AIO: Former friend stopped talking to me after I made a mistake without realizing, and now she’s talking about me to classmates behind my back.

I tried shortening this but it still ended up way longer than I wanted it to be, sorry. I need some input cuz I’ve been losing my mind over this for too long now.

I (22, NB) have ADHD and autism. I score pretty high on impulsiveness, and I’m terrible at reading people. Those two symptoms combined means that sometimes I do things without thinking and don’t realize how it’s impacted other people. I’m very open about my diagnoses and tell people that if I do something wrong, to please tell me directly. I don’t get upset when corrected, in fact I appreciate it a lot (this is all relevant).

Onto the situation:

About three or so weeks ago at uni, I made a joke to someone I considered a friend, let’s call her“Ally” (22). This joke wasn’t appreciated by her, but I didn’t realize that at the time. She didn’t tell me to stop or anything, she just went quiet which I know in hindsight was a sign she wasn’t humored, but at the time went over my head.

Later, Ally goes to our mentor and tells her about the joke. This is totally fine with me. I understand that confrontation is scary to some people, so I’m not upset that she involved our mentor. Mentor brings it up with me in a very nice way because I’ve communicated my struggles with her before, and I tell her, “I didn’t realize. I’ll apologize to Ally.”

I see Ally later in class but don’t want to apologize to her in front of everyone since it’d put her on the spot, so when I see her get up and leave the classroom, I go with her.

Now here’s where I realize now that I messed up, but seriously didn’t even think about at the time.

Ally goes into one of the bathrooms and leaves the door open. She did not close it, she was just looking in the mirror. The only thing that’s on my mind is to seize this opportunity to apologize, so I step into the bathroom with her and pull the door behind me (the classroom is close by to the toilets and the door was open). I want to emphasize: I DID NOT LOCK THE DOOR.

Either way, I proceed to apologize, saying, “I’m so sorry, was that too much? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it.” She said, “Yeah, it was a bit too much.” I apologized again, opened the door, and left. We even laughed about it.

Well, since then she hasn’t spoken to me. Anytime I’ve tried talking to her since, she’s been cold and curt. I’ve asked her if anything is wrong, if I’ve done something, and if she’s okay, and each time she’s answered with, “No” and “I’m fine.” And yet, she continued to give me to cold shoulder.

I was left super confused and didn’t know if I was misreading her body language or if she was lying to me. I ended up sending her a message on Snapchat where I said:

“Hey hey, Ally. So, I just wanna be honest with you. Have I done something wrong? Maybe I’m imagining it but I really feel like you’ve been cold to me as of late. If I’ve done anything then please please talk to me, or to [mentor], or anyone else so they can tell me, in case confrontation is scary. I have a hard time with boundaries, but I’m never hurtful on purpose. Care about you. <3”

She never answer. She didn’t even open it, and ~2 days had passed. At that point, I got really frustrated because I was trying so hard to set things right and be communicative, but I wasn’t getting anything back. She knew I’m autistic, and I felt like she led me on by lying to me that everything was fine. I decided to unfriend her then.

Later, I jokingly hip-bumped a classmate (though, it was more like a hip-touch, to be honest), let’s call her “Shana.” One of Shana’s friends saw me do this and came at me, saying, “Hey, what are you doing? Why are doing that? What if she doesn’t like being touched like that, huh??” By the way, both Shana and this friend are 10+ years older than me. I was kinda stunned and didn’t know what to say, but Shana jumped in and defended me and told her friend to cut it out and not talk to me like that. The train arrived right then, so nothing more came of the situation.

The next day though, Shana pulled me to the side and told me to not worry about [her friend] and that she scolded her for “getting involved in [my] business with Ally”, and that it won’t happen again. I asked her what she meant with “business with Ally”, and she told me that apparently Ally said to them that I touch her too much and it’s making her uncomfortable, and that’s why she won’t talk to me anymore. I told Shana that Ally hadn’t mention any of that to me, and Shana said that she asked Ally if she’d talked to me, and Ally refused.

I’m kinda fuming at this point to be honest. I can’t read her mind, and I don’t deserve to be stonewalled like that, much less have her talk about me behind my back.

But since Ally wouldn’t communicate with me to figure things out, I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t wanna be friends with her at that point though, so I decided to just move past it. That is, until I started noticing other classmates also being cold and distant from me. It made me so anxious and I felt like I was losing my mind since I can’t trust myself to read people correctly. I was stuck in this constant uncertainty. Are people mad at me? Or am I over-thinking?? I had no idea.

I ended up confiding in a friend, “Nora” (19, F). She’s also autistic, so I felt that she would understand where I’m coming from. After explaining it all, Nora tells me that Ally had told her, too, that I touched her too much and made her uncomfortable, and when asked if Ally had talked to me about it, she once again refused. So apparently, she’s telling everyone what I’ve done wrong EXCEPT ME.

This brings us to yesterday (Friday). I’ve continued to feel like my entire class is distancing themselves from me, meanwhile I watch them joke and have fun with Ally. I turned to Shana again and told her my feeling, and Shana revealed that Ally had mentioned something about me trapping her in a bathroom.

Right now, I’m just overwhelmed, sooo angry, and even more done with the whole situation. Like, we’re all adults, right? This isn’t high school, right?? I understand now the bathroom thing was uncomfortable and I take full responsibility for that, but we were in there for 30 seconds - 1 minut, I did not lock the door, at no point did she say, “What are you doing??” Or “Let me out!” Or make any kind of verbal indication of her discomfort. I feel like I don’t deserve this treatment, especially her talking behind my back after I tried so hard to make things right.

I want to tell our mentor (even though it feels super immature). I want to ask Shana if she’d be willing to back me up in case Ally lies and tries to twist the situation, and I’m thinking about asking my mentor if there’s any way to explain things to the rest of the class, although I’m not sure what the explanation would be. I only know bits and pieces of what’s been said about me, and it sounds like an exaggeration of the truth, but I’ve only heard it second-hand.

Am I exaggerating right now?? If you’ve read this far, thank you. (No proof-reading, we die like real men. /j)