even though she (17F) "cheated" on me before we broke up 3-1/2 weeks ago, i (16M) still love her and want to be friends with her. what do i do?

hello everybody, just as a warning this is a very long story, and there is a TLDR at the bottom!!

for some context, this girl (ill just call her uhh A) and i are both in an extracurricular together. shes a senior, im a junior. we werent really friends leading up to us dating, and we just sort of got together right before the school year (8/11). also, in my personal life, i have been dealing with my mom having a untreatable terminal illness, in which right now, she has ~9-12 months left at best. A has known this throughout the entire relationship.

before getting together, A had a long-term friends-with-benefits relationship with this dude, who i will call Steve. now, Steve, is a grade below me (he is a sophomore) and he is too in this extracurricular. i never was friends with him nor talked to him leading up to A and i getting together, but he did start talking to me around then. A also had feelings for Steve, and from what ive heard, he would always reject her. they never kissed, hugged, outright said that they loved each other, or had intercourse. it was simply her giving this dude head almost daily for a year. i knew little about this going into the relationship, just that they were super close and probably had a bit more intimate bond. but A approached me first, she made the first moves and eventually, she was the one who asked me out. for the first couple months, we were madly in love. she was my first girlfriend, first kiss, we took each others v-card, so on. she meant a lot to me. nearing winter break, i started to notice her text this Steve dude more and more, and every time i brought it up she was quick to dismiss and took an argumentative stance regarding it, but i made it VERY clear i wasnt comfortable with them talking.

aaand they still did. at one point over winter break, i fully crashed out on her and i kind of let everything spill, i had been stressed out from school, my mom, her, and friends and i lost myself in the argument and said some mean things. it ended with her calling me annoying and overdramatic and then her switching up and admitting that i was right and she shouldnt be getting mad at me. so, we made up. a few weeks later she was acting off and i brought it up and also brought up steve again because i saw a message on her phone from him. and that led to another big argument where basically, she refused to show me the message he sent (i have never looked through her phone or journal or anything, and id always let her look through my stuff) and she told me that i had to "just trust her". i didnt trust her, and looking back on it, i shouldve known something was off. after that argument things were again super off and awkward, i tried my best to make them less awkward and we still hung out during lunch and had intimate time like every day except weekends, and that was the only time where things werent weird. we ended up taking a break for 4 days where we would both do some self-discovery and figure out whats going on. she then extended the break and kept doing so until i finally asked her to just tell me the issue and she said we needed to break up. she wanted to remain friends with benefits, and i, still full of love for her, agreed to that. we hung out a small handful of times and did engage in intimate acts and we still expressed each others love for each other almost daily. to me, it still seemed like we were more on a break rather than broken up.

im not a location stalker, but we did have each others locations after we broke up and i did check it sometimes (tbf she told me she stalked my location) just to see what she was up to. after about the 3 week point, she began going radio silent on me and dodging me in person and i asked why and she said she just needed space and wanted me to leave her alone. i got frustrated because i frequently asked if she needed space and she said i was doing fine but i would feel like she was pulling away and i didnt want to lose her so i tried to reel her back in. this is what upset her, and she simply wanted to have some space from me and sometimes i wouldnt allow that. so, after a bit of an argument, it ended on not-so-great terms and i said that ill give her space and she can text me if need be. skip forward like 4 days and one of my friends casually brings up how he saw A in steves car during lunch, a few days before her and i actually broke up (we were nearing the end of our break, but still texting like once a day). much later i check her location out of boredom and see shes in a parking lot her and i have gone to in the past to uhh freak off i should say? i didnt think too much, and i checked again like almost 2 hours later and saw she was still there. i didnt say anything, but my mind started thinking. i texted one of steve and i's friends and asked him what steve was up to and he said he didnt know and then A snaps him and i a pic of steve's car and i see shes at his house (or rather where ive heard it is) and overwhelmed with jealousy, anger, sadness, and probably a whole lot of other emotions i text A and i tell her how unhealthy the relationship with steve is, how i dont know why shes acting like this and what i did. to be fair, i was saying some pretty like guilt-trip -esque stuff and kind of turned the whole situation into like "what did i do to deserve this im just a kind boy" and her response was "im sorry i fucked up you deserve better i hope you find happiness". that answer wasnt really enough for me so i continued my rampage and tried to find out why she did it and i never really did, she just kept saying "im sorry" and "were just friends" and "we were smoking and chilling", which i didnt really believe any of that. convo died over time but i still made it known i love her.

then, steve's friend who was sort of my informant told me that steve wasn't aware that her and i were still dating when they hung out and she actually lied to him and said we were broken up and then gave him head during lunch. i dont know why, but i had the gut instinct to tell A that i knew about that information as well, and i sent her a long audio message where i tried to sum a lot of things up and get everything off my chest. she had the same answers, "im sorry you deserve better" but also "why dont you just block me" and "im sorry i ruined everything" and i just told her im not mad at her and im mostly just heart broken and betrayed. as a person, i dont "block" people and i told her i would never block her. i also said to her that if she ever needs somebody to talk to im always here for her no matter what and if she ever wants to hang out, she doesnt need to be afraid to ask.

i told a decent amount of my friends about the ordeal very shortly after, and i never said she "cheated" on me or warped the truth in my favor, i just told them what i know. and a lot of my friends are also A's friends, so they began to hate her and say she cheated on me. it turns out, steve's friend, had made up/misheard a good portion of what i knew and A never lied to steve, and nothing intimate never happened between the two, but they still hung out behind my back while we were dating. feeling bad, i told A that im sorry for wrongly accusing her and i was being misled too and she said that i needed to block her even just for a little bit because we need to move on. it ended with her blocking me instead, not out of anger, but because she thinks we just need to have time to ourselves. we still have each other on snapchat and instagram and tik tok (but we only use those for streak), and we could still speak in person (we havent talked in person for about a week). one of A's best friends reached out to me last night and said that the two different roles im playing of being kind and caring to A whilst telling everybody what happened is frustrating and i need to stop or change, and i explained to her i told friends i trust, not because i want her to hate them, but because they are my friends and could help me out. A was losing a lot of her friends over this, and while that wasnt my intent and i thought she mightve felt enough guilt already, i did subconsciously know that something like this would happen. A's friend was also the one who made A block me yesterday and also unshare our locations. last i heard, A is not doing anything about the 'rumors' being spread and she herself is also going around telling people how shes cooked and that everybody hates her because she cheated on me (she actually said that). i did promise A's friend that i would tell my friends that she didnt lie to steve about her and i being together, and nothing intimate happened, and that she didnt 'cheat'. i told A's friend to also apologize to A on my behalf because i dont want her to lose her friends, and the friend told her but apparently A just said "its okay" and didnt have much to say about the whole thing.

im not sure really, about the whole thing. A was there for me when i was most down, esp when it came to my mom. she went through a similar thing, and it was something we bonded over. we (or at least i) often times vented to each other, and in a way became each others lovers, therapists, and best friends. i realize now that that isn't very healthy dynamic and it led to some severe attachment issues on my end. we talked. every. single. day. we hung out with each other every. single. day. even though all my friends are telling me to move on and drop it and never speak to her again, i still want to be her friend. is that crazy? i dont think we should date by any means, but she was also such a pivotal person to me for a good few months. A's friend thinks that we can be friends sometime later down the road, we just need time. but i dont know how long that'll take. and a part of me still does love her deeply, despite all the not cool stuff she did. im sure the more romantic feelings will fade over time but i know that like ill never forget her. i feel like i should be more mad about this whole thing, and i should never want anything to do with her again. thats not really the case for me, and maybe its just because i am a very forgiving and apologetic person to literally ANYBODY which is both a good and bad thing. A and i still have a class together first thing in the morning every single day and i cant tell if she means to avoid me (probably) but she always avoids facing me and i still catch myself looking at her a lot. the sadness has gotten to the point where ive barely eaten anything in almost 4 days. i just really want to be able to talk to her normally, but i dont know what to do anymore. ive also just been like super down in the dumps about this whole thing and other things going on in my life, and A and A's friend and steve and a bunch of my friends are all going on a week long ski trip for school in a few weeks, and im scared because i want us to be able to talk to each other and be friends, but im not sure how feasible that is.

if this helps at all, A is also a very insecure person about her looks, and she also would talk to me about her suicidal thoughts and other depressing things in her life. although she wasnt the best partner, i do think she did a good job of being my friend and being there for me when i needed her, and i feel like nobody understood me more than she did.

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TLDR; ex-girlfriend hung out with ex-FWB leading up to our breakup (i found out like 3 weeks after) and even though i should be mad, im not and i want to still be friends with her. she blocked me and i was also misinformed about some key details regarding them hanging out which i had to go back and reinform all my friends. shes losing a lot of her friends and i shouldnt really care, but i do and i want us to be on good terms.

feel free to ask me abt any concerns or questions and if you read this entire thing, thank you and please leave me your thoughts in the comments !! have a wonderful day/night everybody!