A little over a year ago I met a couple through a friend of mine, a person that used to be my best friend until a few months ago. The husband of the two showed an immediate romantic/s***** interest in me and I was very flattered by the attention to the point where I briefly thought about actually doing something, but decided against actually taking any action. I let it go on, as it seemed to be mostly harmless flirting and after a bit of soul searching, realized that I wouldn’t let anything actually happen. He initially never went beyond a certain point and a lot of his stuff he did in front of his wife (who didn’t seem to care), so I didn’t think to outright tell him to stop since hey- I didn’t think anything would happen. I want to clarify that I *NEVER* instigated anything or made any inappropriate comments. What I did was harmless conversation about mutual hobbies, his wife, and various stuff, although we did hug a few times- but not anything like s***** comments, body groping, or kissing. Hell, his wife was pretty much aware that we talked, although most of the conversations were in front of her. That’s part of why it went on for as long as it did- it seemed fairly harmless, although there was a mutual attraction. I just figured that neither of us would actually act on it.
Eventually he took things a bit too far and made a romantic advance on me that I couldn’t deny. I wondered for a while if I’d misinterpreted things, as he’d just flirted for so long but the longer I thought about it, the more I realized that he did make a move and that there was no denying what it was. It was during this point in time that I stopped talking to him, which was difficult given that my best friend was still talking to him and his wife, with whom she was becoming close.
During this time my best friend and her husband made a s***** advance to me- she flashed him and he began to m*********. While they didn’t say “let’s screw on the bed”, it was a pretty obvious indirect invitation. I turned them down just as indirectly, but because we had briefly toyed with the idea of doing this in the past, I decided that I needed to just outright state to my bestie that a threeway wasn’t going to happen, which I did a day or two later. She got more than a bit indignant by this and claimed that it was never her intention to have threeway and that her husband only wanted to sleep with her. Maybe it wasn’t, but I figured that a line needed to be drawn and I just shrugged this off as a bit of hurt feelings. There wasn’t much I could do about that without making things messier, so I decided to drop it.
In the past year I’ve been through a lot. My grandmother died. I was finishing my first college degree and everything that could go wrong with my schooling went wrong. My physical health wasn’t the best and the only thing I could really control was my diet, so I always worried about what I could or couldn’t eat. I did confide in my bestie about a lot of this, but didn’t think anything of it because I figured that’s what friends do: they listen to one another. After all, she would complain about various things: her house, her father in law, her own medical problems, husband, and so on. I also tried to help her out by getting her out of the house and by helping to take her to and from various places she needed to go, like the grocery store and the doctor.
However after I spoke to her about not wanting to get in bed with her and her husband, she began to get colder and colder to me. I figured that part of this was due to her medical issues, as she was in the process of switching medications and her doctors couldn’t get it quite right. It happens and I know it can be hard- after all, I would see some of the differences my grandmother’s medication would cause. But then, I think that part of this was because she was also spending time with the other girl, the one whose husband hit on me. I felt awkward because I had never told my friend about what happened, partially because I just got the impression that she wouldn’t believe me because she was friends with this other girl and she’d been acting pretty indifferent lately.
As you can expect (if you’ve kept reading this far), things eventually exploded. I eventually did tell my friend about what happened with the guy, even saying that I’d wondered if I’d misinterpreted things but had decided that I hadn’t. She initially chastised me for thinking that I couldn’t come to her and she openly said that she’d wondered what happened, because my opinion about the guy had changed so quickly and suddenly. She gave every inclination that she believed me.
A few months later she made an offhand comment saying that she’d thought I’d misinterpreted things but that she now believed me, as she’d been talking to the guy and his wife, and he started acting weird when she told him that I felt he’d been inappropriate. (He’d asked after me and according to her, did every time they hung out.) She later approached me with this info- which I didn’t ask for. I never asked about him anymore, I could have cared less about what he did- but her saying that she’d thought I’d misinterpreted things really hurt me because I’d thought she believed me. I approached her via facebook and told her that it’d hurt my feelings. I phrased things badly and a little overly dramatic, I honestly did, but her reaction was really hurtful. She called me a terrible friend and made it seem like she’d been nothing but good to me in the past year. I was told that I’d ruined her weekend with stupid drama and that I never listened to her. She also said that I needed to go to therapy and while I know I can use it, she said this in a way that came across as spiteful rather than concerning. She also said that for the past year she hadn’t been having any fun while I was around. I tried explaining that part of the reason I’d felt so insecure about her comment was because I sort of felt like I was causing a potential issue with her friendship with the other woman and so on, but this just made her angrier.
She went on to say that she never spoke to the other couple about me, which kind of shook me because this whole thing started because SHE brought up a comment that had been made in a conversation she’d had with THEM. Maybe she didn’t entirely initiate it with them, but still- they were talking about me. It was about this time she said that I should take time to reflect on everything, making it seem like I was the only one who did anything wrong.
A few weeks later she tried to approach me and start talking again. I did want to continue being friends with her, but I didn’t want to jump into the friendship full force because what she’d said had really hurt me- especially since she had said that she didn’t enjoy me being around her. I mean, we NEED to be cautious about this and try to fix that before moving forward like nothing had really happened. Plus I was worried that she still had the mindset that *I* was the only person who’d done something wrong. I’d phrased things badly, but she’d been pretty awful as well. Shortly after telling her I wanted to take things slowly, she removed me from all of her social media and deleted her facebook account.
I mean, I knew the friendship was dying and that she was looking to replace me with someone she had more in common with. That’s kind of the natural way of things when people go in different directions. I just didn’t think it’d end this way, with her hating me so much. I’m not an angel by any means, but I can’t help but feel that she *wanted* me to be the bad guy so she could end the friendship on her terms and not feel bad about hanging out with the cheating husband’s wife more. I wouldn’t have thought about this, except I just realized that her husband unfriended me. I knew it was coming, after all- he’s her husband and she clearly can’t stand me anymore. It just still hurts. It’ll fade, but it hurt enough that I wanted to post this TL;DNR here.