Ok first im going to have to provide some context before i begin to truly help people understand my point of view on this situation, I want to hear your guys’ opinions on the matter since I believe i’m in the right but I understand that I could be wrong. This is obviously my perspective so it’s hard to keep it objective and I can’t write about every instance that altered our friendship so please understand that this narrative is limited.
I have a friend, who I will refer to as, Tammy (don’t ask, I just couldn’t think of any other name…) and i will explain the situation between us to you to see if i’m overreacting and/or how I should go on about this.
Starting of with the context: we have been friends for around 5 years, with a massive fault out in between which I think is quite significant in defining our relationship so I’ll begin with the very first fall out.
The first time we fell out was because of her shamelessly leaving me out. Like she didn’t even excuse herself, she did it proudly without care. I was obviously really hurt as she made half-assed lies and didn’t even bother to put some thought behind how i felt or even try to understand me. The most ironic part to it was who she was leaving me out with. Before Tammy, i had another friend who at the time i knew for longer, and i fell out with her because she made fun out of Tammy’s scars on her body. (Not sh btw it was just from old mosquito bites— at least i think from what she told me.) Obviously i didn’t stand for that so i dropped her for the way she treated Tammy… She had a friend who notoriously defended what she said which is the girl who Tammy ended up replacing me with. She also became friends with the girl I dropped through her new friend.
The first time i realised i was being cast aside by her was when i asked her to hang out. She told me she was sick so obviously i didn’t press further or annoy her, however, she had her location on and when i was on snap maps it said she was at her friend’s house. This confused me because I didn’t understand why she would lie about being ill just to hang out with her, if she had just told me she was at her friends house, i don’t think i would have cared because im not her boyfriend or anything??
As i was confused, i texted our other friend, telling her about the situation and how i felt. She sent odd replies, trying to justify Tammy’s behaviour which was weird to me because I wasn’t outright accusing her of anything, i was simply expressing how i felt because of the clear evidence. She later on tells Tammy how I have been ‘slagging’ her off, so I tell Tammy what I told her, hoping we could meet eye to eye somewhere as I didn’t want to argue and fall out.
She kept misunderstanding my responses, so at that moment i just gave up. It was evident she didn’t care about our relationship despite the sacrifices I had made to keep her happy. I never held these things against her because I willingly chose to drop that friend for her so it would have been wrong for me to mention that. Instead I left things as they were and ended up hanging around a new group of friends for about a year.
We eventually start to be friends again as the girl she replaced me with started treating her ‘poorly’ making her miss our old friendship. I felt out of place in my new group of friends as they all were in the same class whilst I wasn’t so I forgave Tammy pretty quickly. Tammy would tell me how her friend would talk badly about me. It was petty stuff like how her and her mother would call my bag ugly, and how I’m apparently racist amongst other things like how her and my old friend (who i dropped) would talk about how my body is nice but her new friend would say otherwise. I was obviously angry because I never had a full conversation with this girl, so her accusations and berating felt random. So, I confront her friend and we get into this argument and we end up having a fight…
Not my proudest moment, but she told people how she would win so i felt pressured to do it especially as people would hype me up saying i need to prove her wrong. This all happened when i was around 14/15 I think?
Anyways, it’s hard to sum up the type of relationship we had but another situation that in my opinion helps understand it a bit better would be the time when her sister started dating her ex boyfriend behind her back. So her sister ended up telling our other friend first, putting her in the middle and she chose not to tell Tammy as she felt it wasn’t her secret to spill. When her sister told me, i felt the same way however i encouraged her to tell Tammy as I warned her that i won’t keep the secret for long. She ends up telling Tammy and she starts crashing out on her and especially, ON ME?? Like i’m the reason you even know about it. She rings the girl i had a fight with (her old friend) even though they hadn’t spoken in months, clearly to punish me? I get angry and leave their house because it was just a rude, stupid move to pull because her old friend ends up telling everyone her sister’s secret which ends up hurting her in the process.
She never apologised for that, but i moved past it naively as i cared a lot about her. She has always been a hypocrite. She used to mock her own sister on how she prioritised her boyfriend over her friends when in reality, she was no different. Someone had changed my username on this discord server one time into an insult, and we were trying to find out who it was to confront them. When we found out it was her boyfriend, she suddenly went from mad to happy. Literally she burst out laughing right in front of me.
She also had a few weird moments where her and her (at that time) current boyfriend would argue, so she would end up taking it out on her friends (I didn’t know this at the time). There was this one specific instance, where we went on a school trip and all of a sudden she started walking away angrily. Me and my friend were confused because we didn’t say anything to make her moody all of a sudden, so we left her be for the rest of the trip. When I returned home, I messaged her asking her if everything was alright. She lied saying she was just ‘hungry’ so she walked off to go get food but it made no sense whatsoever as she was only angry with me and our friend plus her responses were very dry as she explained. Her lack of resolve upset me, as I wanted to make things right between us. Recently, (after breaking up with her boyfriend) she told me how the reason why she would randomly crash out on us was because he would argue with her. In the moment, I sympathised with her, however looking back now— it was just a weak excuse for her emotional immaturity. She had other solutions like talking to us about it, or at-least apologising right after the moment when things between them had de-escalated, but she didn’t. She chose to explain her actions a year later, when it no longer mattered.
She has this thing for trying to paint us (her friends) in a negative light. The situation i mentioned before? She literally sat with people she spoke badly about just to avoid us, making us look like we argued and upset her. This other time, when we all hung out during halloween, her and her sister got into a physical altercation in-front of everyone. This made a fun event turn awkward pretty quickly as you could imagine as Tammy ended up walking out of our friend’s house in the middle of the night. Before she walked out, the friend went up to her, trying to calm her down which she responded with ‘fuck off.’ That response alone made everyone back off and let her leave. In my opinion, hurting other people when you’re hurt yourself, doesn’t justify it so I was angry with her for her reaction rather than the argument itself (which she started anyways) but i still rung her dad to pick her up to confirm that she is safe. The next day at school, she went and told EVERYONE how her ‘own friends left her walking alone at night by \[herself\]’ and people were talking about how we were ‘horrible’ for doing that to our friend.
I hope that bit of context helped set the scene for what I am about to tell you now.
So time-skip to now, everyone in our friend group chose to stay at our secondary school for sixth-form except for Tammy who chose a college. The change obviously meant distance, both physically and dynamically which I acknowledged. However at first it didn’t seem to matter as we kept in contact and hung out pretty much every day at gym or at each-others houses. She obviously had made new friends but still considered me to be her ‘best-friend’ which i admired because it felt like our friendship was so strong that it defied the ‘growing-apart’ norm. Funnily enough, now, it seems no friendship is exempt from it.
Tammy randomly asked me to hang out after a while, and I end up finding out how she did sexual activities with this guy who I only just found out about in the moment— she also specifically stressed how i’m the only person she told.
Obviously, as they weren’t dating, I was kind of weirded out since she’s only 16 (turning 17) and had never done anything like this before. I explained to her how I feel like she should have done something so special and intimate with someone she actually liked. He didn’t even want anyone to know they were talking as he was 18 and she wasn’t against the idea as she only did it for ‘fun.’
Her and her ex boyfriend only broke up like a few months prior to this and they were still in contact at that point so I was confused as to how they would make it work after something like that.
She expressed how she regretted what she did then went onto explain how she was crying on call to her other friend right after doing the act… her unnecessary lying threw me off because I clearly wasn’t the only person she told (which is okay but untrue!) and she tells me how she literally did it again after crying about it.
The day after, we went to gym together. She tells me more about it. Stuff like how he has a really nice car, how he treats her so kindly, how they did it multiple times— which literally contradicted what she told me initially. I explained to her how everything between them felt lustful and that if she wanted a relationship with this guy, it realistically wouldn’t last long since the only moments they had together were when they did sexual stuff.
Then after that, it stopped. No message asking if I wanted to hang out, to call, to go gym. Nothing.
On snap maps she was constantly at gym. I was always afraid to go alone as I never had done it before but i finally mustered up the courage to go. I realised how dependent i was on her whilst to her I was just an afterthought. For that I am grateful, since the distance allowed me to push myself to try things I never did. She would post herself at the gym with her friends all the time which was the only way I found out that she’s lowkey replaced me AGAIN… like i mentioned before, I try to keep an open mind to the fact that she was at a new school and had other friends aside from me but the problem was the combination of silent treatment towards me then the sudden showing off her new friends to everyone else.
We end up hanging out to revise with our other friends who leave early. I bring up how I felt about the way she was treating me which she responded with something in the effect of, ‘me and \[our other friend\] were just talking about how judgemental you come off and my new friends understand me better.’
That was a clear sign to me that she no longer saw me as a friend.
She didn’t bother to allow me to explain why my reaction may have came off that way, she was set on the conclusion that i was ‘judgemental.’ The crazy thing is, the friend that agreed to me being judgemental had every right to because my response to her situation was out of order however Tammy literally agreed to everything i said about her in private (before i brought it up to the other friend) and once it benefited her, she switched up to pit herself and our friend against me.
I spoke to that friend and apologised. She told me how pretty much Tammy’s wording of the situation isn’t entirely true as she made it sound like they were both talking badly about me. She explained to me how Tammy was the one that brought up me being ‘judgemental’ towards both situations and how she agreed but believed I had no negative intent behind my judgement. Tammy also had agreed to me having no negative intent but argued that I simply just don’t understand her situation as I had never been in a relationship myself.
Her justification to my supposedly judgemental reaction just proved to me how she held no value towards my advice since to her my lack of experience meant I didn’t know what I was talking about.
So after another month of silent treatment, she asks us all to hang out. We all show up and she just immediately starts talking about herself. ‘Oh i finally blocked my ex boyfriend’ type of stuff. These random monthly hangouts just felt like her trying to update us on her life. She would always start off with ‘how have you guys been’ knowing we have nothing interesting to tell her and if we did, she always looks bored the entire duration then finds a way to bring herself into the conversation. I remember this one time when she was explaining to us how she argued with her family, she started crying so I was trying to console her, whilst doing so she started to record herself looking ‘cute’ and posted it on her private instagram account (you can literally hear me in the back trying to make her feel better LOL..☠️) It was very clear, from the conversation she had with our other friend to her behaviour— she clearly didn’t value my support at all or even me as a friend. So whilst she was talking about ‘blocking her ex boyfriend’ i just stayed quiet and didn’t congratulate her or anything (she seems to block him every month anyway so it wasn’t a crazy milestone…)
I think after that hangout, she realised that i’m not going to stand for it anymore and how I finally realised there is more to me than being her friend. I feel proud of finally letting go of her because it feels like she’s held some sort of secret animosity towards me the entire time with how quick she was to make me look bad to other people and replacing me every chance she got.
My conscience isn’t clear as I did a lot of pathetic stuff like having that fight and reacting the way I did. I hope people can tell me their opinions on the things I had mentioned but please keep in mind that my reactions weren’t perfect as I had no time to take in what she was telling me. I tried my best to make things right with her countless of times but it didn’t work and everything in my life (right now) feels good.
\*\*TL;DR\*\* This is a story about my old friend who seemingly always had some sort of problem with me, leading to the eventual end of our relationship.