u/Abject_Adeptness_420

I (late 20s, F) met my best friend ("Chloe") at university in 2018. We became very close very quickly and eventually lived together. I considered her my best female friend for almost eight years.

Looking back, there were incidents that bothered me, but I always brushed them aside because I loved her and assumed that's what friendship was.

One of the earliest happened when I was studying in Shanghai. We went out drinking with two guys. I'd never really drunk alcohol before, but she kept encouraging me to drink more. I almost blacked out. She put me in a taxi with one of the guys, and I ended up at his apartment where I was nearly sexually assaulted. She never asked me what happened afterward.

Later, when she moved abroad for work, I visited her regularly, but she almost never visited me despite many invitations.

Eventually she invited me to work for her company in the Philippines. During my interview, she was extremely harsh with me, making me feel stupid for my Chinese. I actually cried afterward. Her boyfriend interviewed me later in Chinese, and the interview went perfectly fine.

While working together, we also lived together. She often commented on my weight and eating habits, controlled what I ate, criticized me, and generally made me feel like I was always doing something wrong. At the gym she would reject any advice I gave her but frequently criticized me herself.

She also admitted to doing unethical things at work, including taking candidates from headhunters and claiming them herself. I was uncomfortable but was expected to help.

After months of feeling miserable, I finally wrote her a long message explaining how hurt I was. I carefully explained that I wasn't trying to attack her, only to tell her how her behavior affected me. I said I felt constantly criticized, controlled, and emotionally exhausted.

Her entire response was: I think you should quit then

That was it.

She never apologized or tried to discuss anything. I stayed anyway because I didn't want to lose my job or our friendship. Later we remained friends after the company closed. I even visited her in Thailand.

There were more situations that bothered me. For example, while I was in Thailand she cancelled a planned trip to Cambodia only about an hour before departure, leaving me to travel alone because of health issue that never happened to her before and magically happened right before the trip.

Fast forward to this year.

She and her now-husband moved to Brazil and invited me to their wedding. Flying there from my country was very expensive, but I bought the tickets because she was my best friend.

We had also been planning a hiking trip for months, but about a month before the trip she cancelled that too.

Since I had never been to Brazil, do not speak the language and she herself had previously told me how dangerous it could be, I started asking practical questions:

• Which SIM card should I buy?
• Which apps should I use?
• Would someone meet me at the airport?
• What was the plan before and after the wedding?

Her replies became increasingly short and dismissive.

I became anxious because I was about to travel halfway around the world alone for more than 35 hrs. Eventually I contacted her husband because he was local and had previously told me they'd help me when I arrived. He told me that they did not have any plan, and he told me he did not have time this week for a 15-minute call with me.

The next day, instead of answering my questions, Chloe sent me a long message listing reasons why I was a bad friend.

Some of them included:

• I hadn't told her years earlier that a dentist who sexually harassed me had also later been around her.
• I was too negative about my appearance and didn't not appreciate her beauty enough.
• She didn't approve of how I handled my romantic relationship.
• She didn't like that I'd had an affair years ago and didn't tell her about that.
• She said I hadn't protected her enough on a night when she got extremely drunk—even though I was the one who got her home, cleaned up after she vomited, and put her to bed.

She then blocked me everywhere.

There was one more complication.

While she was in Brazil, I'd bought an emerald that was shipped to her husband's address because international shipping to me wasn't possible.

After blocking me, she said she'd only return my stone under conditions that were practically impossible. Her husband started insulting both me and my boyfriend. At one point they gave me about a day to find someone in Brazil to receive and forward the package or they would throw it away.

When my boyfriend spoke to them, Chloe apparently claimed that I had ended the friendship, which wasn't true from my perspective. She also accused me of cheating on my boyfriend with someone in Thailand, which never happened.

I ended up losing a lot of money on plane tickets, never got my stone back, and lost someone I had considered my best friend.

The strange part is that I don't actually miss her anymore.

What I can't get over is that I genuinely don't know whether I'm the bad person she described.

Were some of her complaints valid? Probably. I'm sure I'm not perfect.

But I also feel like whenever I tried to communicate my feelings throughout the friendship, they were dismissed, and when the friendship finally ended, years of old grievances were suddenly used to explain why I was supposedly the problem all along.

So... am I missing something? Was I really a terrible friend, or was this friendship simply much more one-sided than I realized?

I've been struggling with this for months, and I genuinely don't know whether I was a terrible friend or whether I ignored years of red flags.