I (44F) have a long-time best friend (45F) who found love later in life. We’ll call her Sarah. Sarah and I met in college—we were assigned as roommates in the dorm, and we quickly became best friends. This woman is the closest thing I have to a sister. We’re tight. She was my MOH at my wedding 20 years ago and is my children’s godmother. All these years she has told me that if she ever finds the right man, she wants me to be her MOH.

Now for a bit of pertinent backstory: I have a cousin (42F), we’ll call her Jen. I introduced her to a high school buddy—let’s call him Larry—when we were in high school. They dated and broke up several times. When I went off to college on the opposite side of the state, Jen and I lost touch. We reconnected ~4 years later when I was engaged, shortly after she’d gotten married to Larry. I was surprised that she’d gotten married without telling me, but apparently she’d sent the invitation to my parents’ old house (they had moved in that 4 years), and it didn’t get forwarded to them or to me. (Keep in mind, this was around 2000-2001, before everyone had cell phones or social media, so it wasn’t as easy to find people if they moved.) I asked Jen to be one of my bridesmaids, and she readily agreed. Our husbands hit it off, and our families spent a lot of time together after that, despite living an hour away from each other. Our children were close in age and had great friendships with each other. We were close. We took some vacations together. You get the picture.

My wedding is where Jen and Sarah met, but they got to know each other better when I arranged a couple of girls’ weekends in the years following. We had a lot of fun together at the mountains or the beach. They were sort of friends through me—they enjoyed hanging together with me, but they didn’t bother to contact each other without me.

Then, about 7 years ago, we moved away for a job opportunity. Sarah made a point of befriending Jen. They exchanged phone numbers at my going away party and quickly hit it off, finding solace in their mutual loss of my regular presence in their lives (their words, not mine). Even though they live two hours away from each other, they’d have lunch dates every month, go shopping together, and so on.

I was thrilled that they’d finally become the great friends I always knew they could be. Although I was pretty lonely across the country from them, it was good to hear that they were bonding. Sarah and I kept in touch regularly, but I had to work hard to keep in touch with Jen. Months would go by without hearing from her, and then I’d reach out again. Sometimes she’d answer or respond, but sometimes it would take several attempts before I’d successfully connect. Now, this didn’t bother me too much, because I knew Jen was busy with her own family, plus she’s an introvert, and it’s kind of always been like that. As the extrovert, it’s always sort of been on me to maintain the relationship anyway. On rare occasions she’d take the initiative, which was nice when it happened, but I never expected it.

About 2 years ago (summer of 2023) Jen suggested that the three of us should have weekly video calls. I was thrilled! Having my two favorite people in a three-way video call every week was a dream come true for me. Sarah and I quickly agreed. We picked a night of the week that worked for all three of us and started meeting every week online. Sarah took on the task of scheduling the video calls, since she already had a video-conferencing subscription for her business.

We had group calls nearly every week. Honestly, I was stunned that Jen was so committed to the weekly calls, but it truly made me feel loved and special that she wanted to spend an hour or two with me every week. We started our calls off with a book club of sorts. After the first book, Jen wasn’t interested in reading more, so we dropped that and shifted our conversations to everything else in life.

Meanwhile, Sarah introduced me to a series of novels she’d fallen in love with, and we began reading them together. We’d often call each other and discuss chapters. (This wasn’t new. We’d shared our love of books for decades and have always read and discussed books together.) Jen wasn’t interested in the novels, though we invited her to join us. Sometimes while waiting for Jen to log on for our weekly calls, Sarah and I would talk about the novel we were currently reading. Then when she’d log on we’d drop that topic and jump into our conversation with her. Jen was often quite late for our weekly calls. She’d get busy and forget or take a nap and wake up late. So Sarah and I had a lot of time to kill waiting for her.

In December 2023, Sarah and Jen did some Christmas shopping together. Sarah said they had a blast and tried a new Thai restaurant, and they talked about this shopping trip a lot on the next weekly call.

In January 2024, Jen started skipping the calls. We’d reach out to her, only to be told she was too busy that week, or one of her kids had a sporting event, or what have you. She also skipped out of her monthly in-person lunch date with Sarah.

Around February, Sarah met a guy and fell in love! She called me after each of their dates early on. She said she couldn’t wait to tell Jen about him when they met for lunch. But Jen didn’t meet her for lunch. She didn’t join the next scheduled call, either. In fact, when we reached out to remind her of the call, she she sent us a text that said, “I’m out on the group call. Y’all have fun.” Sarah and I were both blown away. We tried reaching out to her separately, but she completely ghosted Sarah, and barely responded to me. After a few weeks, Sarah asked me to tell Jen her good news (that she’d met someone) if I heard from her.

Summer of 2024 we drove from Idaho to Georgia to see family, and visited Jen and Larry and their kids. While there, I asked Jen if Sarah or I had done anything to hurt her feelings. I told her I wanted to make sure things were good between us and asked her to tell me I’d done anything to hurt or offend so I could apologize and make things right. She said everything was fine, that she just felt like a third wheel because Sarah enjoyed reading together and she didn’t. She said she and I were fine and would always be fine. We hugged, and the visit with them was like old times. While there, I told Jen that Sarah had met someone and it was looking pretty serious. She acted excited and pondered whether we’d be attending a wedding soon. She said she couldn’t wait to meet the guy.

We saw Sarah at the end of our trip, and being a huge fan of road trips, she followed us back to Idaho and stayed two weeks with us. Over that trip, Sarah confided that Jen had completely ghosted her. She hadn’t successfully connected with her since the group call after their Christmas shopping trip. I told her Jen seemed excited about her news, which made her hopeful. When Sarah got back to Georgia, she tried reaching out to Jen multiple times but all she got was radio silence. She hoped that she could take her guy to meet Jen and Larry, but Jen never responded to her calls and texts.

Sarah called me a couple weeks later and told me her man had officially proposed. Their goal was to get married in October in a very small wedding with only family and their two best friends and significant others in attendance. She asked if I’d be her MOH. Of course I agreed. She asked me to please not mention the date or location of the wedding to Jen, because she’d given up trying to get Jen to respond, and after being ghosted for so long it just felt weird. I agreed. It was her wedding, so of course the guest list was her decision. Jen had gone silent on me too since we’d seen them over the summer. I’d had no success getting her to respond to texts or voicemails.

I managed to get a couple days off work and flew back to Georgia in October for Sarah’s wedding, while my husband stayed home with the kids (we couldn’t afford to all attend, and Sarah was very understanding of that). Sarah and I worked our butts off the entire 3 days I was there, including her wedding day. We did all the decorations and setup ourselves. It was a beautiful, intimate outdoor wedding. There were only 25 guests. The best man, his wife, and I were the only 3 people in attendance not related to the bride and groom. After the ceremony and reception, I took down the decorations with a bit of help from Sarah’s aunt and mother. The morning after, I flew back to Idaho. I didn’t even have time to see my parents or brother while I was in Georgia. I was there just long enough for the wedding, then back to Idaho for work.

Two weeks later Sarah called me and was upset. Jen had blocked her on Instagram. I checked, and she’d blocked me too. I reached out via the group text we had with our husbands, and I got no response. I called and left a voicemail. Nothing. I called again at Thanksgiving and at Christmas. No answer. I wished her a happy birthday via text in February. No response.

I tried again a few days ago via text, saying I missed her and hoped we could catch up soon. Jen’s text response was heated and full of venom. She told me she couldn’t believe I had the gall to contact her as if last year had never happened. She called me narcissistic and condescending. She said my actions had permanently destroyed our friendship.

I am dumbfounded. The only thing I can guess is that she was somehow offended about Sarah’s wedding. My husband tells me that I’ve done nothing wrong, and my parents have told me that she sounds crazy and to just drop her, but I can’t help but wonder if there was something I should have known about. AITA for going to Sarah’s wedding and inviting Jen?