8 Real-Life Stories of the Worst Betrayals of Best Friends

The wounds inflicted by best friends can be felt even years later. That’s why the people who were betrayed in these stories needed to share their sides with the internet. But the last tale will have you questioning everyone you’ve ever called “best friend.”

Putting your trust in someone isn’t easy. Most people don’t do it unless they feel safe, so when someone metaphorically stabs you in the back, you feel it deeply. Let’s discover these Reddit stories to see how badly betrayal hurts.

Comments have been edited for clarity and grammar.

u/RevenanceSLC: What would you do? I used to have a friend who I did everything with. We played video games, went out to eat or to movies, and cheered each other up through thick and thin.

I helped him through his divorce and went out of my way to help him transition to a single life. Things were great! I told him he was the brother I never had but always wanted.

When I got engaged, I wanted him to be my best man. I was so excited to ask him and even made one of those silly, groomsman boxes with all his favorite things. He took it, and we hugged. I almost cried.

But the next day, he told me he couldn’t do it. He sounded so depressed that was moving on with my life. I told him I might be getting married, but he would always be my brother, and we would never drift apart. He seemed much better after hearing that.

The day of my wedding came, and he didn’t show up. I called him a dozen times and left a bunch of text messages. No response.

Our mutual friends came by and asked where he was. I covered him and made some stupid excuse. I can’t even remember it now. I kept waiting for him to show up. He never did.

After that, he ghosted me. I didn’t hear from him for almost a year. It broke my heart in a way I can’t describe. I don’t I’ll ever forgive him.

I want so desperately to reach out to him and reconnect. I want to ask him why and what he was doing that day that was so important that he couldn’t be there.

I want to tell him how betrayed I felt, not to hurt him, but so he’ll know how painful his absence had been.

To this day, he’s only responded to a few of my texts. I haven’t seen him in person for almost five years. I still miss him. Should I call and ask him to catch up?

u/KMApok: I need to know if my friend was really wrong for what he did. I moved in with a childhood friend. We had known each other for over 10 years and were as close as possible. His parents offered us their rental house, and we quickly signed a lease.

Five months into our lease, though, he meets a girl and proposes in less than two weeks. She says yes, and they decide to get married with four months left on our lease. She and I absolutely hate each other. I thought they were moving too quickly.

My friend informed me that either they would move out with four months left, but I would have to move out when my lease ends, or I could break the lease with no penalties granted.

I didn’t have anywhere else to go. I made it work, but the issue was I had about five weeks to figure out a new living arrangement when I thought I had almost half a year. Our friendship never recovered. But I’m wondering if it wasn’t a big deal.

u/OriginalZombie: I might’ve been a little too emotional then. I had a close friend who was making a (what I thought was) rash decision to move to New York.

She asked my opinion on the topic, and I tried to be honest with her and tell her I thought it was a bad idea. She started screaming at me and told me not to talk about it anymore.

Back then, I was a fool and tried to continue the conversation. My friend told me she was never talking to me again and started running away.

I followed her, trying to prove I was a good, caring friend and concerned about her. She got in her car, and I sat on the hood of it so she couldn’t leave.

Granted, I was being unreasonable, but my heart was in the right place. She called the cops on me. They showed up and told us we were both idiots, essentially. I was stupid and have learned a lot from that experience, but I still think she was terrible for treating me like that. Should I have been more supportive?

u/IdkIdkIdk24: Let me tell you that not every best friend is meant to last, and here’s why. My best friend and I planned on moving in together once both our leases ended. But a month later, she randomly mentioned in passing one day that she was moving in with her other “best friend,” whom she’d only known for 1–2 months.

I ended up not saying anything then. A few weeks later, I couldn’t contain my emotions anymore, and I told her how terrible she was for breaking her promise to me and choosing someone else to be her roommate.

We got in a huge fight, and things have never been the same between us since. We are on good terms now, but I don’t think I have genuinely laughed or felt I could be myself around her.

The good news is that my boyfriend at the time asked if I wanted to move in with him shortly after all of this happened. He is now my husband, and we have three beautiful kids together! I’m thrilled with my decision to move in with him!

Coming up soon: a man discovers his female best friend destroyed his life to make him fall for her.

u/Leesh_26: Is blood thicker than water? I went on a mini vacation to NJ (it was supposed to be four days) with my best friend in 2021. She brought her (then) 8-year-old son, and I went with my (then) 4-year-old daughter.

Her son was disrespectful, nasty, and mean to my daughter the entire trip. He had the mouth of a sailor on leave. The last straw was when he ripped a cereal box from my daughter’s hand on the morning of the third day.

She started crying, and he slapped her across her head. I tried disciplining him, and my friend blew up at me and proceeded to DEFEND her son. She also called my daughter a “whiny baby.”

We started arguing, and I packed our bags and said we were leaving. I drove four hours home without saying a single word to her or her son. I got to her house, threw her bags on her front lawn, and peeled out of her driveway.

u/AnxiousBlob8: Would you speak to her again? She told me I was her best friend but didn’t put me in her wedding party. Still, she continued to ask me for wedding styling advice for her bridesmaids. It all stung, but I got over it.

She also told me she needed me at her bachelorette party, and I was helping her brainstorm ideas. We talked daily. But she hadn’t set a date yet.

One morning, we talked like usual, and that evening, I saw posts of her on her bachelorette. We had been best friends since high school! She had a girl she had only known for six months on the trip with her.

Her response when I asked about it? “Oh, someone surprised me with it. I’m sorry that you’re upset.” Yeah, now, she’s just somebody that I used to know.

u/vurplesun: They say there are no friends in the workplace. What would you have done? We were both up for the same promotion. She started sleeping with one of the people involved in deciding who gets said promotion.

She broke into the files where our performance was tracked (that’s not hard because our company is very low-tech in some ways, and it was an Excel spreadsheet) and changed my records to make it look like I was terrible at my job and had many errors.

She then told all of our mutual friends that I hated them and was convincing enough that I suddenly stopped being able to hang out with them.

Anyway, she got the promotion, then ended up with an even better promotion within the company, and my career has sort of stagnated as a result of the lies she told (including outrageous stuff, like that I threatened her or was completely emotionally unstable, which, of course, never happened).

The worst thing about this is that it all hit me out of left field. I didn’t realize she was doing this until it was too late.

I didn’t know she was turning all our friends against me, and I didn’t understand why I was suddenly removed from several committees at work, even though I had not done a thing.

Not only that, but I’m pretty sure, in retrospect, that she is a bit of a psychopath. Fortunately, she lives in another state now, but the damage was done.

I recently got a promotion, but it was about three years (and a change in management) later than it would have been otherwise. Be careful who you call friends!

u/Deleted User: I need help. I have no idea what to do after what my best friend-turned-wife just revealed.

My best friend was the godmother of my 6-year-old son. One day, she took him to the amusement park, and they were in an accident where she was the only survivor.

My wife blamed me for everything and left. A year later, I married this ‘best friend’. She helped me through my grief and once said, “We can always make one of our own.”

20 years later, we were packing up our daughter’s things, and I froze. I saw clothes that were worn by my son on the day she took him out and got into an accident. I immediately confronted her.

Me: How did you say you survived?

She: I told you. I remained inside the car.

Me (in rage): THEN CAN YOU EXPLAIN WHY THIS HAS my son’s clothes from that day?

Her face drained of color, and she was silent for a moment before the truth spilled out. Don’t get ahead of yourself because she didn’t cause the accident on purpose. That was real. She just lied about what happened inside the car.

Once she came to after the collision, she saw my son unconscious and got herself and him out of the car. In the chaos, however, she saw a chance to get closer to me because she had loved me for years. She knew my marriage wouldn’t survive a tragedy like losing a child.

It was a freezing night, and she took his jacket and t-shirt off. She also waited a few minutes before she called 911. She told the paramedics that she had tried CPR on him, and that’s why he didn’t have clothes on. They didn’t have any reason not to believe her.

When she finished talking, I stood there, frozen, betrayed, and broken. My son died from his internal injuries, according to the official report, but the cold must have made things worse for his tiny body.

Finding out 20 years later that the person who helped me rebuild my life had actually destroyed it in the first place is just more than I can handle. What should I do now?

These people shared what it felt like to be betrayed by their best friends. Many didn’t expect they would eventually have to part ways with the people they loved. Have you ever experienced the loss of a best friend after betrayal? Was it your childhood friend or someone you met as an adult? We would love to hear your story.