Best friends are supposed to be forever. After all, they’re the ones who celebrate our biggest wins, help us through our worst heartbreaks, share a lifetime’s worth of inside jokes, and know secrets we wouldn’t trust anyone else with. But even the closest friendships aren’t guaranteed to last.
One Redditor had grown tired of her best friend’s obsession with her eight older brothers. For months, the girl had been making up stories about being romantically involved with them just to get attention. Eventually, the teen reached her breaking point and told her BFF to live out her fantasy somewhere else.
Unfortunately, that was only the beginning of the drama.
The teen had grown tired of her best friend’s strange obsession with her eight older brothers
After months of putting up with her made-up stories, she finally snapped and called her out
We expect our friendships to stand the test of time, but we replace about half of them every seven years
When we make friends, we like to think they’ll be there throughout our whole lives. We imagine celebrating future milestones together, growing older with the same people by our side, and having plenty of stories to laugh about years down the line.
Sadly, that’s rarely how things work out. Most of us will lose touch with a large number of our friends over time, often without even realizing it’s happening.
In fact, research by Dutch sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst found that about half of the people in our personal networks are replaced within seven years. The study surveyed more than 1,000 adults and found that while the size of people's networks remained fairly stable, the individuals within them changed considerably.
So why do so many friendships disappear? According to Mollenhorst’s research, one major reason is actually pretty trivial: people simply stop having as many opportunities to see each other.
Think about how many friendships begin just because you happen to attend the same school or work together. Then someone moves away or changes jobs, and suddenly keeping in touch takes a lot more effort than it used to.
Of course, some friendships end for reasons that have nothing to do with distance. A heated disagreement can be enough to make two people go their separate ways. In more painful cases, one friend might betray the other’s trust. When things end on such bad terms, the wounds can take a long time to heal.
In fact, friendship breakups sometimes hurt just as much as romantic ones, if not more. As therapist Miriam Kirmayer explained to TIME, we generally accept that romantic relationships might end, but tend to expect friendships to last. So when a close friendship falls apart, the loss often catches us off guard, making it even harder to deal with.
Perhaps that explains why people sometimes hold on to friendships even when they’re no longer happy in them. A study involving 225 university students found that people often stayed in friendships that brought them both positive and negative experiences.
After all, a friend who hurts your feelings today might be the same person who supported you through a difficult time years ago. Those memories don’t just disappear, and it’s tempting to hope things will eventually go back to how they used to be.
The teen in this story turned to Reddit for advice because she wasn’t sure what to do about her best friend. Despite the girl making up romances with her brothers and spreading hurtful rumors about her, she was still torn over whether to end their friendship. Thirteen years is a lot of history to leave behind, especially when someone has meant so much to you.
Still, knowing someone for so long doesn’t mean they deserve endless chances to hurt you. Readers encouraged the teen to block her friend and move on, pointing out that she’d already tried to address the problem several times without getting anywhere. At some point, she had to think about what was best for herself, too.
Do you think there’s any hope of saving their friendship, or has her BFF already gone too far? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
In the comments, the teen shared more details about the situation and cleared up a few questions
Readers agreed she had every reason to be upset
In a follow-up, it turned out there was a lot more going on behind her back than she knew
Readers shared advice on what she should do next, and many told her to just block her friend
