Sometime last year, I (23F) called up my best friend (22F) after careful contemplation and reflection that I no longer feel comfortable with her coming over with her boyfriend (24M) to stay over at my house.

To give some context, they both live with their own parents and don’t feel comfortable sleeping together while their parents are home as they’re a little strict. I have been living on my own for a while (3 years at that point) and always welcomed them to my house knowing their situation, and of course I liked hanging out with them too. I’m also close to her boyfriend through my ex – I was the one to introduce them. The said ex and I broke up and I remained single for the two years, and naturally I became the third wheel in their relationship which I did not mind at all because they never made me feel uncomfortable as such.

The prior year I realised I was feeling left out in a way, as many people may have experienced, when your friends are in a relationship and you see that they have different priorities as you, while you’re single. It tore me to even feel jealous because I was happy for my friends to be dating. I am still not over my ex and now that I think about it, that may have played a big part on how I was feeling.

My house became my safe space and I started to love being alone. I also loved having my best friend over when I wasn’t reminded that I was single. As their relationship grew, they started staying over at my house more frequently and sometimes I felt like my best friend was using my house, my safe space, to sleep with her boyfriend. I know they tried to not make me feel excluded or awkward and they hung out with me before we all went to sleep but I couldn’t shake the feeling. I questioned why they couldn’t just have a talk with their parents as they’re grown adults.

I finally decided to call my best friend and told her how I was feeling and that I’m setting some boundaries, emphasising on the fact that I felt like it was an invasion of my safe space. She did not take it well. She went on to say how nice they’ve been about it, how her bf makes consistent effort to take me out to dinners and drive us places and they refrain from PDA to not make me feel uncomfortable. I did feel bad, but I also told her I can’t help how it makes me feel. She said that if she was in my place and I ever wanted to bring my bf, she would never put such a boundary (that sounded crazy to me because none of them have ever lived on their own, hence don’t understand what it’s like to have your own house). She even went on to say that now even she feels unwelcome and would limit her coming to my house.

Things got weird between her bf and I after this conversation and he stopped making any effort to be friends with me. He didn’t even invite me to one of the events where all our mutual friends were invited. I felt really bad and thought I may have been an AH. It was normal between my best friend and I as we kind of brushed it under the rug. Since then I moved out of the country and mended things with him before I left. Things are normal now but it does bother me time to time when I think about it.

AITAH for how I handled this situation?