Okay, this is a long one with a lot of layers so brace yourself.

For three years my friend and I were in a very co-dependent relationship. We referred to ourselves as “greatest friends” because “best friends” was too weak for what we had. He also made it clear from the minute we met that he was in love with me. Despite that, he also set me up with a mutual friend. The mutual friend and I started out as friends with benefits, but it became a relationship pretty fast, especially considering that I was insecure back then and wasn’t sure if he liked me as much as I liked him. Before we became exclusive, I also started hooking up with my Greatest Friend. It wasn’t meant to be long term and yet it got romantic pretty fast and I felt like I had feelings for him and let him know, even though we agreed to keep things brief and put the friendship first (looking back a lot of it was projection due to my insecurity with my other friend with benefits who I had real feelings for).

At the start of the following year my boyfriend and I made it public knowledge that we had upgraded to a relationship. My Greatest Friend was dramatically upset that I was now actually dating the person he set me up with-rather than just sleeping together-and told me repeatedly how painful it was to see me move on from him so quickly. I said that since he and I only agreed on hooking up for a short while and I was already hooking up with our other mutual friend first-on his suggestion!-that this didn’t make a ton of sense. He told my boyfriend about our past without asking me first, and this seemed like some sort of attempt to break us up. We didn’t, because what I did wasn’t cheating at the time, but it did make my boyfriend start to have it out for my Greatest Friend for his hypocrisy. I agreed, but I also felt guilty for making anyone jealous, especially since I had been so insecure about my boyfriend’s feelings for me when we first started sleeping together. I wanted my Greatest Friend to still feel desirable and secure so I kept the flirtatious nature of our relationship going and gave him constant reassurance that he was a great person who I was grateful for while also telling him to piss off when he tried to make me feel guilty about dating someone else. I think I mixed the messages too much to claim any right to feel angry.

Fast forward a few months. Greatest Friend would sometimes say he was over it, sometimes he would say that he hated seeing me with someone else and wished we would break up. It annoyed me and made me resent him but I also valued him so much as a friend that I couldn’t bring myself to end the friendship. When he was a good person he was a really, really good person and when he was a bad person he was mostly just pathetic.

A few months later he told me that he had been talking to another friend and they both agreed that my relationship with my boyfriend was doomed from the start and I would just end up getting hurt. I was still very insecure about my own desirability at the time and I actually believed them for a few hours. Then I told my boyfriend and he said that it was not only untrue, but how dare my Greatest Friend try to gaslight me in such a way and I should end my friendship with him. I couldn’t bring myself to do that, but I did officially tell him to mind his own business and he said he would. He immediately then went to another friend trying to get them to agree that my boyfriend was out to hurt me. (I’ve since learned that this is called a “gaslighting triangle”). After that it went back to ebbing and flowing; sometimes he’d be okay with it, sometimes not. He did try to break us up one more time before the end of the year and then got aggressively upset when we didn’t; by then I kind of got wise to the pattern. But we stayed friends and about half a year later he officially got over it. It hasn’t been a problem since and I’ve told very few people what happened because we share a large friend group and I didn’t want to ruin his reputation after I mixed the messages for several years and told him I valued him. At this point it’s been a non-problem for longer than the two and a half years where it was.

So here’s the problem: I’ve become a more self-actualized person since then (it’s been about six years since) and I allow myself to get more righteously angry when someone wrongs me. This has led me to realize that I only ever half forgave him. I forgive him in the sense that he really did finally get over it and leave me alone and I appreciated that; but I also don’t forgive him because he gave me a good couple years of grief that never should have happened and he also insulted my boyfriend repeatedly for basically no reason. So I’m stuck in the middle. If I ended the friendship now I’d be an asshole for all the times I made it seem like I wasn’t mad anymore and led him on during. But I also don’t always like him and whenever I think about what happened I get mad.

It doesn’t help that he has a generally difficult personality. He’s the type who always has to be the center of attention and thinks he’s humble and loyal when he’s actually kind of self-aggrandizing and takes people for granted (I’ve heard others call him a “narcissist” and a “people user” and they don’t even know what I went through). He’s kind of easy to be annoyed by for his personality alone. My boyfriend has never forgiven him for any of it but pretends he does for the sake of keeping the peace in our large friend group. We both do tend to be kind of passive-aggressive towards him and commiserate a lot of over our annoyance at his presence. But the weird thing is that in the moments where my (now former) Greatest Friend and I do get along, I really don’t mind him. When he’s a good person he’s a really, really good person and when he’s a bad person he’s mostly just pathetic.

So…AITA for not being able to decide how I feel and for being a passive-aggressive jerk sometimes? Because when it comes down to it, he never really deserved my forgiveness but I did give it and only an asshole takes back forgiveness.

P.S. For what it’s worth, I’ve also left a LOT of the story out and all omissions would make him look worse. But I’m also trying to only focus on my own behavior here because I’m the one asking to be judged.