"Don't Ignore Red Flags, Y'all": People Are Revealing The Pivotal Moment They Realized Their Friend Was Actually A Toxic Mean Girl
Sometimes when we first become friends with someone, we may overlook some red flags. So we asked the BuzzFeed Community: "What was the exact moment when you finally realized you were friends with the 'mean girl'"? and a lot of people provided very vulnerable stories below:
1."I was friends with her from middle school through college; we were actually roommates for a couple of years. I should have known she was trouble because she was constantly bouncing back and forth with certain friends, being close one minute and then cutting off and fighting the next. One evening, I was sitting on the patio of our apartment, and one of these on-again, off-again friends walked up and asked if she was home. I said yes and let him in, not thinking anything of it. Two minutes later, she was chasing him out and screaming at me, asking how I could let him in when I knew they were fighting. I was so pissed and just exhausted by it all. I couldn't keep up with it anymore. At that moment, I knew it was over. I put major distance between us until our lease was up, and when she asked if I wanted to sign again, it was a hard no. I haven't seen her since."
—Anonymous, 35, Tennessee
2."She hailed 'good communication' in relationships, but whenever she was upset or took any anger out on me, she gave me the silent treatment or intentionally started conversations to then ignore or be snappy towards me. (She later admitted to doing this all intentionally). She later tried to act like this never happened and be 'somewhat friends' without ever apologizing for her actions or caring how it all made me feel."
3."I had a best friend who I've known since kindergarten and when I look back, she was actually THE bully of my life. It was particularly bad in middle school when there were some days when she went out of her way to make my life hell. One time, she was 'bored' and decided to chew a whole pack of gum only to secretly spit it in my brand new backpack (not just once, but multiple times). Ironically, I was too busy to pay attention because I was doing HER homework for her. When I finally noticed, I was obviously upset, and she told me it was 'just gum' and got mad at me for being mad. I stayed in that friendship for that long because a) I was a kid and didn't know any better b) after she did something shitty, she would usually love-bomb me back into the friendship. Last I heard, she roped in her high-school sweetheart into marrying her, and they're recently in the midst of a divorce. I'm going to take a guess that she's still toxic."
4."She was sleeping with my ex-husband for well over a year. My ex would take much longer getting home from work on certain days (saying he stopped at a buddy's house, and his friends would, of course, cover for him). Then, when I was hospitalized, they both came to pick me up and made me sit in the back seat of my husband's and my vehicle. She was my 'best friend'. They both told me on Christmas Eve that they had been sneaking around for a few months and kicked me out of my own home. Mind you, she was also married with kids. On Mother's Day that year, I found out that she was pregnant but she wasn't sure if it was her husband's or my ex's. My ex now lives right next to her and her husband (who she went back to and is also pregnant again), and he solely takes care of their kid but doesn't help to take care of our two boys. I'm now happily married and expecting my first baby girl."
5."I had a really good friend who completely betrayed me. Let's call her Sophie. At a wedding, I was dancing with a guy we were both friends with, Tom. We'd all had a bit to drink, and she took me aside and warned me kindly that it looked like Tom and I were getting a bit close, I was being a bit embarrassing, and I might regret it the next day. I actually really liked Tom, but I didn't want a drunken thing in front of everyone and was shy of it going wrong, so I thanked her and composed myself. Later that night, she started flirting with him, and two weeks later, they got together. I put it aside. I'd never actually told her I liked him, and we were such good friends. I naively didn't consider that it could have been malicious until a year later."
"Tom and Sophie were still together, and we were all still friends. One evening, I caught up with a mutual girlfriend of ours, Drea, who told me she wasn't friends with Sophie anymore because she'd told Sophie about a guy she liked. Lo and behold, at the first party where Sophie met this guy Drea liked, she tried to get with him right in front of Drea while she was still in a relationship with Tom. It made me realize I should never have given her the benefit of the doubt in the first place. Seeing her treat Drea the exact same way she'd treated me, I cut her off so fast."
—Renata, 27, Germany
6."She had always kind of had this air that she was better than us, but it got worse once her dad's company got really big really quickly, and they essentially became richer than Midas overnight. They moved into a huge home, got two new cars, an insane shopping spree, thousands of dollars for graduation, etc. The rest of our friend group was literally paycheck to paycheck, with three jobs just to afford gas and thrifting for clothes, you get it. She started making snide comments about how she would never thrift because it was 'dirty and disgusting,' would throw fits when we couldn't all get dinner with her (sorry, I couldn't afford a $75 per person buffet), would literally laugh at us when we had to get the $2 drip coffee and not the $7 custom drink she could afford. It just really started to wear on us, so we phased her out of the group."
"She quickly found a new friend group of all rich girls. We would see her out sometimes, and she would turn her nose up at us. Well, daddy's company sank within eight years of that, and they had no savings as they blew it all on stupid rich people shit. She no longer had a credit card and was forced to get a job. She got married, got divorced, moved back home, and has been living the 'poor' life ever since.
Only one of our friends from the old days accepted her apology and has been talking with her off and on. There's a lot more drama between us, so we haven't talked, but yeah, she got her karma. Those rich friends dumped her as soon as she lost all her funds."
7."She was my sorority Big Sister, and I thought she was a real friend. We spent all our free time together. Then, one night, I mentioned that I was thinking of running for the executive board, and she looked me dead in the face and said, 'As much as I love you, you won’t win. Nobody likes you. People think because you’re friends with some of the board members, you’re a snitch and a troublemaker. I know you aren’t, but that’s what they think.' I knew at that moment it was a lie, but I was stunned and so, so sad because her words were either a lie that meant she wasn’t actually a good friend or the truth, which meant I had 60-something people who thought poorly of me."
"I learned the truth when I called a member who was not really friends with either of us but who I trusted to be honest. It turns out my Big Sis had burned a lot of bridges in the sorority, and this kind of behavior wasn’t a surprise to her.
By the next day, people had jumped into action with reassuring words and actions while she got the cold shoulder. In the end, she was ousted from the sorority for poor grades, not paying dues, and being a bad person. I went on to eventually become president. I’ll never forget that lesson, though. Beware of wolves in sheep’s clothing."
—Anonymous, 30, California
8."So, currently, I’m in a friendship that I didn’t realize was toxic until recently. The girl, let’s call her Ava, has been going to school with me since 2nd grade at a small private school. I was never close friends with Ava until 8th grade (I’m in 9th) because I was put into a separate class away from my best friend that year. Ava isn’t mean to me, but she is to others, and when I call her off on it, she doesn’t see how what she said could genuinely hurt somebody. For most of 9th grade, I was in a friend group of four until Ava ruined it. She told the entire class about a girl’s private situation in her life. The girl completely left the friend group. That day, I made it clear to Ava that if she didn’t start being kind to others and respectful of them and their choices, then I would leave, too. She tried to be nicer, but she gave up after a week. I can’t decide if I should leave the friendship. Should I?"
9."She cared more about being popular than being friends with me. I worked at a big-name store that sold more affordable options for people, and I LOVED that job. She was complaining about not being able to afford new clothes, so I suggested she come to work with me. She looked at me with disgust and said, 'I don't wear those clothes.' Another time, she invited me to some guy's house with her, and I brought up that I was in a choir. She was so embarrassed! She dragged me out of there, lecturing me on how I can't talk about those things around *her* friends anymore. That was the end of us hanging out together. Anyway, now she lives in Florida, married to her sugar daddy (after he left his wife for her, of course)."
10."She kicked everyone out of her house when we were watching a movie. She didn't like that people had different opinions and decided we should just leave. It wasn't even a huge disagreement. Some people just didn't find the message compelling. I told her I needed a break for a bit after that (in hindsight, she was highly co-dependent, and I had been waving that off as immaturity even though we were the same age). When we met up to discuss how to move forward in the friendship, she expected an apology for me needing space because it made her feel like the bad guy. I knew she had a victim complex, but I had a lot of sympathy for her and kept ignoring her tendency to be manipulative."
"She would complain that people, especially past friends, would abandon her, so I felt I had to try extra hard after the movie incident to 'prove' that I would still be there for her. It didn't matter because, after that, she waited a few months and ghosted me — and several other friends. Don't ignore red flags y'all."
11."In short, I didn't realize that my former BFF (let's call her Amy) was a mean girl because she was kind and generous to me (for the most part). Amy was gorgeous, vivacious, and had an enviable wardrobe. I noticed that she seemed to get in fights with friends a lot, but she always gave me some sob story about how mean they were to her. Eventually, I grew suspicious, and my suspicions were confirmed when I spoke to a former friend of hers (let's call her Julie). It turns out that Amy is a mean girl who spreads harmful lies about friends, exes, and even employers. (I'm talking HARMFUL lies, like things that could ruin a person's career.) She also bullied friends, finding their biggest insecurity or trauma and exploiting it."
"Julie has receipts to back up her claims. The more Julie told me, the angrier I felt at Amy and also at myself for believing Amy. I asked Julie why Amy was kind to me but awful to our other friends. Julie told me that it was because I was a model, and Amy liked to brag that one of her BFFs was a model. I was horrified. I grew up poor and randomly got recruited into modeling when I was young, and the extra cash, though modest, was very helpful.
I felt like I had betrayed part of myself for unintentionally enabling Amy to bully people when she would have done the same to me had I not pursued modeling. I felt used and idiotic. I cut ties with Amy immediately, stood up for the friends she bullied, and apologized to them for not seeing the signs. I'm much more cautious with new friends now."
—Anonymous, 29, California
12."I was friends with this girl in college. I was shy, and she was super extroverted, so I was naturally attracted to her personality. There are so many stories of her being a mean girl (i.e., throwing ice cream at some random girl walking down the street, dipping a girl’s hair in popcorn flavoring while it dangled over the seat in front of us at the movies). Anyway, one of our mutual friends took up knitting as a hobby and made herself a beautiful scarf that took her HOURS to make. My 'friend' looked at her and said, 'That is the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen.' I knew right there that she was just straight-up mean and that she clearly didn’t understand how hurtful her words were."
13.And finally, "The lightbulb moment was after high school. We had been friends since kindergarten but hadn’t kept in touch much after graduating, and I would no longer have considered her a close friend. When I got engaged in my early 20s and chose my bridal party, she told me she was surprised I wouldn’t have asked her to be a part of it since we were 'best friends.' I felt bad (so naive!), so I arranged to have her be a large part of the pre-wedding events."
"On the day of the first event, she texted me that afternoon (when she already should have been there helping set up) with a weak excuse telling me she couldn’t make it (leaving us scrambling). She was then supposed to help with my bridal shower a few weeks later, and to no one’s surprise, she was a no-show.
I had told myself that if she had shown up, I would have given her a wedding invite (since I knew better than to mail it). Since she never showed up, she never got the invite. It's been 12 years, and I never heard from her again. She always claimed to be my best friend growing up, but she always treated me like total garbage. Knowing she was out of my life was such a weight lifted!"
—Anonymous, 34, Canada
Was there a pivotal moment when you realized you were friends with a "mean girl"? Tell us what happened in the comments below.
