u/Equal_Chipmunk1346

I don't know how to make sense of this, but I get into friendships really fast. I've genuinely lost count of the number of "best friends" I've made in the past few years, and almost all of them seem to disastrously end in like 3 years.

This isn't to say I don't have long lasting friendships. Some of my earliest friendships have lasted 20 years and I'm still incredibly close to those people. So I know I'm capable of maintaining friendships.

But any friendship I've entered into since I was like 15 has this weird limitation period where after 3 years everything just goes to shit.

Earlier it used to just be incompatibilities, which was still easier to deal with because the fallout wouldn't be that bad. We'd drift, fight, stop talking, be really awkward, and eventually smile politely whenever we'd cross paths.

But lately it's turned into active betrayal, rumours, bitching behind my back, weird resentment building up over time — a lot of things I personally just cannot come back from once they happen.

And I know a lot of this comes from the fact that I get into friendships very fast and very intensely. I get close to people long before I actually know them entirely. I emotionally invest way too quickly and by the time I realize maybe we're not actually compatible long term, we're already deeply involved in each other's lives.

I don't know how to slow it down though.

I don't know how people become friends gradually. I don't know how to keep emotional distance while still caring about someone. Every friendship somehow becomes deeply personal to me very quickly.

And now every time I get close to someone new, there's a part of me waiting for the 3 year mark where everything somehow falls apart again.

How do I fix this?

I have about a month left before I graduate, and earlier this semester a few friends and I took a stand against a group of guys over a serious harassment situation on campus. We supported the person involved through the reporting process and spoke up when most people stayed quiet.

The backlash was immediate and honestly kind of insane.

Ever since then, it feels like every piece of drama on campus somehow gets blamed on us, even stuff we had absolutely nothing to do with. Rumors spread constantly. At this point, if anything happens socially, people automatically assume we’re involved somehow.

The university investigation finally wrapped up, and the accused students were found responsible. There’s an NDA involved, so nobody connected to the case can publicly talk about what happened, hence the throwaway account. The only reason we know the outcome is because the person involved had been confiding in us throughout the process and showed us the office order.

The problem is that everyone else only hears the rumors. The guys involved have already started pushing their own version of events, and since we can’t exactly come out with details, people are buying it.

I’ve lost a ton of friends over this. Every day there’s some new entirely unrelated rumor about me, even when I’m literally not even in town. At this point I genuinely don’t know what people think is true anymore. I just know I’ve become an easy target.

What’s really getting to me is that I had pretty bad social anxiety growing up, and I worked really hard in college to get past it. This whole situation has brought all of that crashing back. I’m probably going to skip a lot of graduation stuff because the idea of seeing everyone and wondering what they’ve heard about me makes me feel sick.

And logically, I know I should just move on. I’m graduating, moving to a new city, and starting a good job. I’m still proud of what I did because the investigation literally found those guys responsible. But emotionally, the social fallout has completely messed with my head.

I’m also nervous about starting work because it’s a pretty small industry where people talk and ask around informally about new hires.

How do you recover from something like this? How do you stop obsessing over what people think of you when it feels like your reputation got trashed for doing the right thing?