic things. We had a pretty large friendship group, and the news had spread to all the other groups, so everyone ended up distancing themselves from her. She ended up moving schools."
16. "We had a lovely couple who were like family to us. When we had a horrific tragedy, they were supportive, generous, and kind. When we became empty nesters and were deciding where we'd like to spend our golden years, it was a no-brainer to move nearly 1,000 miles away to be close to them. About a month after settling in 30 minutes from them, we had a conversation with them and one of their parents. We had a difference of opinion regarding the LGBTQI+ community and holy shit; it was like the Cold War. All of a sudden, we were pariahs, absolutely frozen out of their lives. My husband still hears from and (very rarely) meets up with my former friend's husband. The saddest part to me is that they knew our adult child is queer."
"After discussing it many times and rehashing our conversations with them, we decided it was just the last straw, as we recalled many of their wild conspiracy beliefs. We love the part of the country where we've moved and have gained an entirely new group of friends. However, it has made us very cautious about expressing our views until we are confident others are similarly positioned."
—Anonymous
17. "We had a small friend group: me, a girl I'll call Sally, and three others. Sally confessed her feelings for me. I said I wasn't interested, and she said she understood and that was fine, and I assumed we'd be able to move on. She had many red flags that would take me a while to write down, so the main ones were her asking, 'Are you sure you're gay?' and always having her hands on me. We were very close before, and my friends and I are always very touchy, so like a dumbass, I ignored it. I thought she might've been trying to be funny with that gay comment as well. I got a boyfriend. She freaked the fuck out. Telling me he doesn't deserve me, that I'm a piece of shit for 'abandoning' her, that she hopes I'll die, etc. Luckily, this was over text, so I screenshotted the conversation just in case, then blocked her."
"She tried to convince the three others in the friend group that I had threatened to sexually assault her, that I was telling her to kill herself, all these things. So, I sent the screenshots to those friends.
They were all on my side after that, but the event split us up for the most part. I don't talk to the other girls in the group, but I am still pretty good friends with the guy, at least — he's been an amazing friend for ages. As far as I know, most people Sally had known at that point cut her off once they found out what happened. I do feel bad for her."
18. "A friend got cheated on badly with another friend from our friend group. I caught them the night it happened, and it apparently had been going on for a while. I tried to help the friend who got cheated on, but he didn't want to believe it, I guess, and he decided to stay with her and marry her. She hates me because of it, and it has ruined our entire group of friends. I haven't talked to any of them since. He was truly an asshole, though, anyway."
19. "I had a friend from age eight until around our mid-20s (I'm 32 now). We were inseparable in jr. high/high school. Her family was like my second family. I thought we knew each other inside and out. Then, she lied about having a traumatic brain injury. There's a lot of detail that I won't go into, but yes. She fully lied about having a TBI."
20. "I had a great group of work friends. We regularly sought advice from each other, vented to each other, met each other for lunch, and chatted often. One day, one of the people I worked closely with (in the same office) sent me a very provocative email, basically confessing her love for me. She also started telling me she loved me at the end of phone calls. I'm married and have fallen victim to codependent coworkers in the past, so I cut off contact. I do not play those games. Shortly after that, the friend group totally fizzled. I guess that means I broke it up."
—Anonymous
21. "As a junior in high school, I started dating Jay. His boy group and my girlfriends started to merge into one happy group. We were four girls and four boys and got along splendidly. Right before the summer break, my boyfriend broke up with me, and I was devastated. Over the summer, no one had reached out to me. My best friend Gina was supposed to go on a holiday with my family and me but ghosted me. When the new school year started, it became evident that Jay and Gina had started dating, and no one had bothered to tell me. So I began my senior year pushed out of the group and pretty friendless."
22. "Our mate lied about embezzling cash from his job and asked us to help him out of the hole by balancing the books before he got caught; we collectively spotted him $4000. From that point on hasn't called or taken any of our calls in the last year. We've been mates since high school."
23. "About five years after high school, I asked one of my best friends to take care of our horses while I stayed in Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital with my five month old son who had cancer. To this day, not one of them has ever reached out to see how he is or if he even survived – and he turned 39 last month."
—Anonymous
24. "I had a very small and tight-knit group of friends since middle school/high school. Two people started dating in college and then found out they're half-siblings (the guy's mom had an affair with the girl's dad back in the day). They had to break up (obviously), but it also tore apart two families as they didn't know about this affair until then. We just never hung out together again. The whole thing was just weird. And yes, my two friends most certainly connected in ways lovers do, and half-siblings NEVER should."
25. "It was the late nineties, and a group of ten mostly nerdy friends (with three committed couples) rented a cabin for a three-day weekend. Well, the new girlfriend of one of the guys brings enough Ecstasy to rival EDC or Burning Man and then purposely begs everyone to partake on Saturday night. There were a lot of confessions, a lot of massages, a lot of switching partners, and a couple of three ways. I think everyone drove away by Sunday afternoon. A code of silence was decided on, and only a couple of the guys are still on friendly terms."
26. "I was with my ex for almost ten years. During COVID, I moved in with him. ... We had a pretty big friend group of about 15 close friends. Most of our friends were coupled up, and all the friends were from long-term friendships (childhood, high school, etc.) and included their significant others as well. We all got along great. In 2022, my ex and I broke up, with him claiming he hadn't loved me for months. I was hurt but thought, 'Hey, it happens.' A week later, I found out that another couple in our group had also broken up. It turned out that my ex had been cheating on me for the past two years with his best friend's girlfriend (his best friend and girlfriend were together for eight years and living together, too)."
"My ex and his side chick had both planned this break up for the same day and used the same excuse. I had already moved most of my things out, but after I went back to get the rest of my things, his side chick brought over her U-Haul and moved right in. Since I moved out, no one in the friend group has spoken to either of them (this was over two years ago). He was a horrible person and put me through a lot, and I'm so grateful that my friends helped support me through all of this, but it was really sad because they had also lost a friend from this, so we all sort of supported each other too. Last I heard, my ex was engaged to his side chick and lonely while I'm living my best life."
—Anonymous
27. "We were best friends since the age of 16. Every time we went somewhere, if I drove, I had to pay for everything (food, gas, etc.) and drive her wherever she wanted. If she drove, I had to pay her gas money to go anywhere not on her 'list.' ... Then she had to borrow $400, or she would get evicted. She promised she would pay me back that Friday. Friday came; no money. I had bills on autopay and overdrafted. It cost me about a thousand that I did not have. I had to borrow from my mother to pay my own rent. We stopped being friends for a while, but I gave her a second chance years later because her husband was friends with mine. After my divorce, she and her husband questioned the abuse I had experienced, even though she had witnessed much of it. I won the computer in the divorce and found hidden files with pictures of her in them. Apparently, her husband likes to watch her with other men — my ex being one of them."
—Anonymous
28. "After 30+ years of being very close friends, she posted that children who went trick or treating were going to hell because they were offending God. We're both Catholic; she has three children with a divorced man that she wasn't married to. I called her out on her hypocrisy, and she blocked me. When she finally married the father of her children, she said she wasn't going to have a big party — just her children and her family. Some of the other members of our group decided to go (she lives in another city) and told her. It turns out her small wedding had almost 100 guests. When I said I wouldn't go because I wasn't invited and didn't feel like spending money on a trip for something I wasn't invited to, she told everyone that I was a cheapster and that's why I wasn't there."
"My friends called her out on it, so she blocked them too. I thank God every day for taking her toxic presence out of my life."
29. "My best friend since high school (30+ years) ... found a new guy she fell for, declared he was her 'twin flame,' divorced her husband, and moved in with him right away. Meanwhile, I had been going through a lot for close to a year...I'd had a breast cancer scare, my husband had ended up in the hospital for heart stuff that scared the crap out of us (he's okay now), and a few other things, but she'd never had time for me — so I wrote her a 12-page letter talking about everything I had been through and how much I needed her, and all I got back was a text that said, 'I got your letter, thank you.' So I walked away, blocked her on social media, and moved on."
30. "I was friends with this girl for many years. We worked together, hung out all the time, went on vacations together, and so on…She and I were working together at a place where she had set me up with a dude. It wasn't very serious, but I liked him a lot. She knew that because I would talk to her about him all the time. One day, he just ghosted me. Like, fine, I guess. Two days later, I'm talking to a coworker, and he goes, 'Oh, so and so is wifed up [with my friend]. She's his girlfriend now." Now, I couldn't care less about the dude, but I was flabbergasted at my friend."
"When I called her on it, her response was 'he's happy and proud now'...Like, wow. So anyway, I dropped them, but I still thought of her a lot (this was over ten years ago). Back in 2020, I reached out to her because I missed her, and when I asked how our friendship fell apart, she said, 'I know you thought me, and so and so did something behind your back, and we didn't.' Zero accountability after all those years. Spoiler alert: he cheated on her."
31. "I had a friend from college go missing (never found), and it was obviously a stressful time. A few months after this happened, I was out with a work friend, her boyfriend, and a couple of others. My friend and I worked together in the morning, so we said goodbyes and went home. The next day, she didn’t show up for work. She and her boyfriend did not pick up or respond to texts. Finally, distraught, I left and went to her house to discover them both in bed hungover. They saw the calls/texts but ignored them. I was livid, especially after my friend went missing. She never came back to work, and we never spoke again."
32. And finally..."We had a guy in our friend group who was 'just friends' with everyone who ended up getting three of our friends pregnant at the same time."
What caused your friendship or friend group to fall apart? Let us know in the comments or via this anonymous form.
Submissions have been edited for length/clarity.