📝 AITAH for considering leaving my friends when I'm the one who was "mean to them"

By wisegirl1947 • Score: 2 • April 25, 2025 8:11 PM


I (16f) have been through a lot of past trauma when it comes to toxic friendships and my current friends know this. My friends, N (16f), R (16f) and L (16m) were very close. R and L have been in a relationship for about seven months, and they're very happy together. R and N have this other friend, B (16m), who I used to be friends with, but had to end our friendship due to him making me depressed, a state I've been in before, (all of them know this) and never want to go back to. Recently, N and R have been acting very strage with me. They've been friends for years, whereas I only joined their friend group about a year ago after leaving a very toxic one. At first, they were very welcoming and open to me, but ever since I stopped being friends with B, they've grown more distant. They've started excluding me, hanging out without me, making plans OVER me whilst not inviting me, etc., which is all the things my old friend group used to do, and N and R know this. I'm still close with L, as despite his relationship with R, he's still fine with me.

I spoke to L a few days ago, and he told me why R and N are being so weird and dismissive around me:

  1. I'm constantly mean to them (which I don't think is true, as everything I do to them they do to me and have never expressed an issue with the way I treat them)

  2. I'm not open enough and inclusive of B (again, I don't think this is true, as I still speak to him in group discussions/when necessary)

  3. They don't like the way I treat them (again, no issue has been raised to me about this, ever.)

I've only been told this by L, N and R haven't spoken to me. They claim that they have, but I'm yet to receive an attempt at communication. That is the part that annoys me the most, honestly, as I would rather them just tell me their problem with me rather than just ignoring it and, in turn, me.

This isn't all they've done. In my previous friend group, there was a group of about 5 people who I still like and am good friends with. I've started hanging out with them at break and lunch as they don't ignore me constantly. However, today at lunch, I'm waiting in the lunch line with one of these other friends, G (16f) and I check if it's ok for e to sit with them today, and she says yes, but warns me that N, R, and B are sitting with them too. I found this odd, as N, R, and B are not friends with this group in the slightest. They know that I've started sitting with this other group at lunch and it feels almost like a personl attack. I may be reading too deep into things, but one of the girls in this other group, T (16f) has been really dismissive of me lately and even left me alone in class today to go to PE (she hates PE, but N, R, and B had PE then).

All of this is making me wonder if I should just stop being friends with N, R, and B. The only issue is, i want to remain friends with L but don't know if that's possible. I'm mainly looking for advice here, so would I be the asshole for leaving my friends over this?

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