u/we4v3r

Long post sorry

I (20F) have a best friend Britney (not real name) (28F). We met in university, I’m doing my first degree and she’s doing her second, hence the age gap. We get along like a house on fire and study together because we learn the same way.

Last year though, she confided in me that her and her husband have not had any intimacy for the past 2 years and as time went on and she told me more about the situation, I can see how badly this was affecting her. She lost 40 lbs in 2 months, got tattoos and piercings and dyed her hair. Since then, Britney has really ramped up on the self deprecating jokes and sarcastic jokes towards me, for example she will invite me to her place to try something she’s made but will say “I slave while you just sit and eat my food” or I will tell her something about my life and she’ll say “I really didn’t need to know all of that” or she might make fun of me not knowing how to do something or doing things differently. These comments get very frequent and crueler around mutual friends to the point where i don’t think she’s ever said anything good about me to someone else and it almost always tries to make me look dumb or accentuate this dynamic where i would be nothing without her because i depend on her so much when i just depend on her the way normal best friends depend on each other. Ofc the joke is seen as endearing and sarcastic to everyone else but i never speak about her this way despite being there for her through this difficult time in her life without a single complaint.

Britney also never lets me confide in her about anything without making it about herself. Quite unlike her behaviour before the situation with her husband. Comments like “you think YOU have it hard” and things along those lines are often thrown out.

I asked her if earlier this year if she can tone down on the negativity as i’ve lost a friend to unaliving themselves and hate to hear her talk that way and suggested she see someone professional. The jokes stopped for a while but continued around our mutual friends, then slowly ramped back to normal.

We have a lot of mutual friends that we love despite us being the closest to each other.
Britney and our mutual friends often flirt jokingly. I am left out of this quite frequently as I am the youngest in the friend group and all of them view me as a kid still.

This brings me to my issue. Our mutual friends are all people i introduced britney to. Just a couple months ago she told them about the situation with her and her husband. Recently though, she’s been hanging out with them and I am not included or invited. I suspect it’s because she gets some kind of gratification from their attention which I cannot provide because of the group viewing me a kid and “not being able to flirt” with me or it may be that talking to her situation to people that she hasn’t told before gives her new/more validation from multiple sources because she wants to fill the gap of being wanted by her s/o. However I now feel extremely isolated from my friend group. She then talks badly about them to me even though she’s hanging out with them consistently now without me. I considered speaking to her but after everything i described above, i’m contemplating if it’s even worth it. I’m not sure how to move forward here because she wasn’t always like this. She was the best person i knew. I know she’s been through and is going through a lot but i’m just feeling really put down in this friendship for the past year and now i’m being isolated. Not sure if my mutual friends have noticed but it has not been mentioned to me by any of them. I genuinely love her but i’m exhausted. plz help

addition: to add to this draft, our mutual friend, let’s call him Caleb, invited us out earlier this week with some of his friends I’m not particularly close with. Britney told me she’s not going and was adamant about it all week and I told her I’m not going if she’s not going because i don’t really know anyone there other than Caleb. She said she wasn’t going up to today when i told her i might actually attend after all because i was craving a night out. she said “have fun”. I became unsure and said “idk i’ll see how i feel about going later”. Literally 5 minutes ago i messaged Caleb to tell him i’d be there. He said “great Britney confirmed as well looking forward to it”…. I’m even more confused… was she just trying to get me to not come?

TL;DR: My older best friend confided in me about her dead bedroom/marriage issues last year and since then she’s become increasingly negative, sarcastic, and cruel toward me, especially around mutual friends. She constantly puts me down, dismisses my feelings, and makes me look dependent/stupid as a joke. Recently she started hanging out with our mutual friends (who I introduced her to) without inviting me, while still talking badly about them to me privately. I love her and know she’s struggling, but I feel emotionally drained and isolated and don’t know if this friendship is still healthy.