“Always The Victim”: 25 People Explain How They Realised Their Friend Was The Jerk

Friendships are an important part of our lives and those bonds are usually hard to break. We highly value our friends as we can be our genuine selves, and we appreciate their acceptance without judgement. The love, respect and support they provide mentally and emotionally can be incredibly invaluable to us. So much so that we may even allow our friends to call us out on unacceptable behaviours because we know it comes from a good place. However, not every friendship is necessarily healthy, and sometimes we may be blind to the reality of the situation we are dealing with. It's painful to realize when someone close to us is not a great person in general and recently an online discussion delved into this topic when someone asked, "What's the moment you realized your close friend was an asshole?" Redditors recalled the heartbreaking moment they realized that their bestie was toxic and we've shared the details in the gallery below.

#1

Image source: whatnamedoyoulike, Mary Borozdina / Unsplash When I realized I was her last close friend left. Shortly thereafter I started to open my eyes and understand why that was the case. seigneur101: What was it? whatnamedoyoulike (OP): A lot of it was that she is a master at justifying her own bad decisions. Nothing is ever a big deal to her. When her electricity got shut off, it was because "stuff happens." When she got fired from her fourth job in a year, it was "ok, I'm going to cruise on unemployment and give myself time to focus on art." When she forgot someone's birthday, it was because birthdays triggered her anxiety. And when she was served with divorce papers after refusing to attend marriage counseling, she insisted she had done everything in her power to save her marriage. She is never wrong in her eyes and is the only adult I've seen consistently regress in life because of it. In the end, a 12 year friendship devolved into an absolute nightmare for me.

#2

Image source: dring157, Josué Sánchez / Unsplash He tried to abduct a lost, drunk woman from a bar. We were getting ready to leave a crowded bar one night and my friend went to use the restroom. When he came back he was supporting a woman who was so drunk she could barely walk. He said that she had lost her friends and we should take her back to our hotel room. I told him that we should help her find her friends and asked her for her name. My friend looked pissed and said that we should just go. She managed to slur that her name was Amy. I then went to the DJ and asked him to announce to the bar that Amy had lost her friends, needed their help, and to come find her at the bar. During this my friend tried to walk Amy out of the bar, but security stopped him at the door. Luckily Amy’s fiends immediately came to the bar to get her and got her away from my friend. Afterwards my friend was pissed, because “I had ruined his good time.” I told him that he was disgusting, that taking that girl back to our hotel would have been abduction, and that what he had tried to do made him no better than a r*pist. I stopped hanging out with him after that. kazuwacky: Power to you for getting that girl back to her friends. I got drunk around a male friend and he took me back to his flat instead of mine. He tried stuff and got sulky when I drunkenly said no. I'm sure he thinks he's a good guy for that... Somehow. I never spent a second alone with him again, never went anywhere with him again. I viewed it as a frightening betrayal that I didn't expect.

#3

Image source: xmodemlol, Kateryna Hliznitsova / Unsplash When he talked s**t about me behind my back - to my wife who doesn't really know him. Does he think she's going to keep this as their shared secret? Snoo_26884: He was testing the waters with her, seeing if she was happy in her marriage.

#4

Image source: TonyStark39, MD Duran / Unsplash When I found out that they were immediately dismissive of people's interests and hobbies. It was a huge red-flag and I cut ties with that person shortly after.

#5

Image source: Emcee_Such_N_Such, dmytro_sidelnikov / Freepik When he complained and got a server at Texas Roadhouse "fired" over a $2 shortage... And was laughing and bragging about it. Like, it made him feel good / important that he cost someone their job. As a side note, we are no longer friends and, about 2 weeks later, we (me, my wife, and daughter) had the same server at the same Texas Roadhouse. crogers2009: As a former restaurant manager, I can say that the majority of the time we'll tell the customer that we will "reprimand" the employee, and we'll just go in the back and laugh about it, if it wasn't something too serious. GPLeChuck00: My old boss (construction supply delivery company) used to agree completely with the customers, "Oh yeah. He's just dumb. I'll fire him when he gets back." Most of the time we never even heard about it unless he wanted to laugh about how stupid they were. Even if it was serious.

#6

Image source: Mychalstevens, Guillaume Issaly / Unsplash When he propositioned my girlfriend to have s*x with him under the guise of making sure she was being faithful to me. Anon: So if she accepts, he gets free s*x. If she rejects, he's the "hero" for testing her virtue. Brilliant plan. What could possibly go wrong? Shixhat: Punch.

#7

Image source: Broken_KitchenSink, Getty Images / Unsplash They made fun of me for not having a relationship with my dad. Their parents got divorced like a few months later so it’s kind of ironic. shame_on_meStupid: Classic projection.

#8

Image source: jdhenschel, Dhaya Eddine Bentaleb / Unsplash Whenever I open up about my problems he talks about how good he is at everything, tells me I’m a broke p***y for working a regular job, tells me I won’t go anywhere without his financial support, gets mad at me if I don’t agree with him on everything, tried stealing from my friends, tried stabbing my cousin, constantly talks about how he wants to shoot someone, calls his mom a stupid b***h, punches his step dad, must I continue? Anon: This person sounds like they belong in a prison cell.

#9

Image source: _Rick_O_Shea_, Daniel Martinez / Unsplash When he didnt bother to ever call or come and see me after my mothers death to see how I was doing but then turns up at my door the minute he wanted something from me. We are no longer friends.

#10

Image source: dragonfly-1001, Blake Cheek / Unsplash When I finally realised that if she was b******g about other people to me, she was most likely b******g about me to them. It took me a surprisingly long time to figure this one out. ian9921: This is why I have anxiety. A lot of my friends b***h about their other friends to me. dragonfly-1001 (OP): Take note of how the other friends treat you. If they are cautious & look at you as though they are judging, then you can bet your bottom dollar that you are being spoken about. Next time you are on the receiving end of a b**ch session, I would casually make a comment along the lines of "I hope you don't b**ch about me like this" and take note of the response. Or you can do what I did and tell the other friends what is being said about them. It started an avalanche of discussion about what she was telling everyone about everyone and it was at that point we realised that our middle friend was an outright [jerk]. ItsTtreasonThen: It's also good to note there is a difference between venting and trashing. Like, some friends can be great but you if had a friction point you might just need to vent and figure out how to address it. But if it's never about fixing it, or growing your understandings... Then it's probably more about trashing. dragonfly-1001 (OP): Absolutely there is a difference. Nobody is perfect & it is natural that your talking points are about common people you know. However, my so called friend was bitching on purpose to cause problems. She purposely wanted to keep us all seperate so she would be the central contact between us all. There was a constant feeling of unease when we were together as a group. We all had an edge of arrogance about us because we knew something nasty about the others. It was uncomfortable. She lost her s**t once she realised that we were talking to each other without her present to control the narrative.

#11

Image source: EconomySpot3018, alexey turenkov / Unsplash She was going to get a tattoo in Toronto (2 hour drive one way) and didn’t want to go alone, so she asked me to come. Couple issues with this. 1 - it was during Covid, so I couldn’t go in the shop with her. I would’ve had to sit in the car in the parking lot for approximately 4 hours, alone. 2 - it was in a REALLY sketchy part of town. And again, waiting in the car, alone, for 4 hours. 3 - it was on my birthday. She asked me if I could reschedule my birthday plans and move them to the week after, because she couldn’t reschedule her tattoo appt. So again, 4 hours, alone, sketchy part of town, on MY birthday. There had been small things before this, but I couldn’t believe she felt justified in asking all this of me. It was such a selfish request, I broke the friendship off a month later. TheTrollys: Did you go with her for the tattoo? EconomySpot3018 (OP): Nope. I initially said yes because I felt bad for her having to go alone, but changed my mind pretty quickly. Plus, to make it even more stupid, she was married and could’ve just brought her husband. He just didn’t feel like going either.

#12

Image source: Silas-Alec, Fabio Henning / Unsplash When he belittled my hobbies and never supported my ideas, and only wanted to hang out of I could be of use to him. After a while of me being the only one driving and a few too many jokes targeting things that are important to me, I realized how I was giving so much and getting nothing in return. To this day I still dont return his calls or texts.

#13

Image source: Rare-Philosopher-346, Fellipe Ditadi / Unsplash When she ghosted me; then connected several years later. She gave me a sob story which I believed and gave her another chance. After two or three calls, she ghosted me again. Never again. Never.

#14

Image source: Humanaut93, Juan Boche / Unsplash Everytime he broke up with a girl he would go on and on about how crazy she was. Everytime he got a new gf he would force every member of the friend group to be friends with her, which was really awkward because we knew how the story would end. Didn't help that he had a history of cheating. He also liked to talk about who ever wasn't in the room. Once he started getting passive aggressive with my wife I blew up at him. Now he's got a girl he barely knows pregnant and they're both unemployed. F**k em. EnsignMJS: Did you remain friends with his ex-girlfriends? Humanaut93 (OP): My wife kept in touch with one, there were a few though. There was a really bad blow up with one girl, we'll call her "A" who he was with for like 5 years. A lived about 3 hours away and he wasn't even a little subtle about his infidelity. My wife (gf at the time) always said if she asks I'm telling her, because he would bring multiple girls around when A was at home. After one of his mistresses spilled the beans my wife confirmed it to A when she broke down. They still didn't break up but he wouldn't talk to my wife for like 2 years after. In that time he moved in with A 3 hours away, then got ratted out by his neighbors and had to move back here. The night he came back was so weird, he called me up to meet him at a gas station and a bunch of our friends were there and the girl he cheated with too. One day he said to my wife "I forgive you" and she was to polite to say "I'm not sorry" he put me in a lot of s**tty situations and I don't regret one bit not talking to him, I just hate to think of the lies he's spreading about me.

#15

Image source: Mediocre_Newspaper31, Vlad Patana / Unsplash She sent me a funny meme she posted on her Twitter (I didn’t have Twitter so I saw it thru the internet) and I decided to look at the other stuff she posted. Found a screenshot of a private convo between us where I misread a text of hers and got mad because of the misunderstanding. She only posted the parts that made me look bad and didn’t show that we resolved the whole thing.

#16

Image source: pupp3tmaster, ilya gorborukov / Unsplash Our friendship was just so superficial. He never truly asked how I was doing or took any interest in my life, family, interests. Every conversation was about some girl he liked, another one he made out with or bragging about himself. The true moment that he revealed just how much of an a*****e he was, was when he was dating a girl his parents didn't like and so he tried to convince me to play along as if I liked her so he could break up with her and go for a girl his parents did approve of. I was shocked he'd expect me to play along and our friendship just fizzled out after that conversation. He never changed and we attended the same college where he sabotaged any potential friendships with people he knew so they wouldn't get to know me by spreading rumors amongst his friend group. It's okay though because karma eventually got him right in his butt. Aragren: May I ask how Karma payed him back? pupp3tmaster (OP): So the jerk friend considered himself God's gift to women and could never help himself when it came to women. After graduation, he went on to have an internship at a newspaper back east in a small town. When he was close to finishing up his internship at 24, he decided it was a smart idea to mess around with a recently graduated 18-year-old woman and this was only a few months after she just graduated high school. Well, he got caught by the young lady's father and it's a small town so word got around. He lost his internship because of the scandal and had to get a job at the local target because surprise, surprise he ended up knocking her up and had himself an old-fashioned shotgun wedding. I always kind of knew he would end up knocking someone up eventually but his house of cards really fell in on him.

#17

Image source: Hrekires, Krišjānis Kazaks / Unsplash He was caught cheating in a regular poker game and instead of even apologizing, he blamed everyone else for being bad and said it was the only way he could keep himself entertained during the game. This was a $50 buy-in game that had been going on regularly for several years, so not high stakes but not exactly playing for peanuts either. ian9921: $50 buy-in game? That's even worse than if it had been high stakes! At least then he'd have a decent reason, this way he's essentially just cheating for the sake of screwing you over.

#18

Image source: dixiequick, nguyen quan / Unsplash When she sent me a series of scathing texts about how my depression was making it too hard to be my friend, and everyone else had problems too, and I needed to stop feeling sorry for myself. She sent them as I was sitting in the hospital with my dying dad. Two months after losing my mom as well. I haven’t spoken to her since.

#19

Image source: space_kitsune, Collins Lesulie / Unsplash When she asked me to be a bridesmaid only to tell me nevermind a month later because she asked too many people to be in her bridal party and when I asked why I was the one cut out she said she didn't see me staying in her life, whilst drunk, then revoked that statement a month after her wedding.

#20

Image source: Getonwithitplease, Toa Heftiba / Unsplash She told me that she'd been thinking about it and there was no way the baby I was carrying could be by my partner, I must be lying to cover up sleeping with another man. She said she'd added up all the dates and it just didn't work. Then when I asked her to stop talking about it (because it wasn't true!) She told me I didn't have enough friends to cut contact with her. Wrong. See ya. I_FP_TO_TURKEYS: No friends is better than toxic friends, being able to be alone is awesome!

#21

Image source: JohnGilbonny, Getty Images / Unsplash When I waited for them to call me first. I'm still waiting... Dances_With_Demons: This is why I no longer talk to my mother. I realized I was always the one reaching out to her. I made it a point to call and text every couple of weeks and would get a three word reply two days later, if that (and she rarely answered a call), so I decided to see how long it would take for her to reach out to me. Six years and counting.

#22

Image source: cwt48, Dmitry Vechorko / Unsplash In high school I had a male friend who was 2 years older than me and he was like a brother to me. I went to him for everything and we had a purely platonic friendship. He started dating a girl and she and I really hit it off. We became close friends and remained that way to this day. Eventually they broke up and I somehow stayed in touch with her than with him. Few years later after the breakup, we were having drinks one evening and she got a little tipsy, and told me how he was the one who broke up with her, but was still calling and talking to her like they’re dating, WHEN HE ALREADY HAD A NEW GIRLFRIEND. The more she told me, the more i realized how he was just dragging her along for a long time, almost like keeping her as a backup. What’s even worse was he got married 3 years ago, and still tried to put the moves on my friend! She now keeps her distance from him. I sometimes can’t believe how much I looked up to him in high school... Drakmanka: You matured, he didn't. At one time he may well have been worth looking up to. Don't feel bad about something younger you did, be glad that you outgrew both your young self and your old friend.

#23

Image source: GrandUnhappy9211, Taras Chernus / Unsplash I began to notice that he'd get really quiet whenever something good happened to me. He was pouting. He pouted when I got a new girlfriend. When I got a good job. Even if I had a small pleasure like buying an album that I liked. He'd get a hurt look on his face and barely talk. I never understood how he could think of me as a friend and absolutely hate for me to have any happiness at the same time. Oberon_Swanson: Try thinking of your friend's success as your success. Being part of a more successful social circle has its benefits, right? If they get a promotion, your "I know a guy who might be able to help with this" factor becomes stronger. Your friend gets a cool girlfriend? Maybe she has some single friends with similar interests and values. I know it's still kind of a shallow way of looking at it but it helped me past the "jealous of friends' success" tipping point into just being genuinely happy for them even for things that don't help me. Learning to be happy with what you have is also important, and not being competitive with your friends. If you don't see them as being on the "same team" as you, you don't see them as friends, they're really just The Joneses you're trying to keep up with and have d**k measuring contests with.

#24

Image source: Divayth--Fyr, Getty Images / Unsplash I would start a lot of activities, like game nights or tennis or just hanging out. Anything from goofing around with one or two people at a park, to 20 people playing Cards Against Humanity and making quesadillas. This grew over the course of about 3 years, mostly with people I worked with. I started noticing some things were a bit off, and then I couldn't help but keep noticing. Like at game nights, we would do stuff like have a marshmallow fight or toss nerf balls around, and at some point I realized I wasn't really part of that. No one threw a marshmallow at me. I would be laughing and zinging them around, they would all be play-chasing each other with them, but no one ever threw one at me. I wasn't sure what that meant. It was super weird once I noticed it. Other things became obvious once I paid attention. I had couches and chairs in my place, but if I sat on a couch, people would all crowd onto the other couch while I had one to myself. I just sat in chairs instead, and suddenly the couch was fine once I wasn't on it. I tried to figure out why. Didn't think it was hygiene, I knew I wasn't bothering anyone or being creepy. I don't know, just a vibe I give off I guess. Eventually I realized no one initiated anything with me. Lots of texting, lots of hanging out going on, but if I didn't initiate it, it didn't happen. I didn't want to see any of this stuff but I couldn't help knowing it once I knew it. So I eventually stopped initiating. Figured I would give it a week or two, see what happened. It's been a few years now, haven't done anything with those people (or anyone else) since. I just went back to my accustomed isolation, changed jobs, and never heard a word. I still have the same phone and such. I guess this isn't a good answer because I don't think they were a******s. The problem had to be me, I just don't know what it was.

#25

Image source: anon, Getty Images / Unsplash I moved out of state and being away from him ended up being a relief. He's just so negative and whiney and he always has something s****y to say about my life or my decisions. If I make a mistake its because I'm stupid, if something bad happens to me its always my fault. He just sucks as a friend. He's married to one of my bffs so I still see him and its fine but its good that its only a once in a while thing.