My friend accidentally told me to "decide who I am". How can I move past this and forgive her?

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I don't usually go here but I have no idea where else I should turn to. For context, I have been friends with this girl for some time now. We met on the internet and it's just been an online relationship. She has known about my gender identity since we grew closer and it's never been an issue for her. She never joked about it or been grossed out or whatever and has always used my preferred name. Now this is where the issue starts - our first language is not English but a language that has a very heavy gender system. It influences basically everything. With her, I've been mostly using male pronouns to refer to myself. And I think that might have confused her? Because she would always joke that I'm a guy. I'd always say that no not really and she would just quit the topic and move on with the conversation. And honestly, i've never really put that much mind into it. I even liked it sometimes because i thought the jokes were quite funny. But a few days ago after I said that I'm not a dude she said "Decide who you are". To give her credit, she immediately apologised and was apologising for the next thirty minutes after I told her how upset that made me. She even explained that she always knew I was trans and that she even wanted to ask how she's supposed to view me but was scared of offending me so she sticked to my preferred pronouns and went with it. She now knows it was stupid and she said it herself. And, again, was apologising for like thirty minutes. She basically did everything to try to take it all back and earn my forgiveness. She promised to ask questions next time, even proposed referring to me as her "homeperson" not a "homeboy" like she always has been. And I told her we're fine but there's this silent resentment in the back of my head that just stops me from checking out her new messages. I don't want to hold it against her, I don't want to bring it up all the time. Should I just wait until the emotions go down? Please help

Posted May 10, 2026, 10:10 PM UTC

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