I feel the the friendship I thought I would have for the rest of my life is dead. Super long due to it being pent up for a couple years but I have to get it off my chest because I broke down last night
It feels like it just happened slowly overtime, I can't think of the exact moment it started. But I started to have this fear that if I did anything I thought they would deem as wrong, I didn't tell them because I thought they would just get angry and/or drop me. For some background, while we were all on a trip I basically hooked up with this guy that was part of the friend group. I thought everyone was asleep when I had left but apparently they were not and heard me walking out. The next day, I was asked if I went out last night and I said no because I didn't know what they would think about it, but later on I found out that they knew about it.
Time goes by and everything seems okay, so I asked them if they would go on this trip with me, which I was super excited for, it was for a convention. Before this I never really planned anything because my hangout ideas would get a lot of pushback or just completely shut down or ignored, so it took a lot for me to ask about this trip. I gave them some details and to my surprise they agreed and I was so happy. A couple weeks later, when I'm sending hotels in the groupchat, they say they no longer want to go because they thought I said it was in a different city (even though I clearly stated which city it was in before). Let’s say Seattle is where they thought it was when it was really Dallas. I asked them why the city matters so much, it's fun to go explore different places, but they were set on no. This made me so upset because I'm always going along with stuff they want to do, I felt like there was no reciprocation. After that, I didn't talk in the groupchat as much for a couple days, but a mutual friend wanted us all to get dinner together that Friday and I agreed. I was still pretty upset, so I wasn't super into it and didn't talk much. After that, I still wasn't talking much in the groupchat (4 of us in total) for about 2/3 weeks (now looking back I probably should've just said I was upset, but I thought I already did when they had initially said no, so I felt like my feelings were dismissed). Then, (lets call her Lucy) sends in the group chat a twitter post reading "Having friends who don't like you is a real thing, not even in a hater way.. you can just tell they genuinely don't like who you are as a person but are scared to end the friendship". Another friend (Wendy) was confused, asking Lucy "someone doesn't like you?". Lucy proceeded to say it was me and how I don't like any of them. The third friend (Carla) asked why I haven't spoken in the group chat in so long. I said I've participated when I can. Lucy says "lies, but go off". I said okay I'll speak more, but then Lucy continued to say that I was lying. None of that felt great. I do really like my friends and spending time with them. So them saying that I no longer liked them and being called a liar just kinda made me more upset.
Fast forward a couple days, Lucy sent a tik tok video where a guy and his friends buy the cheapest plane ticket to anywhere to have a fun weekend, implying that we should also do that. Everyone was down, no push back of course. I text "Having a weekend in Dallas sounds cool too" (the trip I asked them to go on before). Lucy tells me it’s not the cheapest ticket and Carla tells me to give them a list of 5-10 fun activities to do there. I again tried to explain how traveling to a new place together would be a fun time, but it’s shut down again with them saying "I don't want to go anywhere I don't want to go" and then it turned it into a racial thing saying how there are not enough people of our race there. Wendy chimes in saying that I have never planned anything before but I show up to the majority of the things they plan, which I believe is true. They keep telling me I said Seattle, when I know for a fact I said the correct city, I even sent the flyer and it had where the event was taking place, so at this point I felt like I was being gaslit. I basically told them how reading is fundamental and they started calling me passive aggressive. Wendy asked us what is actually the problem, because Lucy keeps saying it's about the trip while Carla keeps saying it's not about the trip at all, so I was genuinely confused. Lucy texts "You can't fix the problems with liars until they start telling the truth" and proceeds to remove themselves from the group chat. Carla, who was still in the chat, tells me that I was never being gaslit and how it was never about the trip, so I expressed again how I was still confused about what was going on.
Lucy texted me individually saying how she was trying to be nice but I was acting really dense. She says again how no one was talking about the trip (even though that's all they were talking about). She tells me that I lie and omit the truth, how I've done it for various things over the years, and how much they don't want to go on a trip with a girl who lies. Lucy proceeded to tell me about how they knew I was with the guy on the earlier trip I talked about and how they were upset that I didn't tell them that we were texting shortly after that. I told Lucy if that was the real reason all that could've been said in the first place. Lucy says "I don't want to go on the trip because it's Dallas", which confused me yet again because she had just given a totally different reason before. Lucy goes on to say how I haven't been engaged with being a friend in months and how I'm "not engaged when anyone else wants to do something but expect us to jump up when you want to do something". She tells me how I didn't talk much during the dinner I mentioned earlier, how I haven't been sharing things in general, and how I never tell the whole truth and wanted to know all of my "little secrets" right then and there. I apologized for not being a super engaged friend, I explained how sometimes I feel written off/left out of things and like a third wheeler in general. And when I do say something, I feel like I have to get defensive because sometimes it'll feel like they are ganging up on me. I didn't feel heard most times so eventually I found no point in sharing insane amounts of detail of my life. It’s like when you are talking and stop when you realize no one is listening or you’re being talked over. Lucy tells me I should "stop it with the sad act and stop victimizing myself". She says not telling them what guy I'm texting or telling other people certain stories and not them is lying. I will admit I did lie about seeing the guy friend on the trip I mentioned earlier, but I did not know how they would take it because he was all of our friends at the time. However, for the other things, like keeping tabs on the people I text and just small details of my life, I do not see it as lying. I never demand to know who they are texting and who they are talking to. I'll ask about it, but they say "oh can't tell yet" and I'll be fine with that. Please let me know if I'm wrong/crazy about this. I told them if they want to know anything just ask and apologize again.
We still talk and hangout until this day (this was 2 years ago now).Lucy and Carla are no longer friends with Wendy anymore, so that can also be a contributing factor. But the dynamic is very different, especially starting this past summer where Lucy and Carla haven't invited me out to anything with them. Only birthday celebrations and now a big trip in June to celebrate a big accomplishment. I guess I was lucky enough to have them show up to my birthday celebration. Lucy couldn't make it last minute and promised to take me out to lunch but it's been two months and that hasn't happened yet (we live 5 minutes away from each other and Lucy and Carla have hung out a couple times since then). I'm glad the others still showed up, but it still feels weird to not be invited to things they used to invite me to no problem. Lucy has gotten super close with a co-worker this past year and I think it's super sweet because she would always talk about making new friends and hanging out with new people. She is a true extrovert. At her birthday dinner the coworker got one of those custom made cakes where you can put your own pictures on it and everything. After the dinner Lucy came up to me thanking me that I even showed up because she talks to me the least. I felt like crap leaving the dinner. Carla is super close and always talking to a college friend that lives a few hours away. All of them together are a lot closer now and I didn’t realize they would all hang out together without me until recently.
After I tried planning the first trip and how that went horribly, I have never made any effort to plan something else in fear that it would end up the same. I didn't realize how lonely I was until this past summer where I feel like I was just kind of forgotten about, but only sometimes. I do miss being with my friends and I feel that whole ordeal that happened before really affected it. Now I get so much anxiety just to text anything in the groupchat. I don't have to worry about calls, I don't get those and I never call anyway. And now this Sunday I have to be in the car with Lucy for a 90 minute drive to celebrate a mutual friend's birthday (we're carpooling, she asked). I haven't seen her since the end of August. We text in the group chat though, but not everyday. But again, just the thought of hanging out is giving me so much anxiety. Another mutual friend also wants us all to go out to a holiday activity at the end of next week and I already feel this massive amount of anxiety. I feel like I'd forget how to be human and say or not say the wrong thing because it feels like something I say would be turned and used against me, maybe I'm just paranoid. It also feels weird because they now see each other a lot more often and as mentioned before hang out separately. I've been crying thinking about these upcoming interactions with them because I just don't feel welcome or a valuable enough friend anymore. I admit I’m not the most perfect friend, but if I share that, I feel like my feelings would be invalidated like before, so I just feel stuck.
Posted Dec 15, 2024, 5:19 AM UTC