“He Has No Idea It Was Me”: 44 People Who Accidentally Became The Reason Someone’s World Fell Apart

I unknowingly introduced a really good friend to the most toxic person I’ve ever come across in my life..

My college buddy Chris (fake name) and I both had a Thursday afternoon off and decided to hit up a happy hour. It was early, there were only about a dozen people in the bar including us and a group of 3 girls.

One of the girls was 100% Chris’s type (tall, thin, dark hair, outgoing) but he was a shy guy and didn’t have the courage to strike up a conversation.

30min and some liquid courage later, I take it upon myself to start chatting with the girls and specifically introduced Chris to the tall, dark haired girl Veronica (fake name for this story). She and her friends were all single, our age, in a nursing program at a cross town school and seemed like nice gals.

Chris, myself and the girls ended up shutting down the bar that night and by 10PM, Chris & Veronica were fully sucking face and acting like the rest of us didn’t exist. I was happy for him, but got a little nervous when they ended up leaving together and her friends started joking about ‘not knowing what he was in for’. Whatever, he’s an adult and far be it from me to rain on his parade.

After that night, Chris effectively disappeared off the map. The only times I would see him was in class or at that same bar with Veronica. The dude just seemed off, but refused to talk about it and insisted he was happy. Veronica on the hand? Refused to let him out of her site (would make him wait outside the bathroom for her).

Surprise surprise, turns out Veronica was a complete sociopath/narcissist/straight up con-artist who bled Chris dry both emotionally and financially. Highlights include (but are not limited to) fake pregnancies, forcing him to cut off friends, demanding he drop classes to fit her schedule and manipulating him into paying her rent/bills/lifestyle.

Now, Chris came from a nice upper-middle class who he was super close with and apparently they rightfully had some suspicions about this girl. I had just figured he was head over heels for Veronica and ignoring us all, but I knew something was wrong when his Mom called me and asked if I had spoken to Chris lately.

Turns out he had drained his bank account and started wracking up significant debt on the credit card he shared with parents, buying crazy expensive jewelry/make up/clothes for Veronica. That was enough for his parents to drive the 4hours from their hometown to stage a mini intervention.

In the end Chris had to drop out of school, move back home and his parents ended up getting a restraining order against Veronica. His parents forced him to get a job to pay off the $3K he accrued and ended up forfeiting his partial football scholarship.

I lost touch with him once he moved back home, but I sometimes wonder how his life would’ve turned out if we didn’t go to happy hour at Kelly’s on that Thursday..

I divorced my ex wife when I found out about her chronic cheating after dealing with years of her alcoholism. She immediately tried to get with the guy she was cheating with, who was married with kids. During a drunken fight between them, she called the cops and filed a false report against him (she had tried with me previously. Was proven fake). In his drunken state, he panicked and k**led himself.

My ex had no remorse, instead posted on social media looking for sympathy. Now 2 kids don't have a dad and a wife lost a s****y husband. I only feel bad for the surviving family. I have no doubt I saved my own life by leaving her without trying to work things out. In the following month she tricked a guy into marrying her, got knocked up, bought a house. 12 months later he reached out to me on Facebook asking for divorce lawyer advice and asking me to testify against her. She signed away her rights as a mother when she saw my name on the court paperwork.

I went to my husband’s best friend’s wedding with my husband. I had only met him once as he lived in another city. We had gotten married in August and his best friend was getting married in October. Anyways, at the wedding I told the bride that it was so nice to see her at their wedding when they had just been to mine.

Huge mistake, my husband never thought to tell me, and honestly I was in my wedding daze. The bride did not attend our wedding. He had brought another woman.

I was recently seeing a guy for a couple of months on and off and I found out from him that he had had a relationship with an 18-year-old girl two years prior to our meeting. For context we are both in our 30s.
I thought this was really weird and possibly predatory so I reached out to said girl also a former coworker, and it turns out that he r***d her. It’s been two years and she has no intent to file a police report so I took all of the information I could, and I sent it to his parents and effectively ruined his relationship with his parents. No regrets.

Not directly, but a friend came to me once to casually ask me about another friend and how they were handling their new job. The friend with the new job had been ecstatic because it was a huge opportunity for their career in an over saturated field. It was essentially their big break.

I told the first friend that they were loving it and handling it just fine and they asked if they were like stressed or anything. I offhandedly said something about them having friction with one of their coworkers but that they were doing fine with it.

What I didn’t know is that friend asking me these questions was friends *with* the coworker and used what I told that friend to help get my friend fired for “creating a toxic work environment.” Not only was it very high school drama, but it ruined the trajectory of my friend’s career completely and they’re still struggling today to find meaningful employment despite this happening four years ago.

I was once the tool which got someone's career stalled, but I do not feel entirely responsible.

I was in therapy at an agency, and knew two friends who were therapists working there. I also had a 3rd friend who had just committed s*****e. At the funeral of our mutual friend, one of the people I knew from the mental health agency gossiped about private and confidential information they had snooped into the dead person's file to read.

At my next therapy session I was deeply grieving the s*****e loss, and outraged about the gossip from the dead person's file. So, my therapist pressured me to reveal the name of who gossiped, and I refused.

Two days later I got a phone call from my second friend who worked as a MSW therapist at the clinic -- and who had absolutely NO idea about what was going down as we had not even spoken in a year or so -- and she asked me why she was being questioned and possibly disciplined due to this gossiping.

So, I was forced into a position of having to reveal who indeed had been unprofessional. And that was the end of her career, and it was handled so beautifully that to this day she has no idea it was me who reported her. The incident happened in 1990. I've often wanted to tell her, but feel it is best to leave as is. She really did it to herself.

Twenty years ago I was a computer tech at university. One day my colleague has told me that she is reviewing a very interesting master's thesis and asked me whether I could find some authors mentioned in the references. Back then everything was either not online or not easily searcheable, so doing so required some google fu. I have followed some obscure links and found a copy of the article that was referenced in one of the chapters. It turned out the whole chapter was basically a single citation - the student has only changed all the 'I's, i.e. instead of 'I have researched' it was 'the author has researched' etc. But of course that is not how it works...

That was literally on the eve of the defense of the thesis... It was a big scandal in the department. The student was kicked out - but given that they formally has finished their education, they could not repeat the year or anything like that - to receive the master's degree they would have to essentially begin studies at a different department.

Of course, it was not my 'fault'... Still, being so instrumental in the demise of that person (even if completely deserved) made me feel quite strange.

We kept having boxes of parts "lost" when they were shipped to customers and manufacturers; about $20K worth. I was in charge of operations so I had to figure it out and keep it quiet since we didn't know if it was one of our employees or not.

I installed a GPS tracker in a box and had to ship it like 5x back and forth between two of our locations until I finally got it figured out. It was an orchestration between one of our employees and a FedEx driver.

Long story short, our HR fired our employer, and alerted FedEx who did the same. Our company did not press any civil charges, and the DA declined to prosecute because the evidence was very thin.

I thought nothing of it for about two years, but then a fellow employee linked me to a news article that the former FedEx employee had recently died from a d**g o******e while homeless. I don't know if my solving our theft problem directly caused it, but I'm sure it contributed to their downward spiral.

Coworker went on a road trip to Seattle. I jokingly asked him to bring back some H****n. I was not a user and didn't actually want any, it was clearly a joke.

Well, the day that he's supposed to be back he calls me and says he's running late and might not be there on time. So, I don't get concerned when he's not in at his scheduled time. An hour late and I call him again. No answer.

He doesn't come in that night. Calls the next day. He was speeding excessively to get to work, still in another state, and got pulled over. He had some w**d in the car, just a personal amount, but still not great. The problem was he had a very small amount of Tar H****n he was bringing me back as a joke.

That joke ruined his life. He had to move to that state in hopes of avoiding a charge for transporting d***s over state lines. Since he had two separate kinds of d***s they pinned a dealing charge on him. It didn't end up in jail time, but long probation and he had to live in a s****y place for years.

I apologized to him and felt terrible. He never once blamed me or had any animosity. He knew it was his choice and that he had f****d up. I still felt bad about it.

I took video and pics for the yearbook at a high school assembly. It was some sort of DARE deal don’t do d***s, strong men ripping phone books and do all sorts of strong man things.

Took it home to review the tape (late 90’s) and get pics developed. Mom saw it, asked for copies (as she paid for the pics and the film to be digitized and would be reimbursed by the school). No problem. Turns out she worked with one of them. She in Human Resources, him in whatever capacity (keeping it vague). He was out on worker’s compensation and disability, saying he couldn’t work or really move meaningfully in his life. He was almost claiming to be partially bedridden.

That was not the case. Sorry random strong guy.

Working in CPS for a while, a lot of people say I’ve ruined their lives. Granted, some I have, but I don’t think you should get to continue living as normal after SAing a child or t**turing multiple children. Most families, I was able to get resources in the home to help. There’s a couple that haunt me that I wish I had been more experienced, supported, and knowledgeable earlier in my career so I could’ve actually helped them.
One man shot himself (I don’t think he did it, I think it was a family member but I ain’t snitching) after being confronted with the evidence of years worth of him SAing a disabled child. That family was shattered, there was no possible happy outcome there.

I don’t think it was his life but it cost him a job. Coworker said he was going off for bereavement saying a relative passed away.

The next day he was off & I worked directly with his sister in law and she wasn’t off. I offered condolences she asked wtf I was talking about. I told her about the relative she got on her phone texting and said nobody died. I thought oh s**t and walked away.

It started a big investigation because company pays you for bereavement days. He got fired for fraud.

When I was 15 my friends and I went to a Cincinnati Reds baseball game with a large group of high schoolers at old Riverfront Stadium. My friends and I snuck off from the group and convinced a guy to buy us beer. When he handed the beer to us a plain cloths police officer came up and flashed his badge and started to ask questions. When the guy was not forthcoming with answers and would not show his ID the cop pulled out his cuffs and a tussle began as he tried to put them on the guy who bought us beer. As the tussle began, my friends and I took the opportunity to run and re-joined our large group in the upper seating on the opposite side of the stadium. I'm not sure if it ruined his life, but him buying beer for us certainly ruined his night and I'm sure costs him a bunch of legal fees. I wish I could tell him I'm sorry.

Ex bf was an a*****e alcoholic. After a fight one night I turned off his phone while he was asleep, knowing that he had an important meeting the next morning at his corporate job. His drunk a*s overslept and missed the meeting, and eventually got fired. I packed my s**t and moved out one day while he was at work. Honestly I don’t feel bad at all.

I was newly invited to a friend group and ended up expelling a core member via exposing her anti-vaxx status.

I had offered to have a hang out with our young babies but mentioned that we don't do playdates with unvaccinated children.

She went on a tangent about injuries and pauedo scientific nonsense, which stunned me to be honest. This whole group has kids and are all very risk averse when it comes to childhood diseases.

Mutual friend asked how the playdate went and I forwarded screenshots.

So she asked her directly if she was exposing her immune compromised friend and their critically I'll child without their knowledge and consent at parties and it went nuclear. She was unanimously ghosted by everyone and I felt like s**t about it.

When I was in high school me and a friend of mine were trying to go to an MLB game. It was right before smartphones and his car didn’t have GPS so we got lost going there.

Lost touch with him for a couple years before seeing him at a house party and brought it up laughing about how we got lost. Turns out he didn’t tell his parents where we were going. His mom saw the toll bills from when we got lost and thought that it was his dad using the car to cheat on her and that his dad slept on the couch for a year before my friend realized our excursion was a contributing factor to his parents fighting.

When he told me the story it seemed like they had reconciled and I’m sure the toll bill wasn’t the only thing, but it was pretty wild finding out that two dumb kids on summer break trying to go to a baseball game played a part in a marriage potentially breaking down.

Oh man I have one. When I was like 19 I was riding a bicycle to work and got hit by a landscaping truck pulling out of a gas station. The two guys were so apologetic, helped me up, checked out the bike, offered to give me a ride, everything. Nice guys, and I was ok, just stunned really. Well some lady in the parking lot called the police. Turns out they didn't have documents. Cops arrested them both and impounded the truck. And then gave me a ticket for riding my bike wrong. I still feel bad cus if I had just got my s**t together faster and left they could have left before the cops got there and ruined their s**t. Total time was less than 5 minutes from hit to cops. They only show up that fast when you don't want them I guess!

My very best friend and I had drifted apart after school, once we both got our first serious jobs. They hit me up outta the blue one day asking if they could borrow $45 to pay a ticket, saying they get paid in a few days. Was always good for it in the past, thought nothing of it and gave em $100.

Went to hang out with some mutal friends maybe an hour later and one of em says "did you hear what happend to X? They just got out of rehab"

"rehab? for what?"

"h****n, they were doing it for years and nobody knew"

I freaked out and called their mom, "Hey Mrs. X, I had no idea but they hit me up outta the blue asking for money to pay a ticket and I gave them $100. I'm so sorry", she sighs and says "Oh honey. If it wouldn't have been you, it would have been one of the others"

The h****n they bought with that money k**led them. Their tolerance was gone and they did what they were used to. I honestly do not blame myself at all, in hindsight they did an excellent job hiding it. Think about them every time I hear a song I know they'd have loved.

I almost started a forest fire by accident once. I was burning a burn pile, and I didn't take enough safety measures. The wind started gusting, which started the grass around it on fire. I kept putting it out and the wind would gust again, igniting it all, over and over. I rushed to the house, called the fire department on myself, and rushed back outside with hoses, connecting many together to reach the fire. I got the fire put out after about half an acre burned. The fire department came after it was out. It would have reached the trees before they got there. I almost caused a major fire. I felt terrible about it, of course. My hands were blistered from trying to put it out with a shovel over and over.

The grass was green, but there was dead, dry, grass under it. Combined with the wind, it was just a nightmare.

My sister got pregnant at 20, she wasn't sure what to do.

I, being a good little christian at the time, told her of course she would keep it and we would figure it out.

She married the baby daddy, who turned out to be a psychopath that k**led two of her cats, completely destroyed her mentally, and ruined her credit "starting businesses". She's now obese, unemployed and unemployable, on several psychiatric and physical medications, and her son is taking after his dad. I blame myself for it everyday and can't stop imagining how amazing her life would have been if I had encouraged her to get an abortion.