Cut off from friend group of 10+ years and not sure if it’s my fault
So I had two friends Alex and Mike that I knew for about 10 years we met online playing video games and we had fun together for a long time. We were all from the old school internet mindset where you could basically say anything and no one would be offended or take it personally or anything like that. I was definitely the loudest and most abrasive of the group but like I said no one took it personally. Eventually Mike starts to get detached from the group as he’s more into D&D than traditional video games so me and Alex decide to start looking for someone else that we can hang with when Mike is unavailable. Eventually after some hunting in games we like and a little on Reddit we do find someone, let’s call him Zach.
Zach is a very sheltered person, he grew up with very strict religious parents and wasn’t really allowed on the internet until he was a teenager. He also went to private Christian schools where he was kind of a social outcast. So we start hanging out together and as we slowly get past the getting to know you small talk and I start to get more comfortable I act as I normally do and start cracking jokes and poking fun and just trying to have a good time. Zach takes anything I say that might be viewed as negative or harsh or hurtful super personally but keeps it bottled up and doesn’t say anything to me about it but in reality he’s miserable he doesn’t like me very much and isn’t having a good time and the entire time I’m totally oblivious. He views this 2 year stretch of our interactions as me actually bullying him when from my perspective all I did was say things that were on my mind and he chose to get offended by them and not tell me.
So instead of confronting me and being open and honest about his feelings he starts to purposely stick closer to Alex and prioritize playing games with him and him only because he claims it was the only way he could find joy. I start to take this personally after a while because me and Alex are so close and they are hanging out with each other more than I am hanging out with Alex or all 3 of us are hanging out together. It gets to the point where it’s like a secret club that only they are apart of and they act like little kids about it. Hiding shit and laughing about it. Alex is the owner of the Discord server we all use to chat in and at one point he makes a voice and text channel hidden from me and Mike just for him and Zach to use to play games without us. I find this out and I make a big deal about it but the entire time it’s almost like I’m being gaslit into believing it’s not as deep as it is and I’m making a big deal out of nothing so it was really hard for me to confront Zach about this and I couldn’t even do it face to face. Somehow one of us decided the best way for us to squash this beef would be to write down all the problems we have with each other in a text document and send it to each other and hash it out. We did it and Zach read mine but I didn’t have the courage to read his because I didn’t want to hear that my feelings weren’t valid because I can’t physically believe they aren’t. That decision even further harmed our relationship and I regret it. We move on from the beef after without ever really settling it.
A little while goes by and things are better for the time as we’re moving into the summer until randomly one day Zach sends a gift to both me and Mike for us to open on camera in the discord. We get in the call and we get on camera and the gift was just some candy or whatever but then Zach turns on his camera to reveal Alex in the background in the same room. Which is a big deal because this is a strictly online friendship and meeting up in person has only been talked about at this point as like a mystical what if and then they just do it on a random day without telling any of us. Once again I take this personally because at the time I don’t have my drivers license and I was only able to meet up with them late in their trip due to a timing miracle with my parents going on a trip of their own. I confronted them about this and Zach claims they didn’t invite me both in part because they were housesitting for Zach’s sister and he didn’t know how many people he could have over and also because Zach thought if I were to come I would physically attack him or just generally ruin the vibe in some way. To say this hurts me to find out is an understatement because it just feels so unwarranted. To me I feel like I never said or did anything extreme enough for him to think I would want to cause him actual bodily harm and it just shows the communication issues present from day one.
Again and again Alex and Zach keep doing really important things together without the rest of the group like getting a friendship tattoo (which they lied about the meaning of btw) and I’m just supposed to pretend like it doesn’t bother me because I’m not allowed to be mad about it because I will get told I deserve it for bullying him. Eventually I just can’t take it anymore. I tell Zach in a giant text document he needs to apologize to me for all of the conniving shit he’s done to me as I’ve apologized to him for all of the “bullying” I’ve done to him or else I’m never gonna be able to move on and I will leave the group. He responds with a text document of his own doubling down on his feelings and basically telling me to get fucked and everyone agrees with him and not me. At this point I just accept defeat because any hope of any of my friends having my back in this situation is completely gone so I tell him in another long winded message that I agree to move on but I do not agree with the sentiment that he is in the right in this situation.
He reads that message and just completely flips out and sends me a big giant “goodbye. It wasn’t nice knowing you” text and blocks me on everything. Leaving Alex in a position where he’s forced to pick between his friends. To make a long story short he chose Zach over me. And I’m really hurt by this because before Zach came along me and Alex were like brothers man like we were destined to be friends forever. We met when I was pretty young too so he had a giant influence on me and my life. It’s hard to see someone you love that much choose someone else over you. I’ve spent the time since we’ve split apart constantly thinking about it jumping between wanting to fix it and not wanting to because of how betrayed I feel. I know in my heart that I wouldn’t intentionally cause someone to feel pain like they claim I have and I know that if I was given a proper chance to apologize I would have but all they told me at the end is that it doesn’t matter now. I still bullied him. It doesn’t matter if you wanted to or not. But I feel like that’s bullshit. Does intent not matter? Can someone be truly guilty of the harm they caused if they weren’t even aware they were causing it? I’m not sure.
I’ve glazed over a lot of details because this post is really long so I will clarify if needed but I would like some insight. Am I in the wrong? Should I try to repair this relationship? Is it worth it? Do I deserve it? I don’t know. Thank you for reading.