Hello! So I (F17) have this friend (F18), I’ll call her Brianna. Brianna and I are both seniors at our high school. We met freshman year, but didn’t really become close until around junior year. We had a bunch of classes together and just really clicked, and ever since then we’ve been attached at the hip. She’s extremely loyal, very sweet and supportive, and one of the most talented athletes I know. She’s gorgeous, and charismatic, and I love her to pieces. So for some background, junior year we both were in relationships that later failed. I was dating this guy I met through Brianna, I’ll call him Tyler. Tyler and I dated around 7ish months before we ended up breaking up (though we later got back together and broke up again) due to his being a senior and going to college in a different state and me still being a junior. Brianna was dating a girl I’ll call Samantha at the time. Samantha and I went to elementary school together, and she was one of the sweetest people I knew, though, she ended up doing Brianna really dirty. After poorly communicating with her for an extended period of time, Samantha dumped Brianna over text, and then after having proposed they stay friends afterwards, completely iced her out. Brianna was rightfully pissed, and absolutely wants nothing to do with her. Though, she still talks about her…A lot. About every day I see her at school or every other day, she has some story or issue about Samantha to tell, or some new thing to be pissed about. Sometimes it’s about the way she’s sitting, or the fact that she looks at her during class. I don’t give her grief for this though, as if it were one of my exes I might be inclined to feel the same, but at this point, they’ve broken up over a year ago, and Brianna’s loathe for Samantha has only gotten worse as the months go by. And as her best friend, she’s really made a point to enforce that I, too, should want nothing to do with her. This I have little issue with: though Samantha and I had been pretty good friends while she and Brianna were together, I ghosted her not too long after they split and things became bitter. I’ve iced her out without explanation, and I feel so awful for feeling this way, as I’m only doing it in loyalty to Brianna, but it weighs so heavily on me and I just feel so guilty. It’s also worth mentioning that during this time throughout the school year Brianna has gone back and forth between being cordial with Samantha, being friendly with her, and hating her, and I just kind of have to roll with it, and I try my best to. It’s also hard because I have a class with Samantha, and we’ll often make eye contact and she’ll smile at me, and I feel so terrible for smiling back because I know I’m supposed to hate her and show it for Brianna, but I’m also just not a very confrontational person, and I genuinely have a difficult time being unfriendly to people, even when they’ve wronged me personally, much less my friend. There have been so many times where I’ve been mistreated, whether it be at work by a customer or a coworker, or even by other students back in like elementary school, and every time it either is just swept under the rug or someone else notices it and calls it out on my behalf, because I just freeze up at the idea of escalating any kind of conflict. This isn’t something I’ve told Brianna, as I don’t want her to think I’m taking Samantha’s side or am unwilling to be loyal to her, as Brianna is my best friend and will always come first to me. Though in this, Brianna and I aren’t alike at all. She is a very confrontational person, and will not hesitate to call someone out or put them on the spot. And I’m not saying this in a bad way, I think this can be one of her better qualities as it does take guts sometimes to call out things that you think are wrong. We have another friend who I’ll call Tammy, who isn’t as close to either of us as we are to each other, and is decently close friends with Samantha. Brianna is cool with this, as they aren’t as close, though when Samantha started to join our little group where we meet at school to talk to Tammy, Brianna was deeply bothered. She said that she took issue with Tammy coming there while she was there, which I think it’s definitely fair, and so after a while of this Brianna confronted Samantha, asking her to stop and for awhile she did, though, started doing it again, just in Brianna’s absence. I mentioned this offhandedly to Brianna one day, and she got really angry (not at me or Tammy, just at Samantha). I tried to tell her that I wasn’t talking to Samantha, and that she just came to talk to Tammy (which was true), which, when Brianna wasn’t around, she had a right to do as they are friends, and after a bit she calmed down, saying that she felt Samantha was trying to steal me and some other friends from her, though I assured her that no matter what her intentions were, Brianna was my best friend and I would never choose Samantha over her. I just mention all of this to provide context for something that just happened. A while ago, Samantha followed me on Instagram, and without thinking much, I followed her back. I hadn’t thought much of it, and hadn’t attempted to hide it from Brianna as I hadn’t acted friendly towards her on Instagram or in person, but after around 2 weeks, she found out, and sent me an uncharacteristically professional message that felt like something of a cease and desist. She didn’t tell me to unfollow her, but it was cold and read like an email, saying she noticed that she and I were connected, and that given their history she didn’t know what to think, though it was clear what she thought and what she expected. In hindsight, especially after all of the context I just provided, my following her back (and even just allowing her to follow me) was clearly wrong on my part, at least knowing Brianna I should have known how it would make her feel and not have done it. Though, I do think it’s worth describing what between Samantha and I is currently. We have a class together, though we don’t talk or interact much. Nothing friendly, nothing hostile, we just coexist. (I also think it’s worth mentioning that I am very straight and Brianna knows this so there’s nothing romantic there at all at least not on my side). Additionally, when my ex and I initially broke up (I had also been done quite dirty), Brianna followed him… and I’m not saying this because I think it makes what I did right, but I do think it makes Brianna’s views on following exes…inconsistent. I remember when I noticed it too, we had been sitting next to each other, talking about him I presume, and she was looking through his instagram trying to find dirt, and I noticed she followed him. I brought it up, not in an accusatory or combative way, just an “oh you follow him :/“, to which she responded with something along the lines of “just to spy on him.” Though he was never active in his instagram, and I’m pretty sure she unfollowed it later (whether that had anything to do with me or was just because he was inactive idk). I also think that regardless of my relationship with Tyler, he and Brianna were friends before all of it, and while I might not love to see my best friend hanging out with my ex, I wouldn’t force her to give up that friendship just for me. Though I’m happy that they weren’t super close and aren’t friends anymore since he moved. This was also a long time ago and a very off handed interaction, so whether or not she even remembers is beyond me, but while I love her to bits, she is definitely hypocritical in other ways as well. There’s been a handful of times where I’ve lent her 2 or three dollars to buy a hot chocolate at the school cafe (sometimes she’d pay me back and sometimes not, I never ask as it isn’t much and she’s my friend), but I remember after she lent $5 to another friend of ours, Brianna was very insistent and cold in making sure it was repaid. Granted she doesn’t work, and everything she buys is funded by her parents (which begs the question as to why she’d lend it if she knew her parents would request having it back, but I digress), but it just kind of left a sour taste in my mouth. Though, at least in following my ex on Instagram, I knew she hadn’t intended to hurt me, and with this in mind I just felt she didn’t put much weight into following people, so hadn’t thought much of it when I followed Samantha. Obviously that wasn’t the case, and when she sent me the message I’d been caught off guard, and just hated the idea that I’d made her feel like she couldn’t trust me, and so I apologized profusely, promised her that she was my friend, not Samantha, and unfollowed/removed Samantha as a follower. I regret doing none of these, and Brianna was grateful, but her initial reaction still kind of rubs me the wrong way. I never want her to have to worry about me and Samantha becoming friends, but idk it’s becoming so intense and like I don’t like having to worry about her keeping tabs on every interaction I have with her. AITA?