Top 20 Friends Moments That Will Always Make Us Cry

When Monica informs Rachel that Chandler will be moving in with her – and that Rachel will have to move out – she’s surprised that her roommate doesn’t seem to care. Monica tries to invoke memories of their time together, only for Rachel to shrug it off. After Monica confronts her, Rachel reveals that she essentially thinks the couple will back out of the arrangement. After all, they avoided another big step in getting married recently. But as Monica explains and the realization sinks in, Rachel and the audience must come to terms with the reality - it’s “the end of an era”! We may not have been their roommates, but this still hits us hard.

Joey generally isn’t a guy who goes in for romance. But at one point, he starts developing strong feelings for Rachel. After deciding to tell her how he feels, he has a meal with her. Joey is nervous throughout, but he eventually manages to get the words out. Unfortunately for him, she doesn’t reciprocate. The two of them go on to hug, expressing that they care about each other too much to stop being friends. Regardless of what you think of this duo as a potential couple, it’s hard not to feel bad for them both at this moment. Who hasn’t been rejected or had to reject someone? And both actors totally killed this scene - as well as our tear ducts!

After discovering a stray cat exploring her guitar case, Phoebe is convinced that the feline is her late mom Lily reincarnated. Granted, the animal is a male, but that’s beside the point. As you can imagine, Ross thinks this is utter nonsense, particularly after finding out the cat belongs to a little girl who’s looking for him. His attempts to get Phoebe to return the cat are initially rebuffed. As part of her response, she gets to the heart of what it’s like to lose a parent. There’s no denying the character’s sadness and entire speech hit home, even if you don’t believe in reincarnation. At the end of the day, everyone handles grief differently.

Chandler and Monica’s relationship may be a secret at first, but eventually the rest of the gang finds out. To that end, Phoebe and Rachel decide to mess with them to get the pair to admit it. Phoebe pretends to seduce Chandler, and after Monica and Chandler figure out what’s going on, a hilarious game of “chicken” ensues. Each tries to make the other so uncomfortable that they give up. Their back and forth is hysterical, and some iconic lines are born from the ordeal. But, ultimately, Chandler caves and reveals that he’s in love with Monica. While not the first time he says it, she reciprocates, and we can’t help but melt a little every time!

Chandler and Joey’s friendship is arguably the most rock solid of the group. However, things start looking dire for their relationship when Chandler kisses Kathy, Joey’s girlfriend at the time. He agonizes over things, but eventually talks to his buddy about it. Joey is initially accepting, thinking that Chandler came to him about his feelings first. But when he learns that they already kissed behind his back, he’s understandably hurt. Sure, Joey and Kathy’s relationship was on its last leg, and she’s now dumped him. But the betrayal he feels is completely valid. He and Chandler do manage to patch things up eventually, but at this moment, it’s rough seeing these besties fall out.

Mr. Heckles would frequently tell the gang to keep the noise down – even when it seemed like they were being pretty quiet! However, Monica and Rachel’s downstairs neighbor passes away suddenly in this episode, even leaving his things to them. As the group goes through his stuff, Chandler uncovers some unsettling links between himself and Mr. Heckles. He starts worrying that he’ll end up lonely and bitter, too. Ultimately though, he grows a lot, recognizing his patterns and realizing what he wants out of life. Plus, seeing him empathize with the departed man is surprisingly moving. His final farewell to the late Mr. Heckles in particular always gets us.

Ross’s marriage to Emily starts pretty disastrously. Saying Rachel’s name at the wedding will do that. His attempts to make things work lead to Emily giving him an unfortunate ultimatum. He can’t be friends with Rachel if he wants her to come to New York. Desperate to fix his marriage, he agrees. He struggles with telling Rachel, especially since she receives other bad news before he can deliver his own. Eventually he tells her, and she’s naturally furious and hurt. She’s worried about being cut out of the gang. Ross later agrees to step away instead, but that doesn’t make it hurt less for her — or for us. Their heart-to-heart has us choking up every time.

Speaking of Ross’s spouses, his first wife Carol comes out as a lesbian and leaves him shortly before the first season. But on his first major romantic outing with a woman since their split, Ross runs into Carol and her girlfriend Susan. But Susan unexpectedly has to go, and Ross’s date subsequently departs as the two exes are caught up in conversation. Ross is struggling, and he tells Carol he still loves her. Just because their relationship is over doesn’t mean the feelings have magically gone away. Although they kiss, the scene sees Ross slowly coming to terms with the end of his marriage in a deeply sweet moment. We’re moved to tears, and Carol’s actress, Jane Sibbett, was too.

Ross becomes a father during the first season. But before Ben is born, we see him caring for another small primate - his pet monkey, Marcel. However, when the creature becomes increasingly… amorous, Ross is forced to find him another home. In the end, his application to the San Diego Zoo is approved, which means everything is about to change. Indeed, most of the gang delivers their goodbyes to the monkey at the airport, with varying degrees of sincerity. Ross’s emotional farewell may be interrupted by Marcel himself, but the love he has for his furry friend is something many pet owners can identify with. Saying goodbye to a pet is never easy, no matter the circumstances.

Chandler and Monica get acquainted with Erica, a potential birth mother whose unborn child they hope to adopt, in this episode. When she mistakes them for another couple, they initially go with it. But after they inevitably reveal the truth, Erica is hurt and changes her mind about picking them as the parents. Just when it seems like all hope is lost, Chandler speaks with her and asks her to give them another chance. He opens up about how devastated he is that he can’t have a child with Monica. He also reveals that he considers her a mom already - she just doesn’t have a kid yet. The candid speech and Matthew Perry’s incredible acting are bound to give you all the feels.

Phoebe is often used as the comedic relief on “Friends” during moments that need some levity, so it’s rare that we get to see her involved in a truly poignant one. Even Phoebe and Mike’s relationship is mostly played for laughs, but their wedding vows were some of the sweetest things ever written for the show. Phoebe telling Mike that he is the family she has always dreamed of having and Mike telling Phoebe he loves how “wonderfully weird” she is make us choke up every time we watch this scene.

While people tend to focus on the romantic relationships in “Friends,” is there a purer partnership than the one between Chandler and Joey? When Joey starts making more money in Season 2, and he and Chandler keep getting into domestic spats, he decides it’s time to spread his wings and move to his own place. Seeing how hurt Chandler is by his decision is devastating, and their game to see who will keep the foosball table is hard to watch. Thank god Joey comes back for that hug!

One of the climactic events of the series is Rachel being offered a job in Paris and preparing to move away. At her going away party, she takes each of her friends aside in order to give them an individual goodbye. Each one is sadder than the next, and while we expected to get teary eyed when she said goodbye to Monica, we didn’t realize that even Chandler would make us well up. The saddest part of all this, though, is her reaction to Ross when he’s upset that she didn’t give him a proper goodbye.

Is there anything more devastating than a couple deciding to end things when they are still deeply in love? Monica and Richard’s relationship didn’t end with a big blowout fight, but rather the gradual realization that because of the different things they wanted in life, they would never be able to truly work together. The fact that they break up at a wedding makes it all even sadder. Richard’s suggestion that they “just keep dancing” as Monica cries into his shoulder still gets us even when rewatching.

For the entire first season and part of the second, viewers heard jokes about the crush Ross had on Rachel when they were teenagers. We didn’t get to see it all play out, though, until the gang got together to watch Monica and Rachel’s prom video. Rachel thinks she has been stood up by her date, and so Ross steps in by getting dressed up in order to make sure she doesn’t have to go alone. When Chip shows up, however, the camera pans to Ross and we see his plain disappointment. Things take a positive turn in the present when Rachel kisses him after seeing how much he cared for her.

There aren’t many times throughout the series that “Friends” goes full-on rom-com, but this is one of them. We all knew that Monica and Chandler would get engaged eventually, but it was a long (and frustrating) road to get there. After Chandler tries to throw Monica off the scent and ends up pushing her away in the process, the two come together and Monica arranges a surprise proposal of their own. Neither of them could keep it together and we couldn’t either! Seeing one of our favorite TV couples agree to stay together forever always makes us tear up.

As soon as Phoebe started considering acting as a surrogate for her brother, her friends cautioned her that it may be a difficult journey. She ultimately decides to go for it, though, and carries his triplets for him. After giving birth, emotions are high and she has a tough time dealing with the fact that none of the babies will be staying with her. She has a moment alone with the three babies to say goodbye, and it’s one of the sweetest scenes in the show’s history.

After Monica and Chandler got married, it seemed like the next logical step was starting a family, but things didn’t work out so easily. Chandler gets a call from their fertility doctor who delivers some unfortunate news. Monica arrives soon afterwards, and he breaks it to her. He tries to play it off with humor at first, since that’s his go-to defense mechanism, but eventually he reveals the heartbreaking truth. It was devastating when we learned along with them that they both had fertility issues that would make it nearly impossible for them to conceive.

After all the “will they, won’t they” of the initial seasons, Ross and Rachel finally get together, only to have their relationship crumble when they decide to take a break and Ross sleeps with someone else. In typical “Friends” fashion, the writers mixed in moments of humor to the dramatic scene, but when it came down to it, there was nothing funny about this break up. Ross pleading with Rachel to reconsider her decision to ask him to leave is absolutely heart-wrenching. Seeing all the other friends crying in the other room makes it too much to bear.

There is no sadder scene in “Friends” than the last one. It was truly the end of an era when Monica and Chandler packed up all their things and left the apartment that we, as viewers, had felt at home at for a full decade. Seeing them empty everything out was hard to watch, and the final shot panning around the empty apartment is shockingly effective. Luckily, we got to shed some happy tears as well when Rachel got off the plane and came back to Ross.