Yahoo News "He Is Dead To Me": 27 Friend Groups That Fell Apart Over Wildly Shocking "Incidents" That You Have To Read To Believe
Recently, Reddit user yurivanta asked, "What was 'The Incident' in your friend group?" People replied with shocking and heartbreaking stories about what tore their friend groups apart — read them below.
NOTE: There is a mention of pet violence/death in this post, as well as mentions of sexual assault, murder, domestic abuse, and child sex abuse images.
1."A car accident. Four friends were in the car when it got T-Boned. It was totally the other driver's fault; she was going too fast into a blind hill. Our friend in the seat that was closest to the accident died from internal injuries. The last time we were all together was at his funeral. We see each other around town now and again, we still have mutual friends, and we're all in a 'Remembering (friend)' Facebook group with his family. But for some reason, we all just...never got together again. No one talks about it."
2."A friend of ours was talking to a girl on the internet. He went to meet her and got arrested. Turns out ... there was no girl; it was one of those undercover stings where officers act like underage kids to catch men speaking to children. ... He traveled almost 200 miles to meet this underage girl. It broke our friend group apart. Some tried to defend him, saying that it was entrapment; others, like me, cut all ties with him."
3."We found out that a friend had faked his death and assumed a new identity. This was because he used to be a drug dealer and needed to disappear to avoid arrest. This all came up because his girlfriend at the time hit him and then called the cops. Once he was fingerprinted, it all came up."
4."A friend's dog ended up killing and eating another friend's smaller dog."
"Said dogs were a yorkie and a chow-chow mix. They let them out together to play at the chow owner's yard during a high school reunion (with a fence between them), but somehow, the chow broke through and seriously mauled the yorkie. ... When the Yorkie owner intervened, the chow attacked him too and ran off with the limp body of the Yorkie. ... The Yorkie owner needed some stitches and demanded the chow mix owner have his dog put down, and he refused. After that incident, nobody talked to him until he moved away. From last I heard, the chow mix eventually did end up getting put down anyway after it killed a neighbor's cat in his new town."
5."[The 'incident' was an] accidental discharge of a firearm at a Christmas party after [we were all drinking] alcohol. I was the intended target. The shooter got himself instead. For my health, I decided to change cities and friend groups."
"He intended to 'scare me' because I made a jest, and he took it personally. But the firearm went off as he drew it. This guy had been my best friend since seventh grade up into our early 20s."
6."Our friend, the perfect husband with a perfect wife and a perfect child .... had encounters with HUNDREDS of sex workers all around the country. He was traveling a lot in his car and had a second secret mobile phone. His wife found it, and there were literally hundreds of phone numbers for sex workers. He left, and there was no contact for almost two years, and then he came back, and now they are back together like nothing happened. WTF?"
7."A 'friend' got arrested for sexually assaulting a nonverbal disabled child under seven years old at his job teaching disabled kids. He tried to enter a plea of insanity, but the judge refused to accept it; they are pretty sure it's not his first victim. No one in the group saw this coming. I am unaware of anyone supporting him now, but when he first got arrested, some did think it was all just a mistake. He is dead to me."
8."One of our friends got hooked on drugs and ended up murdering his ex-wife, one of our other friends. It was devastating."
9."My friend fucked my girlfriend inside my house, on my bed... This was the incident that separated us all; we were a group of friends of seven people, including my old girlfriend."
10."I discovered, after a few too many inconsistencies in stories told, that one of the group was wanted by the state police for mail fraud, and had been using a fake name with us. I wound up getting a copy of her priors along with a mugshot and sent it out to everyone at once. A few months later, we found a story about her arrest."
11."We were in school when this happened. ... We were at lunch and found out one of my friends had a knife, and he was going to kill this one kid because he was 'annoying.' ... I had no choice but to tell on him. I only did it so he could get the help he needed. ... My other friends got pissed off at me for doing it."
12."It was my friend group/D&D group. Last year, literally three days before our next session, I got a message from a former player... with a link to a news article from a paper in our state capital that her ex had been arrested. I read it only to find out that he had been arrested for being in possession of HUNDREDS of images of child sex abuse images. We killed his character and made sure the rest of the group and even our local game store knew. He is banned from the store, and we haven't seen him since. And if he's smart, it'll stay that way."
13."A former friend of the group had a mental breakdown, assaulted his sister, and declared himself the second coming of Jesus."
14."A friend asked all of us to be bridesmaids at her wedding. She let us buy dresses and get them altered, then got married in her backyard alone without telling any of us. We found out when the wedding pictures were posted on Facebook."
15."I had a short-lived fling with a girl in my old friend group, and I called it off because she was going around telling people very personal things I said in confidence about myself and my mental health (that had literally nothing to do with her). I was drinking at home one night with my roommates, and she stopped by (she was friends with my roommates before and after all this)."
"I decided in my very drunk state in a moment of clarity that A) I didn't want to be around this woman, B) I didn't want to say anything I'd later regret, and C) it would be for the best if I just grabbed a glass of water and went to sleep.
As I'm just falling asleep, booze hitting me pretty hard, my bedroom door opens, and the woman says she just wants to talk. In increasingly impolite and even hostile tones, I kept telling her to please leave, leave now, get the fuck out, I don't want to talk to you, I'm drunk, just leave me the fuck alone, and then passed out. She decided it was okay to spend the night in my bed even though she was repeatedly told I didn't want her there. She was perfectly sober, and I definitely wasn't, and she could've gone back upstairs or gone home any time she wanted.
I was livid [the next day.] I was extremely angry. I went ballistic and called her out for her disgusting behavior and told her I never wanted to see her again. But apparently, I was the bad guy in all this, except for two out of like a dozen people who remained friends with me after this."
16."My friend A was clearly not mentally well and became obsessed with friend B. A was always going to B's house and always calling and texting. It got to be a bit much, and B wanted distance, but A couldn't take the hint. A got a little wild, and B ended up needing a restraining order. I was still close friends with both of them for a while after that, but it kind of demolished our large friend group. That all went down about 14 years ago. Last I heard A got help and got her shit under control. I think they even made up at some point."
17."I've had a group of buddies — four of us total — since high school. We all ended up in college together. I brought a woman into the friend group. We went on a few informal dates and would make out a little bit, but when summer came our first year of college, we cooled off. I got a girlfriend, and she ended up fooling around with a guy back home. It was really no big deal. We still remained friends with no hard feelings. One of my friends ended up hooking up with this girl regularly — a total FWB situation. I was glad. Now, there were really no hard feelings or jealousy because I was with my girlfriend, and she had my buddy to have fun with."
"We noticed our third friend ended up getting really distant and resentful. THREE YEARS LATER, on a road trip, he got drunk and confronted my buddy. He was madly in love with my friend (my buddy's FWB) and felt betrayed to find out my buddy was sleeping with her.
We basically brought this incident to 'Friend Court.' All four of us had a trial and really gave our friend a piece of our mind. He was way out of line to be so upset about a secret crush he told nobody about and a crush on a woman he had no exclusive 'dibs' on."
18."My friend Bob's girlfriend announced to our group of friends that one of our friends (let's call him John) tried to kiss her at a party where Bob was not present. John denied that he did such a thing, and he said that it was actually her that tried to kiss him at the party, but when he refused, she became mad at him and said that she would 'destroy his life.'"
"We didn't have any proof that either story was true, so half of our friend group decided to side with Bob and his girlfriend, while the rest of us sided with John. This created a divide in our group, and things were weird for a while.
But around two months after this incident, Bob found out that his girlfriend was fucking a co-worker and broke up with her. Now, this still doesn't prove who was telling the truth regarding the attempted kiss at that party between her and John, but now everybody believed in John's version.
Unfortunately, this caused a big crack in our group that never fully healed. Despite his ex cheating on him with a co-worker, for some reason, Bob still believed in her version of the story and never tried to make amends with John.
Also, the part of our group that initially believed in Bob's girlfriend's story tried apologizing to John, but John never accepted their apologies. He was angry because some of our friends decided to believe in an unknown girl (she was Bob's girlfriend, but she was never part of our group; we knew very little about her) instead of believing him. Some of our friends who sided with her knew John for more than ten years, yet they didn't believe in him.
So, in the end, she didn't destroy John's life as she promised, but she destroyed our group of friends."
19."I liked my friend (A) and eventually told her. I was sure she felt the same about me, but she said she didn't. We stayed friends and continued on as if that conversation had never happened. A few months later, I met a woman (J) and started dating her. My friend (A) apparently did like me and was now jealous. A started stalking J on Facebook and sent weird messages to her. Things like asking what it's like dating me, are we really dating or are we just sleeping together, how am I in bed...I asked A about it, and she lied, saying she hadn't sent my girlfriend anything. I tell her I'm currently looking at the messages, and she loses her shit, so I block her. I haven't seen A or talked to her since then. She started talking shit about me to our mutual friend (D), who believed her. D is also friends with J."
"His roommate S (also a friend) stood up for me, but D got mad at S, saying she was just standing up for me to make him mad, and then he moved out. I lost my friendship with A. D lost friendships with J, A, S, and myself. D eventually saw the truth, but it just wasn't the same anymore. My friendship with D started in elementary school with a mutual friend, and we lived a block away from each other. We literally grew up together. At that point, we had been friends for over half our lives. And it was all gone in a day."
20."We all worked at a popular fast-food restaurant together. A was a shift manager at my location and was married to D, another shift manager at a different location of the same restaurant. A cheated on D with M, breaking D's heart and causing her to quit her job and spiral down a very dark path very quickly. D abruptly moved out with only the clothes on her back, and after about six months or so, she finally decided she needed to go back home to get all the stuff she had left behind. On the way back to her old house where A still lived, D died in a car crash. This happened six years ago, and I'm still not on speaking terms with A nor M."
21."One of the former members of my friend group started selling drugs to children and bringing them to his place to get high together. We knew he was a dealer, but selling to kids crossed a red line. One of us admitted to anonymously tipping off the cops about it."
22."My three friends, A, J, and M, had all been friends for probably ten years. A and J were dating, but M was often still very flirty with J...sometimes in front of A. None of us ever said anything because A didn't seem to care, so why should we? Then, A and J got engaged. One month before the wedding, M wrote a four-page front and back handwritten note to J saying all the reasons why she shouldn't marry A and that M was the better option for her. We were all shocked and thought it was kind of pathetic. A and J uninvited M to their wedding. This was maybe seven or so years ago, and I'm pretty sure A and J haven't spoken to M since. It was some wild times. It definitely all worked out for the best, though, considering I always thought M was a fucking creep."
23."My husband's friends wife-swapped a few times. Both were (stupidly) trying for babies at the time. One woman got pregnant, and they couldn't be sure who the father was. She wanted to wait to find out; the other three pressured her to have an abortion. She spiraled after having it and ended up in a mental health facility for a few days. The next month, the other couple fell pregnant and kept the baby. The other couple didn't stay together after the abortion, and they're both still single, living in different towns, unable to find someone. It was all really sad."
24."This fucked my school friend group to the core. We had just finished high school like the month before. C drove T home and sexually assaulted her in his car. T didn't want to speak to the cops or let anyone else know at the time. T was going through a lot of trauma and asked others to let C's newly pregnant partner know. That didn't happen, and it caused a fight. ... Our friend group never recovered. "
"This was years ago. I miss T and still want to destroy C, but unfortunately, I have to respect T's wishes and not make a public confrontation about it."
25."[I was in a] group of about seven friends. My ex-friend D did something really wild one night in 2020 and five of us have not spoken to her since. My boyfriend (J) and I visited her that Summer because she was really lonely after moving two hours away to live with her cousin L at the beach. I felt bad, especially since it was her first time living on her own, and she was an alcoholic with a loooot of issues. We all started drinking a little with her roommates, but nothing too much. J and I have never been really heavy drinkers, so a shot and a drink was enough for us. Things got intense and the three of us (J, D, and I) ended up in her room. The three of us started kissing on her bed, and I ask D, 'Is this okay?' She says yes. J asks if she’s sure. She says yes and starts to undress my boyfriend. Then L barges in and yells that the two of us need to leave."
"Embarrassed, we got our things and ran out the door. We quickly booked a hotel and started to drive off. D ran out, drunk as hell, and begged us to take her with us. She started sobbing and apologizing, saying that she wanted this. We were a little confused and told her to go to bed. She went back inside.
J and I knock out at the hotel. Best sleep ever. I wake up to missed calls from her, crying and apologizing. I ignore it and move on. My boyfriend and I have a fun time at the beach. Days went by, and I wondered about her— she typically posts her entire life online, and I hadn't seen a thing since the trip. I looked up her profile and saw that I was blocked. ...
A few weeks later, I got a message from L. ... L apologized to me and said that D caused a big scene after we left. She was breaking things around the house and hitting L, all while crying and telling her that she ruined her life. Then, she told me that she barged into the room because D texted her that J and I DRUGGED HER and were trying to RAPE HER. L also told me that D's roommate K told her that D tried to get K to put more liquor in my drink. K refused. L was very confused that night because why was D begging her to let her go with us if we were trying to do that? ...
L told me that that was the last straw and told D she should move out. ... D called her family to pick her up, and she left. ... Anyway, long story short, our friend group hasn't talked to her since."
26."When the TSA escorted our friends off our flight, that was the beginning of the end. One of the girls in our friend group got hit by the pandemic pretty hard and started drinking/smoking during work hours and becoming really overall unhealthy. Since then, every public outing with her involved her becoming ... belligerent or rude to strangers. Our group was pretty tight, so we put up with it and continued inviting her and her husband on group vacations."
"Returning from one vacation, where she was see-sawing between being really stoned and being really agitated and rude, she got into an altercation on our flight with a flight attendant and another passenger. Let me be clear in saying this passenger did nothing wrong, and the flight attendant was totally justified in calling TSA to remove them (her and her husband) from the airplane. Her husband stayed pretty quiet and defaulted to going along with whatever she said about her being the victim in all of this and how she was going to write to the airline to get the flight attendant fired.
This past September, there was an upcoming trip involving her, and the rest of the group had an internal discussion where one girl agreed to be the person to tell her that she had changed, that she was a very rude person now, that she had serious issues she needed to work on, and that we were uninviting her to the trip and refunding her the tickets. Contact with her has been minimal — and we in the friend group have noticed an improvement in our social gatherings. It's sad because, before the pandemic, we all got along great (I was particularly close with her and her husband), but that last trip was the first solid nail in the coffin, and the rest of the nails came quickly."
27.And finally, we'll end with a longer story: "Our friend group was a group of three. ... There was me, Derek, and Rob. Rob was ... usually the life of the party. Derek was a lot more laid back; just a good man but not really good with the ladies. I was kind of just there as the youngest and most immature. ... Rob graduated way before the rest of us. Derek was next, and I was the last one left in high school. We all kind of drifted apart after high school. Derek joined the military."
"Rob just kind of kept doing the same shit he always did in high school: cheating on girls, drugs, selling drugs, etc...I just kept working since I was the poverty-stricken one.
Around 2009, my sister called me, hysterical, saying that our friend Derek had passed away. It kind of hit me like a splash of cold water. I was stunned and in denial. There was no way...Anyway, I reached out to our old friend group (Rob and some others who joined the group after they'd graduated). They weren't good people, so consequently, I'd stopped hanging out with the group. Rob just attracted that sort of crowd, and Derek was just one of those see-good-in-everyone types.
The story I was able to piece together was this: One of the newly-joined friends to the group was getting married, so this night was his bachelor party. They started at a strip club, but another in the group suggested that they should end the night in the next state over so they could gamble at a casino. Derek went and withdrew... a couple thousand in cash so he could pay for the groom-to-be to gamble and maybe some others in the group who may have been struggling at the time so everyone could be part of the celebration.
While at the strip club, one of the dancers noticed that Derek had a lot of cash. ... She started to be extra clingy with him and eventually asked what he was doing when they were done. He told her the plan. Well, she wanted to tag along and just hang with him while everyone else was partying it up since he was more laid back. ... He agreed, and the plan was for her to leave work, go home, and change, and they could pick her up there.
Once they got to her place, he knocked on the door. The dancer's boyfriend was waiting to ambush my buddy for his cash. He ran around the side of the house and hit him square in the face. My buddy was two sheets to the wind at this point, so there was no bracing for the hit or any expectation of anything other than picking up a cute girl. He went down like a sack of potatoes and landed straight on the back of his head. He was bleeding everywhere, and the 'friend group' all finally noticed what was going on, and they ran out to help him.
They got him back into the car and drove him home. They had to drive past THREE hospitals to get to his house. He was unconscious and bleeding all over the back of the car. They got him home, a whole hour away from where this all happened. He didn't live in our hometown anymore, so they took him to his mother's house. They left him on the couch and told his mother that he just had a lot to drink. (They must have cleaned him up by this point.) She thanked them for bringing him home 'safely.'
The next morning, it was getting late into the day, and Derek's mother got worried and tried to wake him up. He had passed away in his sleep. His mother and sister never really got over the whole thing. He really was a shining light in the lives of many, myself included.
I wasn't there, so some of the information I was given I can't really take to heart, but a lot seem to believe that this was all a setup, and when they took him to his mother's house, they knew they shouldn't have. They just wanted a quick cash grab, I guess? I never thought a few thousand dollars was worth our friend's life. I still think about him today and how I haven't seen his mother or his sister in years. They don't live in the same house anymore.
The funeral was the last time we were all together. ... I don't really speak to the group anymore. As a matter of fact, when someone from those early days in my life asks about our old group, I get kind of angry and upset inside and wish I knew what really happened and why the hell they decided to neglect medical care for someone who wouldn't have done the same to them."
What tore apart your friend group? Let us know in the comments or via this anonymous form.
Submissions have been edited for length/clarity.
