This does include some trigger topics like grooming or anything NSFW really. I(F, 17) have a best friend who we’ll call L(F, 14 currently) I met her online 2 years ago when I was 15 and she was 12 during a trend that we were both in and around a year ago we reconnected and I joined her discord server. I met some of her best friends and her partner, Jayden(I don’t care enough to hide his name, also M, around 15 during this time). Jayden seems pretty cool, a decent person. Randomly he left the server and later broke up with L. She vented to her best friends and I and we learned that he had been grooming her. He groomed her around the time of the trend we were both in. They would both be on call and he said a lot of disgusting stuff like “I’ll fuck you once I see you”, “I wish I could have you wrapped around my dick”, and “I want you to piss in my mouth.” When they would be on call she’d be drawing and he’d be jerking it. All of us were rightfully disgusted and angry. We hated Jayden from that point on. He returned to the server when a friend that he interacts with a lot gave him an invite. We were all annoyed but L told us that she didn’t want anyone else to know because she wasn’t comfortable with other people knowing. We obeyed her boundaries and kept quiet about it. He was really annoying, saying his opinion like a fact, being overly negative, butting into conversations that he’s not apart of, and holding grudges that he’d carry out by being petty. All throughout this she was defending him a lot, calling privately, and he just generally took her away from us. We all knew that he liked her again and wanted her for himself. L barely got any time with us because he’d always ask her to call and her reasoning for wanting to was because she was a people pleaser and because she still loved him. See, around the time of the trend, Jayden was actually pretty decent. He was kind, made sure she was comfortable, gave her praises and spent all his time with her. She felt really loved but it slowly deteriorated when he started paying attention to her less and I think that’s when it he started doing the disgusting stuff I mentioned earlier. Whenever she’d tell him about breaking up, he’d say sorry and that he feels bad and wants to changes. He didn’t and he kept saying it every time she talked about breaking up and she always believed him. We all tolerated it until he left again. We all had a sigh of relief and carried on. But he returned again when a different friend, who also knows what Jayden had done to L, invited him back. We were pissed. We tolerated it again, but he hardly changed. It was basically the same shenanigans as last time. But this time, now that L had realized what he did, she wanted the truth if he knew or didn’t know her she or what he was doing. In the server there’s a vent channel and she started speaking there. She was vague about what was stressing her. In the server, I comfort and help everyone as much as possible so I got to her first and we went to dms. She explained Jayden knew full well of her age and what he was doing and she felt awful. It’s information that she didn’t want to get out because she felt that it would make everyone pissed at her for going back to him and she apologized several times because she thought I’d be disappointed or upset too. I told her that I wasn’t upset in the slightest and that she can kick him out permanently if he was really a threat. After comforting her until she felt better we both went to bed. This brings us to now. There was an update to a game and it involved many skins. One of which is a direct reference to another game. I was stoked as hell for it and I loved it dearly already. There’s also a gaming channel in the server and some people were talking about the skins that I liked. Jayden said that it was a “disadvantage” skin because it was easily visible. I asked him why he thought that and he said it’s easily seen from across the map. Mind you, there is little to no difference with visibility when it comes to the skins and he had played enough and gained enough skill that he shouldn’t be concerned about disadvantages or advantages. It was back and forth between us and it got kinda heated. I told him something around the lines of “Its really annoying when you tell your opinion because you treat it like the gospel.” It was longer than that but that’s all I remember. L told us to drop it and I said to take it to DMs, but he kept talking in the channel(I mainly think he did this so L could defend him). I did eventually drop it, but he kept going, and I blocked him. I talked to another best friend privately about the situation and they told me I could take time away if I want to. Which I did. I don’t like being extremely emotional in any way because it makes me do things I regret later but it really felt like I should tell it straight to L that I don’t wanna be friends anymore if she keeps defending Jayden or leaving the friend group as a whole. I don’t know what to do. I do understand that it was stupid of me to get so heated over an opinion and I want to apologize for it because it was really out of line and generally not appropriate, but also I felt that being mean to him was appropriate with the way he acts and had treated L. I need advice for moving forward.