AITA for bitching at my friend over a mutual friend’s relationship?
I (17 f) just said some not so nice things to my friend Kate (17 f) because she was talking shit about my best friend Laura (17 f) and our mutual friend Sean. (17 m)
For context we are all a huge friend group and everyone mentioned is friends with each other. Tonight three of my friends went to a party. Halfway through my friend El (18 f) gets a call from Kate. El is Sean’s girlfriend of multiple years.
Kate tells El that Sean and Laura are acting weird and too close at the party. She says her and three other girls, noticed it when they walked into a gas station with their arms linked. To our entire friend group, Sean and Laura are like brother and sister. They have a close friendship and nothing more and we all know that. However we live in a small town, and rumours fly.
Their behaviour that was described is the same thing they do every single time we hangout. El knows how they act and she has said SO MANY TIMES that she does not care and that Sean is allowed to be friends with girls. We all know Sean and El are in love and Laura is asexual, though that is not public knowledge. This subject is brought up a lot because of the rumours in our small town and Kate has never once said anything about it or their behaviour. She has defended them so many times, so the switch up was crazy.
At the party some girls cornered Laura in the bathroom and asked her about her relationship with Sean and to my understanding, accused her of trying to break up Sean and El, which is so not true. She genuinely thinks of them as her parents and refers to them as that a lot. They’re like a family.
The other fucked up thing is that Kate unlocked Sean’s phone when he was in the gas station and she was in the car, and she went through his private folder and found risqué photos of him and El. And she told El over the phone that she had found some “funny” pictures of her.
Both Laura and El were crying at my house after all this, and feeling betrayed. They feel hurt that Kate thinks so little of them that she would assume this and talk about it with other people. So I messaged Kate in an absolute rage.
I said I was incredibly disappointed in her and asked why the fuck she thought talking about that to others, who have fucked us over in the past might I add, would be a good idea. I told her this was the shittiest she had ever acted in our entire friendship and asked her if she was uncomfortable with it why she never spoke up. I also asked her why the fuck she would hangout with those people.
One of her minions responded telling me that Kate is allowed to have other friends and everyone thought it was weird. She said that they asked Laura a question and that was it and told me Kate was crying at the party. I told her to fuck off and tell Kate to message me when she’s ready to fucking apologize.
Everyone is really upset that she’d go behind our backs like this. I’m worried I came across too harsh. AITA?