Not Best Friends Forever: 7 Real Stories On Overcoming Toxic Friendships

Toxic relationships are real, and they affect many people all over the world. A lot of people cannot recognize if their relationship is healthy or not and end up perpetuating this kind of behavior. Sometimes, it’s very discreet, but it can affect you and your mental health in several dangerous ways.

To make aware of this huge problem, we selected 6 real stories by Casper Libero’s students that have overcome toxic relationships , and how they managed to do it. Check it out!

When we were friends, the feeling I had was of frustration

 “So, I met this girl when I was only 7 years old. We had many years of friendship, but I only realized how badly she was treating me when I got older. Anyway, she was always a very spoiled person,  so we always had very different personalities. Because of that, she always tried to copy me, she did the same activities that I did, and that created a kind of weird situation.

Besides that, in every fight we had she never apologized, she was super proud, I was the one who always had to run after her, no matter what happened, and that made me feel awful. We studied separately for a while, but when we were about 12 years old, she moved to the same school as mine. This whole period was marked by constant fights, not only between us, but with my other friends too, which did not happen before. 

When we ended up fighting, she was still putting all the other girls against me. She always had to be the centre of the group, and when that did not happen, she got very angry. When we were 14, we had our worst fight. We had a group of virtual friends in common, and she just started to spread several lies, cursing, and making up stories about me for them. It was a horrible phase of my life, in which I constantly felt humiliated, as if I was the worst person in the world, even though I did nothing, one day I was even the target of cursing by the whole group.

After that, I finally decided to cut any kind of relationship with her, and obviously she did not run after me to apologize. But it got even worse, because she started to exclude me inside our group of school friends, going out with all of them and leaving me completely out. The following year, I changed schools and it was the best thing I could do. I got completely detached from her and almost never met her, only years later we studied together again in prep course. But, until today she is very toxic with my best friend, and she does the same things that she did to me, but she still cannot break this relationship with her.

When we were friends, the feeling I had was one of frustration, I did not know what toxic friendship was. It was a frequent feeling. After it was over, first I felt a lot of sadness, but it was also a relief to have gotten rid of this situation. When I gave a second chance, I was hurt again, still added to all this feeling of anger and feeling bundled.”

– Anonymous

And today I can finally be myself

“She was my best friend since we were about 7 years old. We studied together and were inseparable! Anyway, she really seemed like a sister, you know.  Because we have known each other for so many years, sometimes I didn’t notice some of her actions and attitudes, I didn’t realize it because of our immaturity either.

In adolescence, everything began to become more evident. She was very possessive and created in her mind an idea that it had to be just the two of us. I could not get close to other friendships, only friends in common between us. She could make other friends, but I could not, and she always held me too tight. I could not create many deep friendships in school because of that, and that only changed when we stopped studying together, when we were 16, and I became more independent and created new bonds. Even so, she made my head against those friends, for me to understand that the only person who was my real friend was her, the only person I had was her. She wanted it to be like this. Not to mention the many times we fought when we were teenagers and it was always my fault, and always for very nonsense reasons, and she would stop talking to me and make people’s heads, and even mine, against me. 

Last year, we were both moving to São Paulo . She was going to prep course and I was going to college. That is when I realized that she didn’t accept my freedom, especially in college where I was even more free than school. We were in very different phases, and she could not respect mine, where I was in college, meeting new people, places and realities. Little by little, she moved away, stopped answering me and we didn’t see each other with the same frequency anymore. I could not tell her anything about college, my achievements, my life, and we drifted away, but I always went after her.

Until she started to post some hints for me on the internet. I kept thinking that it was nothing, that it was something in my head. I would send her a message, answer her Instagram, and she would not answer, she was disappearing from my life. I found out on vacation that she had entered college on Facebook. A huge achievement, and she did not tell me, I had to find out through social networks.

I was very sad, we were inseparable, and all this happened out of nowhere, because she did not accept me being free and independent of her. In September of last year, she called me to talk and let out everything she felt during this period. Still, she decided that I was not wrong, that she should have talked to me from the beginning and not have created paranoia in her head. I scored everything that had done me wrong, and she treated me as if it were nothing. It was when I closed everything, said that I was still very hurt, that I wanted to get away, and it was so important to me. I finally got rid of her; you know. Then I realized with the time that I was leading my life on top of her, and today I can finally be myself.”

– Anonymous

This affected me and affects me until today in the way I build friendship with other people

“When I was about 12 years old, I moved from a state school to a private one. Along with me were several other friends from that same school, including a girl who was very toxic and manipulative. I didn’t realize this, because I´ve never had many friends. So, as I had her, with all that romanticism of best friends forever, I did everything for her, like activities , tests etc. She manipulated not only me, but like all the friendships she had, she made the girls fight among themselves, it was very crazy.

Until we started to grow up, and I started to disagree with the attitudes she had. She literally made the other kids cry inside the school. So, our friendship was shaken a bit. Still, I liked another boy at the time, and talked about him all the time. She went and started dating him. I had to accept, but I would come in between classes and they would stay together, I had to go out with them, it was a very annoying and uncomfortable situation. 

But the auge  was this:we had each other’s password on social networks.  One day, she entered my MSN, changed the password, and did not tell me. She used my account to curse all our friends and they all turned their backs on me. She arrived at a level I had never imagined. She spoke badly about a father´s friend of ours, who had already died, and it was terrible, I became hated at school. Nobody believed in me.

After a while, we separated when she went to a new school, and simply forgot me. I was extremely upset because we were friends for about 6 years, I had in my head that we would be friends forever and she never spoke to me again. This affected me and affects me until today in the way I build friendships with other people. I became extremely dependent on my friends, afraid that they would abandon me, and no friendship works that way! I still think that no friendship of mine will last for long, and it still hurts me a lot. After many years, she came to apologize to me and try a rapprochement, but I did not let it, it was very traumatic everything that happened.”

– Anonymous

I got a total of zero friends, but it is better than insisting on such a friendship

“Well, I’ll call her Marisa. I was never one of many friends, but we were best friends, very close. We studied together for 4 years, and even after we graduated, we still see each other and talk quite often. We fought a few times while we were friends, but we always got back to friendship. I only had her and one more friend, whom I will call Andressa, while she had several other friendships. One day, me, Andressa and Marisa went to a nightclub, and we would sleep later at Andressa’s house. After a while, I was enjoying a lot and did not want to leave, but they insisted and went to the line. I was late and they just left me there. Their excuse was that I was very drunk, but please, if your friend is drunk do not leave her alone at the night club! It was a lie, I wasn’t drunk and luckily, I got home without any problems, but imagine if I wasn’t sober. Anyway, then Marisa apologized for the attitude and I ended up forgiving her.

What put an end to our friendship was a day we went out together with another friend, who was one of our best friends and we managed to meet very rarely.  We were in a bar, drinking a lot, when Marisa said to me: “You know Flavia, if I didn’t know that you were dating boys, I would be sure you were a dyke.”

She didn’t say it with normality. I was very angry, because I was always very masculine, and fit the stereotype of teenage lesbian, but I always had many boyfriends. And she kept insisting, saying that my way, my speech, my thoughts were all dyke stuff. The problem is not that I if I were  a lesbian, but this friend who was with us, who was completely different from me, had just come out of the closet and was dating. I felt extremely uncomfortable with her way of calling my “way” as if it were something negative, in front of the other friend who was gay. I was horrified by the prejudice!

After that, we still went to a gay ballad at Augusta,São Paulo. In line at the bar, a girl came to talk to me, just talk, and Marisa got very angry and wanted to leave all the time, but she was hitchhiking with me. I got home, reflected on what happened and went to talk to my father about it. I never answered any of her messages, anywhere. I simply disappeared from her life. After that, I got a total of zero friends, but it’s better than insisting on such a friendship. She was such an important person to me, with whom I had been through so much, that she made me stop. I did not want to talk about what had happened, I just wanted to end everything at once. Kinda crazy, right?”

– Anonymous

I thought I was over it, but I was wrong

“In my first week at the new school, I opened Facebook and saw that they had many messages. They were from a group called “Friends”, created by a “friend” of mine, in which more than 100 students from all the classrooms of my old school were there to curse me. They said I was a liar, a whore, they took pictures of porn actresses and put my face on top of them, offensive montages with my name and picture, and I was only 12. I could only leave the group with the permission of the chat administrator, according to the network norm, and she did not want to allow me. Every day there were hundreds of messages demeaning me, offending me.

I had already left that school after 4 years of bullying. It was a routine of physical and psychological violence, and after I left the same group of people who was responsible for all those years of pain created this group on the internet. I told my mother and she was shocked, started crying and sent a message to the group, with my account, telling that she would activate the social service. The same day, all messages and posts were deleted, but I stayed in the group, they did not remove me. I did not have any more evidence to denounce in the social service, so we gave up. The group was silenced. 

At the beginning of last month, the group was reactivated. The girls, whom I used to consider friends, and who had orchestrated all of this, were administrators and put me in charge as well. I threw my cell phone on the wall. When I saw that the group was still functioning, even without any message or publication, I had one of the worst weeks of my life. I couldn’t get out of bed, I remembered everything I had been through, it hurt me too much. I thought I was over it, but I was wrong.”

– Anonymous

How can one child do this to another child?

“I was born in São Paulo and moved to a small town, there I entered a school where everyone was related or already knew each other. I was a stranger, not part of that reality. As soon as I entered the classroom for the first time, I felt a not pleasant climate. But I was very young, about 8 years old, and I did not know exactly what was happening.

There was a group of girls with a “leader”, and soon she started to treat me badly. She looked at me weird, yelled at me. In the first year she did not abuse me much, but it was clear that she didn’t like my presence. She did not include me in the plays, she did not share the food with me, and she started to gossip and tell lies about me at school. When I was 8 years old, I found myself trapped in a network of absurd rumours, how can one child do this to another child? Because of these rumours, one day they started humiliating me, calling me poor, and they threw food at me. 

The following year, more students came in, and everything started to get worse. Two new girls came in, and at first, I got very close to them and we became very friendly. However, I had gained some weight, and they were super thin and beautiful, so they started to make comments about my body. They said that I was too fat to play with them, and ended up turning against me too, along with the “leader”, and I kept thinking about what I had done for them to treat me that way. They started to exclude me because I was “fat”, had a “rat face” and a “very big nose”, besides calling me poor because of my mother’s work. It went to verbal and physical aggression, they pulled my hair, they wrote offenses about me, like “elephant” and “very fat” on the bathroom wall. I tried to fit in at all costs.

They even said to me: “Do you want to be our friend? You’ll have to pay for our lunch every day in the cafeteria”. My mother did not know, and she wouldn’t give me that much money either, so I had to start buying everything on credit. I owed them almost 900 reais. There were times when they were very friends of mine, they did not do evil, so I thought “cool” that if I was flattering, paying for lunch and doing everything for them, they would stop offending, humiliating and assaulting me. I created the dumb, retarded girl character so they could accept me, and I can’t forgive myself for that.

When my mother paid my debt, she thought it was too weird. 900 reais in 3 months? My twin brother, who knew about everything, told her what was happening. One day she came to talk and asked if I had anything to tell her. I turned and answered: “Mom, I don’t think those girls like me, I think I should change myself. I’m ugly, my body is ugly, my nose is ugly mommy”. She explained to me that she was bullying and started crying.

She went to talk to the school, the answer was always “it’s child’s play, it’s normal, in a little while it gets better, your daughter is making drama”. I started to go to school and pretended I was feeling sick, I forced vomit so my mom would have to pick me up and take me home. Sometimes I would not even go to school because I cried so much. It started to affect not only me, but my whole family. I started to take bad grades, stopped eating, cried all the time, had suicidal thoughts.

And the aggressions did not stop. I was only accepted if I bought food, toys, bracelets. It was the only way I could participate in the games. In one of them, we were playing Max Steel and one of the girls told me to sit on the lap of one of the older boys, who had an erection.   

When was the fuse? Well, I liked a boy in our class, I’ll call him Jorginho, and one of my “friends” started being very nice to me, out of nowhere, and said: “Look, Jorginho wants to meet you at the little house (where the children would meet the “boyfriends at school”) at 11 o’clock”. I thought she was being nice, wanting to help me with the boy I like. I was hidden from everyone, and when I arrived there all the older boys, from the second year, were there, pointing their cell phones at the house, waiting for me to arrive. I managed to hide behind a tree, and they did not see me. I don’t know what would have happened to me if I had gone in there. I came back, talked to the director, and she said it was “child’s play”. I called my mother, she went there and got me out of school.”

 – Anonymous

I completely lost my identity

“I was studying in a school with a longtime friend, let’s call her Paula. We knew each other for more than 7 years, and that is why I let some very abusive attitudes go by, which I only realized well afterwards. We were very close, but I always felt a little inferior to her, because she was more attractive and fit the standards, and I did not. Everyone around me knew how my deep under eye bags affected my self-esteem. She, for not having it, kept saying derogatory things. She even said it was something ugly, and you do not say that kind of thing to a friend who is venturing because she feels bad about their appearance.

There was a time when I liked a boy, and we went to do some group work with him and another girl. During this work, they used to make fun of me about my appearance, my hair, my way of talking. It was very remarkable for me, because I never expected that a friend of mine would do this in front of a boy that I liked. They were not laughing with me; they were laughing at me. Besides all of that, in all our group projects, she never even cared about helping us. I’ve always done all of the hard work and she never helped with anything and didn’t even come up with a good excuse to justify.

Besides, she was always very lying, manipulative and stole other people’s things. She even made friends with another boy, who offended and humiliated me in front of the room, and they became best friends. They both managed to disappear with my perfume and my cell phone during the class. In high school, during the break I would go to the other room to talk with my friends there. One day I left, and this boy entered the room and said that she was taking my money. I went to confront him, and she said that he had taken it. I believed her, and when I went to vent with my other friends, they said that she was lying, that it had been both. They went through my things and stole my money in front of the whole room.

 I have walked away from many people, I’m not someone easy to deal with, and after everything that happened, I got very bad. I was very extroverted, I made many new friendships, and after this experience with her I completely lost my identity, I stopped being like this and I did not know who I was.

It is strange, but at the same time it impacted me a lot. I felt relieved, it seemed that a big weight had come off my back. Not that she is the worst person in the world. However, our friendship was destined for maturity. A very close expiration date. Today, I still carry some insecurities developed during my friendship with her. I am a resentful person, I admit, however, I do not feel so much hurt from her, only from her attitudes. I don’t want anything bad for her, on the contrary, I thank her for her friendship.”

– Anonymous

It’s common to think that a toxic relationship is built with only bad moments and memories. When the person is mean to you all the time, but it is a lie. As in many of the stories above, your best friend from many years can become toxic to you, and it is important to realize that as soon as possible. Don’t let any relationship come first than your mental health! If you need any help, always look for your family or other trusting friends  or even a specialist, as a psychologist, to help you overcome a toxic relationship in your life.

• best friends
• friendship
• overcoming
• toxic friendships