DARK SECRETS: Lifelong friendships end stories | Rare Historical Photos

We were both the 'weird' kids in primary school when I moved into town at age 8. I didn't fit in with the general cohort, and neither did he - we became fast friends. A friendship that endured through highschool and early adulthood.
There was a point when we were both near 30 that I realised I never felt better after we saw each other. Often, much worse really. This made me reflect on the years we'd been 'friends', and I realised for the last 10 at least I had never actually felt good after seeing him, and our relationship was very heavily skewed towards his needs and issues.

I realised in all the years we had known each other, he had never asked how I was, how I felt, or how I was doing.

I realised, that is not a friendship.

So, I stopped calling him. I stopped visiting his house. And thus, the friendship ended. Because I was the only one being a friend.

He went to a military academy and married a girl we'd both dated. Then nothing from him for 50 years, although she was a friend on FB. Last month we all reconnected and had a wonderful time catching up and recollecting good times.

We definitely need to do that every 50 years.

I'm 43 he would now be 39. I moved my senior year of highschool, had no real friends anymore and was just kind of starting life over. I met him shortly after moving in. We played football together, then started playing video games together. We both even moved out and became room mates for a bit.

I hung out with this guy every day for like 12-13 years. Then I moved to another state. Yet that didn't stop our friendship we transitioned to playing games online and talked over skype, then teamspeak, then discord. I'd call and just talk to him every day on my dull 45 minute drive either into work or home from work one of the two.

We played all the MMO's together, played or tried most multiplayer/co-op games. We were just really great friends, best friends. 7 years later I moved back just down the street from him.

We hung out once in person because we were both just busy with life but still playing games with each other. He then got sick with covid, and the rest was a blur really. It was the fast acting terrible strain of covid that he got. He was okay one day said he had a cold. The next day his mom called me and told me he was in the hospital.

We talked over text a couple of times and joked about how I was going to finally catch up to him in a game and maybe even surpass him. 2 days later he was put on a ventilator, 1 day after that he was brain gone... 4 days after that, he was removed from the life support and that was the end... In his passing he did one final amazing thing. He donated his remaining healthy organs to those in need because he was always a helper and it's what he wanted.

I knew him for 22 great years. I knew him probably better than anyone else did. We talked about everything and nothing at the same time. I tell everyone that the day he passed away I lost my little brother and the world has never been the same since.

I still miss him terribly and there are just some moments when I'm still playing the games we played where I can't do much. I'm too busy crying over the memories of the years we spent playing the game together and just missing him even more.

There are some games like World of Warcraft where I can't even look at the game any more because that was basically a decade of us playing.

My cat passed away and I was devastated. When I told my bestfriend about it, she didn't even check in on me. The next text she sent was about haggling the price of the laptop I'm selling... even when she knows I need the money as I just spent a lot trying to save my cat.

This was just yesterday.

They had kids and I didn't. after that I think it was that our lives were too different to connect anymore. their lives revolved around their kids and I and my partner couldn't identify with that. my and my partner's life was about travel and career and they couldn't identify with that.

He had a sudden early onset of paranoid schizophrenia at age 20. In less than a week, he was convinced that all of us (his friends) did something vaguelly horrible to him that he couldn't quite describe, while angrily claiming the gov't had cameras now aimed into his bedroom.

We were best friends. Got drunk the first time together. Went on summer vacations to the beach. He was one of the few peers I bonded with in high school. After that week, his mental state deteriorated rapidly and he spent a lot of time in inpatient since. I visited him but over time, lost contact. What I had learned was that he had completely forgotten who I was, forgotten our entire friendship and anything that had ever connected us. The lack of recognition in his eyes is something I'll never forget though.

It's obviously not his fault and I hear he's functioning much better than he used to,..but it certainly is a special kind of grief.

He ghosted me. I’m British he lived in the states. Went to visit him twice. I guess for him I was just a pen pal. We were friends who spoke almost every day for 15 years.

He got married, had a child, and gained different interests. As this happened, communication and visits became rare until I noticed I noticed that I was the only one visiting and or started communications. I decided to stop and see if it was just in my head. Well, I haven't seen or heard from him since. I hear he is doing well, and that makes me happy.

I failed him as a friend. I went through some of the worst bouts of depression and avoidance that I've ever experienced. He kept offering to hang out or play games, and I kept pushing him away until eventually he just gave up and left. I'm doing a lot better these days, but I really miss him and wonder if I should reach out and try to rekindle our relationship. At the same time though, I know that it's been far too long since we last spoke, and I don't know if he would trust me after everything.

I don't blame him, of course.

Just...faded away. It happens, as you get older in life - you realize relationships generally aren't forever, that's okay. New ones take there places.

Lost all respect for the dude -
I needed a job and opted to work doing the bins because work is better than no work and he wouldn't work for his dad at £80 a day as a labourer and instead opted for the £55 a week you get on state benefits. Then all he would do is spend his day drunk and high and argue when he'd forget the rules of the card games we were playing.
Felt sorry for the girl he was with too because he'd use all her money to fund his drinking and smoking and getting angry at her when he didn't have enough.

I left and never bothered contacting him again, and what's funnier is that when I did see him in the street years later, he honestly believes he did nothing wrong and that I was just a bad friend.

My disability got worse and I now need a wheelchair to get around outside the house. They started ghosting me and after pushing them for an answer me thinking something happened etc they tell me "well, we've nothing in common anymore since you cant go out to shows and such." I was heartbroken. This was my person that I thought was my ally, I had supported them through so much but I was just dropped like I was nothing. I foolishly tried keeping the friendship going for a few more months but they kept cancelling on me or outright lying about their plans. In the end I just blocked them everywhere, they didn't deserve a conversation. It still hurts so badly.

We had been friends since middle school, we were a group of three best friends. When he got married in 2016, I was a groomsmen and our other friend was his best man. The wedding was the last time we heard from or spoke to him.

Nothing happened to cause it. He just.. disappeared. I heard he got divorced years ago and is living with family in Las Vegas now. I reached out to his mom on Facebook to see about getting in touch with him and she replied "He will not ever reach out. He has expressed that was the past and he no longer will visit it."

And that's how I lost one of my best friends.

Oh, this friendship just recently ended!

We were best friends since sixth grade. He helped me feel free to be myself. In college, we would drive to each others’ towns to see each others’ concerts or performances. Our friend group stuck together no matter what and were constantly talking. He was even one of my groomsmen. My wife and I were the first people he and his girlfriend told about their engagement.

And then he moved across the country to get his Master’s degree.

The second he left town, he almost completely stopped talking to the rest of us. He even stopped talking to his fiancée, who didn’t move up with him (the plan had been for them to be long distance while she stayed home and he rushed through his program). The two of them eventually started working through the distance until one day he told her she had to move in with him. She said she wasn’t sure, since they were still working through things, but he said “move in with me or you’re never hearing from me again.”

She did, and things were fine at first. Better, even. The two of them spent time together. He even texted me back for the first time since moving, and HE planned a time to hop on a game online. The day came… and he never got online. It’s been a year and I’ve still never heard from him.

Around that time last year, he changed majors and got a new group of friends. He completely stopped paying attention to his fiancée and fully dropped the rest of us back home (she even asked if he had texted us in a while and he said “I’m in [state] and they’re not. Why would I talk to them?”). He started hanging out with one girl in his new friend group a LOT, even bringing her along with him and his fiancée when looking at new apartments. His fiancée said he wasn’t cheating, but I think this is denial.

Anyway, the two of them fought and stopped talking for a little bit, then right after they started trying to make it work again, he said “we need to set our wedding date. We should make it as soon as possible.” She got nervous and said that she thought they should go to couple’s therapy first, and he got angry and told her he hadn’t loved her in two years (so, since around the time he proposed, and a year before he demanded that she move in with him), that she never knew “the real him,” and that all she ever did was make him angry. She collected her stuff and moved back home QUICK.

In her rush, she left some personal items in his apartment, including some clothes and a pearl necklace from her father. She asked if he could send it back and he said he wasn’t going to waste time mailing her “junk.” However, a couple days later, she saw on his Instagram that he was wearing her shirts and her dad’s pearl necklace. Furious, she texted him about it and he said he’d be blocking her “until he could figure out shipping costs.” A couple weeks later, he unblocked her to say he was “forgiving her for all of her manipulative behavior” and that he “didn’t hold any resentment,” but that he thought it’d be “better for the two of them to go no-contact.”

I don’t know what caused the quiet, sweet, quirky kid I grew up with to become such an absolute monster, especially since the rest of his family has always been so sweet to me. Illegal substances? Losing himself in the freedom of a new place? Was he always like this and I just never knew? Who knows. All I know is that fifteen years of friendship with him went down the drain once I found out how he’d been acting.

I got depressed in my teens and gradually drifted away from him and everyone else.

It got worse into my 20’s. I watched everyone move on with girlfriends, jobs, kids and homes while I self-loathed almost into my 30’s.

I’m in my mid 40’s now and have struggled to fully reconnect or make any new friends. I’m still included in all these old friend circles but like one foot in and one foot out. Present but not really there, if that makes sense.

I want it but I don’t want it. I go to work and my social battery is drained and anything else feels like to much work.

It’s me. I’m the problem.

This is about a best friend I had for many years. He'd kind of grown apart some years ago when he started spending most of his time with a *very* conservative crowd, and he drifted away from our chill friend group of folks who all had played a ton of D&D together. Eventually, to my surprise, he reached out and seemingly wanted to rekindle the friendship a little; surprising because, at that point, I had come out as a transgender woman. We chatted back and forth in a few exchanges, it was all going fine, and I was really excited that we were rebuilding the friendship, and then, out of nowhere, he apparently started sending my mom a ton of anti-trans propaganda on Facebook (a platform I'm not on) which pissed her off immensely. Needless to say, the rekindled friendship got snuffed out.

Life I guess. Get older, interests and priorities change. Covid certainly accelerated it and after years of feeling guilty, you finally realize that it's hardly ever truly personal. Everything is a season and people who try to guilt you into believing otherwise are projecting most times than not. Know they're doing well and that makes me happy.

He invited me to his wedding, then never called me/returned my calls again.

I didn't drink, at all, during his ceremony, nor did I make any comments at all, so it couldn't have been my behavior.

Edit: not that I should have to add this, but given the decision people have made to interpret my statement. My friend of over 20 years had a deeply alcoholic uncle who showed up to the wedding smashed, and embarrassed himself. I chose not to open any, out of respect for him.

I stopped talking to her for a couple years due to some feelings I refused to admit sober. She'd try to reach out me once a year, since unbeknownst to me she kept telling everyone I was her best friend (wed known each other since we were 16), but I always ignored it out of annoyance.

She passed away in a motorcycle crash 3 years ago and it shattered me in a way I didnt think I had a right to feel.

I went to her wedding and never heard from her again.

Before the wedding she moved out to DC (and I think eventually Seattle), she's not on social media, and she changed her number. This was years ago. I still think about her. I've reached out to a mutual friend about her and that resulted in nothing. I'm not sure if she's in contact with anyone from our hometown. She was my best friend growing up.

I still would like to know what I did wrong. I miss you, Alex.