Hey Pandas, What Was The Moment When You Realized You Were In A Toxic Friendship Or Relationship?

I was friend with this girl who was very sweet, but oh boy, extremely high maintenance. She needed you to be available to help her or talk with her(for hours), and if you weren't available because life (I was working, in school, and a relationship), or if you upset her, expect to get a 4 page letter, single spaces, front and back, from her explaining how hurt she was. I did try to talk to her about it on multiple occasions, but it never helped I slowly started putting space between us by just not responding or answering phone calls. The final straw was when I was pregnant. She found out from a social media post. I hadn't told many other people besides my close family and a couple of life long best friends. Oh good God!! I got bombard with multiple, very long e mails, voice-mail, and a couple of her signature hand written letters. All of then went on and on about how hurt she was I didn't tell her about the pregnancy, and how upset she was that I told my 2 other friends and family, she believed that she should have been the 1st person to know. It was just too much. I sent her an email back, explained that I will always care about her, but just couldn't do it anymore. I got more emails and letters for about a month, and then never heard from her again. I truly hope she is well, and if she really needed me for something I would be there, but I have never regretted exiting that friendship. I actually felt better because I didn't realize how emotionally exhausted I was because of her

Gaslightinh..

When I was constantly the one to initiate contact. I took that as a hint and decided to stop contacting her. Lo and behold! I was right about her not really wishing to maintain a friendship; and I have since moved on to form other more meaningful and fun friendships. Nobody was at fault, just different interests and no chemistry.

I had this one friend, lets call them Abby they were so rude to me. They would ignore me, never listen to me and constantly abandon me. My worse fear is being abandoned so this would hit hard for me (this whole thing happed last week). They were making me VERY depressed because i had to deal with them everyday and i just felt so lonely. Since Abby proclaimed herself the “leader” of our 4 person group (including me) everybody listened to her and did what she said. They started ignoring me/abandoning me as well, i was so sad i just couldn’t deal with it anymore. I have problems with anxiety and depression but i was always hiding it so my friends wouldn’t leave me, but two months ago i stopped hiding it. They immediately started treating me differently. So one night i realized that all i wanted in life was to be happy and i would never be happy if i stuck with them, so, i found new friends in secret (this was very hard for me because I’m so bad at making friends). When i did find new friends they made me so happy, i wasn’t lonely anymore. So the next day i stopped talking to my old toxic group and just left them, stopped talking to them and that was it, but they wouldn’t let me go. They sent a letter to my locker after two days (which i expected because Abby will do ANYTHING to make things more dramatic) the letter said things like “we know we are definitely not in the wrong” and “ we did NOTHING to you! This letter is for you to admit what you did wrong” i was SO done! So i replied saying what they did to me and how i was depressed already knowing that they would deny it. And they did while causing more drama by showing everybody I’ve ever known and calling me a stupid b*tch. I just wanted to leave a toxic relationship and be happy, now everybody I’ve ever cared for, people i would KILL myself for hate me! They even gathered up everybody I’ve ever loved and went to the principal to talk to her and call me a b*tch. I dont know what i ever did to deserve this, i just wanted to be happy. But they just had to make me miserable. I can’t walk through the halls without two people i cared for calling me a b*tch. Now they’re making up lies, telling the principal that i steal stuff and have drugs. Everybody hates me… because i tried to be happy… and i dont know what to do. I’m starting to hide my face but i wont work, sometimes in the hall they make me cry and i just can’t deal with it. I dont think ill ever be happy…

oh god. ok, when i was turning 12 in a few months, i got a boyfriend. at first i didn't notice anything. i didn't notice anything when i asked why he loved me and he only said i was beautiful. how he would always tell me to sit straighter and press my legs together to be more ladylike. how he didnt like me sometimes humming to songs or doing little dances i learnt. how a few weeks before we broke up he told me i was annoying. that was one of the biggest hurts in my life. wheni heard he was planning to dump me, i went through the 5 stages of grief in less than 30 min. then i did it before he could because that was when i realised how manipulative he was. i think he was raised on stereotypes

This will be my first submission but it only makes sense after writing it under #6 comment section, here goes:

This kind of happened to me in the first semester of high school of my senior year in 2016, maybe as the first post here, she thought I was a toxic friend. I am not a party goer, she was, I am not too over friendly or outgoing, she was, I get exhausted around people, she was always getting her energy from others. We were different from each other but I thought that we were best friends, known each other well or at least I thought so for 4 years but then on the month of our birthdays, she is 10th of October (if I remember right, maybe it was 5 or 8,) and mine on the 29th. I gave her a present and she received it with no complaints, then no contact and my birthday week was here and I tried messaging her, Facebook etc. Her mom sent me a messaging telling me to stop, I was dumbfounded, what did I ever do? Let me mention this, she has a leg trouble, one is a tad longer than the other and she kind of struggles to walk (therefore a disability)

Wanting to talk, I told her that I would wait outside my classroom door, her class was at the end of my hallway so she would pass by me. She never came, I felt sad and started crying and a counselor came out of nowhere. She called to me to go to her office which was in the same hallway and I spoke to her. Then my ex-friend passed by, there was a window with the blinders on but there was a small crack which I saw her from. I was about to leave to talk to her but the counselor stopped me and said, "No, let me go instead," and I was like, "Oh, okay." And when she came back, she told me my ex-friend did not want to be my friend anymore. What made me get more in shock was that she had brought with her the school's security guard. For me it felt like betrayal, she received my birthday gift for her, without remorse and in a way called the cops on me. I felt as if I was a stranger in her life, I would had never harmed her in any way.

When the counselor told me all of that, she suggested to stop talking to her and I immediately blocked her everywhere I could remember. I avoid confrontation if I can do so and if she called for a security guard, what more could she not do. Some time passed by and I saw she tried to contact me via skype, I saw her message months later. Blocker her there too. I remember during my birthday week I passed it off crying. My family saw me and tried to console me. It still hurts to this day. Then recently, she sent me a friend request from her new account in Facebook. I was not aware that was her but saw a picture in her feed and confirmed it was. I tried to make contact. While still hurting because it became a sort of trauma in my life. I sent her a message and asked to meet up, when we were gonna do so, both of our schedules did not match. I received that as a sign from God to not ever meet.

God works everything in favor of his children and He knew I was hurting. After realizing that fact, I sent her a message saying we shouldn't meet but I had questions. Why did she do what she did. Which no surprise, a coward always a coward, no response. She left me on seen and never replied. I left it as that, God bless her, I have struggled to forgive her because she made me feel as if I was at fault. But I have forgiven her, no contact at all. I wish to not be her friend any more. I last saw that she apparently only had one true friend and it kind of makes me laugh at the irony of, if you had only properly seen me as a person and not as a whatever she saw me as then our friendship could have been longer that what it was. 😒 "Time heals all wounds" but God healed mine. Thank you for reading. In response to #6: About a walking diary : I understand the need to speak about anything, during elementary and middle school I always bottled my feelings and that made me feel lonely. Now I speak my mind, of course trying to mind the feelings of others. God is my guide and solace. 🥰

My bestie tried to tell me for literally years that my mother's behavior was Not Okay, but of course, I always defended her and tried to say she wasn't that bad.
Then she got WORSE. For a whole month she was absolutely nasty to me. Finally I found out the reason she was mad was that she had read something I posted on my blog (which I wrote personal things on because I thought she didn't read it) that was just a little bit unflattering to her. She was absolutely livid, told me she had read my entire blog, had a huge argument with me... The works.
The argument ended. I walked away. Then I came back, and said, "How much of my blog did you say you'd read?"
She repeated "All of it! I read all of it!"
I said, "So you read the parts where I said I was so depressed I wanted to go to sleep and never wake up?"
She got a look on her face like a deer in headlights and went, "Nnnoooo...."
At that point, I knew for sure that she was abusive. Because EITHER she lied about reading my entire blog, and only told that lie in order to make me feel bad (which is abusive), OR she genuinely DID read my entire blog and simply didn't care about my mental health (which was also emotionally abusive of her). That was the straw the broke the camel's back.
If your friends say someone in your life is not treating you right, even your parents or significant other, LISTEN TO THEM. We tend to excuse a lot more behavior than we should from our family members and close friends.

There were a lot of incidents that I made excuses for because we'd been friends a long time and I was close to her young children. But the thing that broke things off - we were at a neighborhood party. There was drinking, but she was no where near drunk - just enough to push her into her loud party mode. Anyway, there were tons of people at the party that I didn't know. I had brought a camera - because I always did - and took a few photos of my friends there but then put the camera away to just enjoy the party. After a bit my friend asked where my camera was. Told her, and she lost her mind. "You mean you haven't been taking pictures? F* you for not taking pictures! F* you!" Last part said several times over - she was angry to realize that SHE wasn't going to have photos for her scrapbook. That was the moment I left the party, left her life and never looked back.

My brother, I love him and I do wish him the best but I don't want him in my life anymore. We were somewhat close, until mom died. After she passed I would call him once a week for a month, to see how he was. No answer, no call back. But claimed that he felt like people didn't want him in their life. He told dad that it was dad's fault mom died, it wasn't. I thought it was a super sh*tty thing to say. He's 46, can't hold down a job. Only ever calls when he wants something, and when you tell him no he gets annoyed. Nothing is ever his fault, all the bad things that happen in his life are never the result of his bad decisions it's "just his luck". I told him straight out, if you want to have a relationship, great I'm all for it. But I'm not going to give you money, or do you favors. And if you want to see your niece and you make plans to do so, you need to stick with them short of an actual emergency. Never heard from him again. He's met my 2 year old daughter twice (he came with my dad who was visiting), and he lives 30 minutes away. He couldn't even be bothered to let me know if he was going to come to my wedding. No response at all, didn't show up. I don't need users in my life, blood relations or no. I've had friends who I've know for years treat my better than my own brother. Family is what you make, not the blood you share.

When I compared her to my other friends. (more in comments)

Ohhhh boy...buckle your seatbelts my friends because this one will be long.
When I was younger, I had a terrible, terrible ability at making friends. I would say to the point where all my friends were toxic at one point (and that includes me, I used to be a horrible friend due to lack of social skills and knowledge).
I couldn't have been older than maybe...13. Middle school age, a sixth grader. See, I had transferred school districts (in America, schools you go to are dependent on where you live). Well, I had managed to do this because my mother had gotten a job at this school as a teacher, and so I went with her. We had a sixth grade orientation, it wasn't mandatory but my mother made me go anyway.
I immediately felt uncomfortable. I knew nobody and had zero skills in friendship. The principal came up to me, said I looked awkward and shoved me over to the first girl group he saw. This was the beginning of a three year friendship nightmare.
Now that everyone knows this backstory, here's the part where I realized she was toxic. The leader of this girl group, let's call her Jolene, had her eyes set on me, specifically. Not to get all Hollywood but I was about to befriend the literal mean girls. It should have been my first hint to leave when I noticed that they kept leaving behind 'friends' to go talk to the more popular people at that orientation.
It took me three years to see she was so awful to me. I got into anime/manga/eastern asian culture for Jolene, I forced myself to listen to all the bands she liked and was always trying to be the one to hang out. She put zero effort into our friendships and kept trying to destroy my budding personality.
Here's where I realized it. Jolene was in the musical with me. I had always dreamed of doing musical theatre since I was small and I had managed to land a lead role on my first time. I was ecstatic! Obviously I wanted to celebrate. She said that it was only a middle school musical and I needed to get over myself. Jolene really did say that. Which is interesting, because she was also in this musical. It crushed my heart when she had said that, since I had been working to overcome my anxiety and learn more about myself and what I liked.
During this production of the musical, I still hung out with her. I don't know why. I think it was the sense of familiarity, since she was really the only person I knew. I also developed a crush on this boy the two of us had begun to hang out with. I thought he was hilarious, he was extroverted and confident. He enjoyed music just like I did. So I had been planning to tell him about my crush. I didn't want to date but I wanted him to at least be aware.
Jolene took my man away.
I went down the hallway to find her kissing him against the lockers, knowing I had a crush on this boy. The two started dating for a while and when I showed signs of moving on, she dumped him and he didn't date anyone for a while.
Why did she do that? What was the purpose? I can't really say. She was just hurtful because she could. She invalidated emotions from anyone outside of hers. Jolene never wanted to celebrate others achievements, or played it as a competition to get something better or worse (my 'favorite' was when I had been talking about a very personal experience of mine and she said that because this person wasn't convicted or put in jail then it never happened). Jolene had a lot to work on herself. I think she realized she was an awful person after befriending and developing a crush on one of the most awful persons I have ever known to this day. She realized how she was, and Jolene treated me worse because of this other person's toxicity.
I sadly was so desperate for a friend I never left her until some very true friends managed to save me after a devastating time in my life. I could have saved so much heartbreak, hurt and trauma if I had left after the first time.
Please, don't be like me. Get you someone who isn't a Jolene.

She invited me to travel with her family to a University where her brother was attending college. My father gave me $100 to pay for my own food and extras. During our trip, while her and I were at the local mall, she tells me that she would steal money out of her father's billfold. I asked her why she just didn't ask for the money. She said it was more fun to steal it.

Fast forward later that day and I told them I was heading to the lobby of the hotel to get change for the vending machine. When I got back, she tells me her father was on the warpath thinking I was the one who stole $40 out of his billfold...probably because she denied taking it. I told her mother that my father gave me money for the trip. She called my father to confirm and he said yes...that he'd given it to me.

Not once during the entire trip did my supposed friend fess up that she'd been the one that had stolen it. I broke off my friendship after that trip.

My girlfriend talked about getting married, which I wasn't necessarily against. When I asked why she wanted this, I was assuming her answer would be along the lines of "I really love you and we're so great together." Instead, she said, "Because I'm pushing 35 and I don't want to be the only one of my friends who isn't married!" This answer marked the beginning of the end of our relationship.

I found out I had a toxic friendship when she threatened to sleep with my boyfriend if I didn't have this huge party for my birthday.

when my friend would run up my bar tab and ditch me

When my dad died and she and I were co-executers of the property and contents of the house etc...and I found out that while my husband and I were at the house painting and fixing it up to try to sell it, she was at a winery with some of my ex friends and she funded her trip out of the shared bank account we had to pay the bills until the house could be sold.

Had this friend I thought was a close friend at work, and we would meet for lunch. She moved to another department (but same company), and we would still make arrangements to meet for lunch.

Slowly, she either began to come late for the lunch appointment or told me, 10-30 minutes after the time we were supposed to meet, that she can't make it.

The final straw was when I waited for her for more than an hour, having messaged her to confirm we are still meeting, to see her walking out of the cafeteria with her current department colleagues, supposedly after their lunch. When I asked her about it, she said she forgot about our lunch appointment.

I decided there was no point waiting for someone who basically only looked for me when she couldn't find someone else.

I can’t say anything without the person having to give her two sense or “insight”. It wasn’t until a few months ago when she tried to do a “Metoo” thing (not making light of the movement) which wasn’t a thing that I realized she just wants attention and can’t stand anything but the sound of her own voice… which led to too many verbal abuse instances without me catching on.

I told him I wasn't into kinky sex so he peed on me.

Any time I got excited about something (which usually results in me rambling about said thing) I got told to shush or that I was being annoying. Eventually I just kinda stopped talking at which point they got mad at me for “always being grumpy” when I’m actuality I just didn’t know what I could say that wouldn’t have them mad at me