“I Hate Myself Every Time I Think About It”: 25 Times People Ruined Someone’s Life

Mistakes happen without intention, but their consequences can be far-reaching. Even when an accident isn’t directly your fault, it may trigger a chain reaction of unexpected outcomes. Today, we’ve compiled a sobering collection of real stories illustrating how unintended actions can spiral out of control. These accounts were shared in response to the Reddit question, “Have you ever unintentionally messed up someone’s life? How?” Read on to discover how people look back on being the unintended catalyst in someone else’s life falling apart.

#1

Image source: Nesnie_Lope, Darí Dorofeeva/unsplash When I was a freshman in high school (14 years old), my friend told me how she had been sleeping with her best friend's dad for over a year. I don't do well with big secrets on my conscience, so I broke down after marching band one night. I told one of my friends who made me tell our band teacher, who reported it to the police and talked to my friend's parents. She told her parents I was lying about it, but that Monday morning I was called to the principal's office where I had to tell the band teacher, principal, and the police. Later that week, the news reported that the man was arrested. I don't really know what happened after that, but it's safe to assume that I probably ruined his life and he doesn't even know who I am.

#2

Image source: Chim3cho, Vitaly Gariev/unsplash I started a butterfly effect that got one of my highschool teachers fired and blacklisted in the state. He was trying to get the theatre teacher fired behind her back and sketchy around female students, one day he called me out for waiting to use a saw for Stagecraft, and I blew up on him, called him every name in the book and essentially told him he was a [horrible] person for reasons X, Y, and Z. I got sent to the office but since my record was spotless they just sent me back to class and had a meeting with the teacher. Eventually a lot of other students got the courage to call him out too. The next year I graduated and I heard that he was harassing a female student and the entire class he was teaching reported it. He got fired within that week. It feels good to win. I also slashed his tires. Edit: His wife also left him after he got fired.

#3

Image source: anon, Hanson Lu/unsplash Freshman year of college, week 2. Playing touch football in the quad with randoms. Go up for the same pass as some guy. I catch the ball because I can jump higher. Down he goes. Down i come on top of him. ::CRACK:: Compound fracture to tibia. Everyone screams, he's in shock, I'm in shock picking the dirt off his protruding bone. Ambulance arrives, takes him away. Weeks later he comes back to clear out his dorm room. Turns out he was in school on a track scholarship and without that leg he couldn't run. Without running, he couldn't keep the scholarship. Without the scholarship, his family couldn't afford to send him to school. He will never run competitively again. My bad.

#4

Image source: BeDazzledBootyHolez, Yunus Tuğ/unsplash When I was in highschool I was studying Blood types and how traits get passed on from parents to children. I started asking my family members what their blood types were in order for me to make a chart for Dominant and Recessive traits. Well I got to my Aunt and uncle who were both O positive and after some research determined that none of their kids were fathered by my uncle because they had completely different blood types. She confessed that she cheated on him 20 years earlier and continued the affair for 9yrs. Uncle was devastated and kids were wrecked. They got divorced, my aunt moved to Alabama to live with her long time BF, my cousins got all [messed up] and one moved in with her own BF and got pregnant. TL;DR: Studied blood types in high school. Revealed my cousins did not belong to my uncle. My aunt cheated and lied for 20 years.

#5

Image source: cexshun, Lala Azizli/unsplash We had an employee whose entire job was to manage this spreadsheet. To help her out, I wrote a massive Excel macro that did her 8 hours of work in 30 seconds. Instead of finding something for her to do, the boss fired her and I got employee of the month honors and a $750 award for saving the company money by eliminating her position. Edit: By "entire job", I mean everyday. I replaced all of her responsibilities in totality with an Excel macro. She was replaced with a ctrl-G.

#6

Image source: GeorgeHowells1, Getty Images/unsplash I came into a woman's life she had a great career and prospects but I was so demanding she spent all her time on me. Years later she's struggling to find a footing in a career and a social circle of her own. Sorry, mum.

#7

Image source: sawheatness, Getty Images/unsplash Being in the US military, committing adultery is taken pretty serious. A "friend" of mine told me she was hooking up with her married superior. (I say "friend", because no real friend would have put me in that situation.) I got asked about it by someone higher up and I wasn't about to ruin my career by lying, so I told the truth. A lot of people took her side. They both lost rank. He got kicked out. His wife left him. Last I heard they were married. They deserve each other.

#8

Image source: anon, Bert Sagi/unsplash When I was 6 my sister and I were skipping rocks. I tried to pick a big one up and lift it behind my head to throw it. As my arms swung backwards, the rock slipped from my fingers and hit my sister in the back of the head. 6 months later she started having seizures. She still gets them 21 years later. I can't help but think it's my fault she's epileptic.

#9

Image source: convenah, Curated Lifestyle/unsplash My best friend when I was younger was an incredibly fast sprinter. His dream was to represent our country in the Olympics. He very easily could have done that, had it not been for me. We were out one day playing in the forest (we were about 12 or 13 at the time). We saw a little stream and thought how cool it would be if we jumped across it. We did a few times and it was awesome. We did it one more time and I bumped into him in mid air. He landed awkwardly and broke both his legs. Bones were sticking out. It was horrific. I ran to get his mother and he was taken away in an ambulance. He had several surgeries and months of physical therapy. He never ran again and we lost contact. I blamed myself for years and watched the Olympics last year and felt angry that he wasn't there, when he should have been. I bumped into him recently and drunkenly apologised for ruining his chances at being an athlete. He laughed, called me an idiot for blaming myself for so long, we had a few drinks and [slept together]. So it all worked out.

#10

Image source: Stolypin26, cheng xiao/unsplash Hit a car in the rain. Everyone (little girl, boy, mother, and dog) was fine but the weird thing was that the car was full of clothes and seemingly random items. I distinctly remember a blender. And they were all dressed in there pajamas as though they'd just hopped out of bed, loaded up the car, and set out. Well, eventually the father shows up. I'm standing next to the little boy, he's probably twelve, while all the cops, firemen, and on lookers are hurrying around us. It is absolutely pouring. The father sees the kid and walks straight passed him to go look at the car. It didn't hit me until later that they were running from him, but I knew something was off. I looked at the kid and said I was sorry and that I couldn't see through the rain. He didn't even look back. He just stood there staring straight ahead in his soaked clothes with that angry look kids get when they're trying not to cry. I knew he hated me and I knew I had just put the cherry on top of a horrible childhood. I will never forget that moment. They never filed an insurance claim and I never saw them again. I destroyed someone's life and all I had to pay for was a new bumper and grill for my truck.

#11

Image source: toml3030, Pablo Merchán Montes/unsplash Caught a dude for massive theft at my business. He came into my office, and begged me not to go to the police because that would mean the end of his marriage. So we signed an agreement where in lieu of criminal complaint he would return what money he had left (he blew about half of it on stupid [stuff] already) and admitted to the theft in writing. So he makes payments on the agreement, and like a [jerk] he is, stops once the statute of limitations for criminal complaint has passed. Which is really odd, because he already paid back about 85% of the money stipulated in the agreement. I'm pretty sure he got some bad legal advice somewhere. So we file a civil suit against him for the entire amount of theft plus a massive penalty plus our court costs as laid out in the agreement, he spends roughly $30K defending against the suit, his wife finds out about it, and now it's on his record for 20 years because we win and he owes us more money than he will ever see again in his life. The really stupid thing is that if he paid us the money he spent on defending the suit, he would have paid off the agreement.

#12

Image source: megmegshell, Getty Images/unsplash I got into a car wreck, it was my fault. But the other driver was driving without a license. I found out later he was deported.

#13

Image source: Goatboy1, LinkedIn Sales Solutions/unsplash When I was around 20 years old I was still living at home. A friend came to visit me once and brought his girlfriend to meet me. She decided she'd had to have me instead, left him, and actively started pursuing me. I wanted nothing to do with her as she was not my type but she kept calling and my sisters caught her looking in the windows. Eventually I had the bright idea to introduce her to another friend so I can get her to leave me alone. They actually hit it off and eventually got married and had a couple of kids. Sounds good, doesn't it. Except it wasn't. They had a terrible relationship, had both kids taken away, and were homeless for a while. I tried to save him from her by bringing him to my apartment in a neighbouring city somewhere he could haven't a place away from her and get his life back in order. A few days later, she found out where I lived and came and got him while I was at work. Eventually they did split up permanently. He remarried several times, had several kids, was always having trouble with support payments and insurance. He couldn't get a decent job and has always been on the brink financially. Currently he has his own lawn and garden business but is still struggling. Out of guilt AND because he's still one of my best friends, I help him out financially and materially whenever I can but I can't help but wonder how much better his life might have been if not for me. All because I didn't want this girl to keep bugging me.

#14

Image source: rectangleCURVE, Alex Vinogradov/unsplash In high school my then boyfriend broke up with me. One morning I noticed him showing our mutual friends a coke bottle. I asked a friend later what was in the bottle. It was gasoline. GASOLINE! He brought it to school to get high. I ended up turning him in to campus police and he ended up going into a mental institution and expelled from school. He's still pretty messed up, arrests for trapping and such. Good times.

#15

Image source: petaboil, Kristen Sheets/unsplash Crashed a car with my girlfriend at the time in the passenger seat and broke her back, shattered some bones in her hands, and put a gash on one side of her mouth ruining her smile. She was likely destined for Cambridge or Oxford, was an excellent piano player and had everything her somewhat meagre upbringing could afford her to get her where she was likely going. Incredibly talented intelligent and fairly pretty young girl. Once she was out of resting and back to school she became lazy and unmotivated, was kicked out of the private school she had a scholarship to, her damaged hands meant she couldn't play anywhere near the level she used to be able to and the big scar on her cheek made her feel ugly and she let go of her body. We parted ways fairly amicably, but later she came to resent me for the issues the crash caused the rest of her life. Last I heard she was at a local community college studying photography, where she apparently had fallen in with the wrong crowd and wasn't doing too well. I'd love to go back in time and brake a few metres earlier, or at least message her and tell her how sorry I really am, but I know I should leave it in the past. The crash changed my life as well, I had recently passed my PPL and was enjoying that, I picked an illness up in hospital which kept me from flying for about a month. I was then meant to go onto commercial training, but in the time I was in hospital, financial ruination of my father meant that was no longer possible, so I went to college to study aeronautical engineering, which I wasted, went into a retail job where I still am, and that's the story of my last 6 years. This went a bit of course and for that I apologise.

#16

Image source: thedannychang, Maxwell Hunt/unsplash I was playing a show with my band, opening up for another band who was on the verge of breaking and was gracious enough to let us on their bill. They had a few notable people from record labels come out to the venue that night, who were seated right by the stage. As I was setting my guitar rig up for our set, I accidentally knocked over a mic stand from the stage that fell onto the table that the record execs were sitting at, which led to their drinks being knocked over and spilled all over them. I wanted to apologize and buy them drinks, but right as that happened, the lead singer of our band began to play the first song. From the corner of my eye, I could see them getting up to leave and they never came back.

#17

Image source: vauntedsexboat, Getty Images/unsplash Right after college, I worked in a copy/shipping/print shop. (Like a FedEx store with more services, basically.) The day before Valentine's Day, this college-age guy comes in and says he wants to get something laminated. It was a Transformers Valentine's Day card he made for his girlfriend when they were in grade-school together, which he recently found and now wants to give it to her a second time, years later. Pretty sweet, right? I'm in the middle of a large print job, so I tell the guy it'll be around 30min before I can get to it. He pays, gives the card to me, and leaves. I finish my current job and go to laminate the card. I put the card in the plastic sleeve and between some heavy cardstock, feed it into the machine's rollers... and the machine eats it. It gets caught between the rollers and the machine starts twisting and ripping it all up, melting the plastic together and crushing the card. I try to reverse the machine and get it out, but it's jammed in there really good. I wound up having to actually take the machine apart to get it out. The card was utterly trashed. Singed, crumpled, ripped, and sealed in lumpy melted plastic. When I told the guy and showed him what was left of the card, I felt like I was kicking a puppy. He just had the saddest, most helpless expression on his face. I managed to extract the remnants of the card from the plastic and scanned it all in, then spent the next two hours doing my best with Photoshop to fix all the damaged spots and creases, then printed it out on cardstock and laminated that. It actually looked pretty good when I was done, but... I know it wasn't the same. Ugh, I feel bad just thinking about it. That poor guy.

#18

Image source: Marissani, Kateryna Hliznitsova/unsplash According to my ex I ruined his life. He quit his job to "take care of me" (I in no way needed taking care of. It made life a little easier for me but I could have managed on my own). I was dealing with low level disability onset and he was basically driving me to work and doctors appointments. When he wasn't driving me around he was playing games or sleeping around though. Eventually when he decided to go back to work the only place that would take him is Walmart, right before I left him. He has convinced himself and several other people that I'm the reason he's stuck at such a low end job while I have a manager position in tech that I in no way worked for.

#19

Image source: cjwiegmann, Getty Images/unsplash There was this kid that always got straight A's in hs because he cheated constantly. he got into Stanford because of it. he cheated off of me and we got caught, teacher thought I was cheating off of him so I flipped (I was on the A- B+ line) and got people in the class to take my side because every student knew he cheated. my teacher then told other teachers so he got caught in every class after that, didn't graduate and obviously didn't go to college. he deserved it but I feel bad. edit: he was a really smart guy, came up with creative ways to cheat. If he had worked as hard studying as he did to get out of studying he still could've gone to a USC/Cal/UCLA level school, but probably not Stanford or Ivy League. Stanford is weird about admissions so you never know.

#20

Image source: Beardglasseshat, Fredrick Tendong/unsplash I introduced my friend to both World of Warcraft and League of Legends. He used to be an aerospace engineering student. Now he's taking one class at a community college.

#21

Image source: Stumbling_tortoise, _ drz __/unsplash In elementary school I told the class there was no such thing as Santa.

#22

Image source: anon, Getty Images/unsplash I hate myself every time I think about it this one: I'm a photographer, and I get pretty animated and enthusiastic during my portrait sessions (it's who I am, and it tends to make my clients feel more at ease when I'm raving about how awesome they are and how gorgeous their pictures are going to look). So I'm [photographing] an engagement session one day, and it's going really well, and as I snapped off one with an amazing backdrop and the perfect light I shouted, "This is the kind of photo your grandkids are going to go CRAZY over!" As this is leaving my mouth I remember that the woman suffers from infertility and is very sensitive about it. You can pretty much see her heart break between one image and the next. Ah, then at their wedding I was lining everyone up for family portaits, and I turned to an older lady with a sour look on her face and said, "And you're the groom's ... grandmother?" Nope, that was his ma. TL;DR: Shut up and just take the picture.

#23

Image source: H3d0n1st, Samsung Memory/unsplash I introduced a friend of mine to World of Warcraft while he was in college. He was graduate biochem student and had an internship in a lab somewhere. From what I could tell, he was on his way to a pretty good career. Now he lives in his mom's basement and has no job. But he does still have a WoW account. So he's got that going for him, which is nice.

#24

Image source: anon, Thais Varela/unsplash I mean, I kinda just set it up so that they would do it to themselves. I was getting ready to move out of an apartment where I had threr roommates and a couch guy. I had renewed my lease, but the couch guy offered to do it for me, the roommate that was letting him stay there was leaving so he'd need to find somewhere to live. He had been dragging his feet on getting his end of the paperwork done, like, stuff that took 10 minutes and that I had printed for him. One day, as I'm getting ready to leave, he tells me that he went to the leasing office and finished his paperwork and they told him that I should just give him my key. No reason to drop it off at the office. Which struck me as weird. I went by the office to talk to them about this and make sure it was on the level, which of course it wasn't. The leasing office people tell me that he never dropped off any paperwork and that you would never, *ever* just give your key to someone else. So, his stupid little plan became clear to me. What he wanted to do was just take the key and live in the room while I was responsible for every payment until the lease expired. I was kinda furious, so I told them to put the room on the public waitlist in two days, turned in my key, and left. I shot him a text that he needed to get his paperwork in, outright ignoring the lie, but also not letting him know that the room would go to the first in line in the next two days. I left him with the impression that his little scheme was still going according to plan. Things would only go wrong for him if he went forward with it. Which he did. The room was filled by someone on the waitlist by the end of the week, and I didn't pay a dime in additional rent. He was kicked out and Portland's newest homeless youth. He sent a pretty long, angry, and rambling text to me sometime later, which I just ignored. I'm pleased with my work.

#25

Image source: falconpuppy, Andrej Lišakov/unsplash I worked at a restaurant in high school. One day at school talking to a girl in my art class "Hey I saw your mom last night!" "With my dad..?" "Uh no..some random guy I didn't know" "She said she was getting groceries..and never came back with any" The parents got divorced.