post that I have previously about the situation: https://www.reddit.com/r/Advice/s/VDqCbxjd9N

This is gonna be a long one so please bare with me. For the purpose of privacy I will be using fake names so please bear with me.

I want people’s opinion on a situation that happened to me and my friendship group, I also think this was a valuable lesson for us considering our young age, so I thought I’d be fun to share it.

I (F19), was friends with this girl who I’m gonna call Nia (F20) for about 4 years and within those 4 years we established we wanted to be best friends because we bonded very well and enjoyed similar things. For context clues we were in year 12-13 if anyone’s from the UK but junior and senior year if anyone’s American.

I want to firstly acknowledge that in year 12 I did like a guy and was very blindsided by some of his actions due to him being the first guy I had liked in over 5 years and despite everyone telling me he was problematic I didn’t want to believe it. One girl that I used to be friends with, Riley, got a lot of people in our year one being Nia to not like me because I wasn’t listening, which it wasn’t my brightest moment but one of my friends Cleo (F19), who I wasn’t even friends with at the time got me out of my own ass and made me realise I didn’t even like him but it was because he was the first guy I liked in a long time. Nia, however, didn’t even try to help me, she actually let me be treated like shit and didn’t speak up when Riley told a bunch of people to not talk to me. Mind you, me and Nia walked home together and she still considered herself my best friend. After this whole situation I slowly started to become closer to Cleo and 3 more girls: Hazel, Aria and Sasha (All are F19) and we started to form a group along with Nia, there was now 6 girls in this group one being me.

Cleo then started introducing a guy into our group, Tristan (M20), and he slowly started to adapt to us causing an older brother type of dynamic. What we didn’t know at the time was that Nia and Tristan started talking and slowly got closer and closer making us think if they could be more than just friends, which they denied for the following 6 months almost 7. He’d always say things like “I’m talking to her more because we’re closer” (mind you we’re a group of 7 now and have a whole active group chat that we always talked about everything and anything in, sometimes the conversations were deeper and other times we’d be discussing how all of us should dye our hair green and be fools). This went on for about 6 months and a couple of times when we had outings it felt like they would be using us to go on dates because her parents were a lot stricter than ours, and made us third-wheel them despite the outings being for birthdays of people in the group. For example, Cleo and Aria’s joint birthday outing, the pair were either in front of us and a lot further from us or behind and also a lot further from us. Cleo, as a joke to see what Nia would do, put her arm on Tristan’s shoulder for support and asked Nia “What would you do if I put my arm around him? Would you get pissed off?” which caused Nia to not say anything but appear pissed off. Also, Hazels birthday which was the first outing she was allowed to go to. This outing was ruined from the beginning because Nia kept on asking when we were going to eat (it was around 11-11:30ish and the plan was to eat in the evening because that's what Hazel wanted for her birthday). Firstly, she didn’t only go on and on about how she was hungry but also denied going into a cafe and get a sandwich when being asked if she wanted to get a bite because we weren’t planning to eat until later, because this was how Hazel had planned things out and we wanted to stick to her desires because it was her birthday. Secondly, when Cleo offered Nia her sandwich she denied it and kept saying she wanted food from the restaurant which pissed us off because it wasn’t like she didn’t have the opportunity to get something small to eat. she had every opportunity to get something (me, cleo and aria all collectively got sandwiches because we were hungry but didn't want to disturb hazels schedule and we asked hazel if we could since we knew what her plans were) but kept on refusing which caused Hazel to get so frustrated that she said we should just go to and eat. On the way to there, Hazel was struggling with navigating google maps because she hadn’t needed to go to this specific location before and Nia started getting mad at her for not knowing where she’s going despite booking it (first of all if you know your friend struggles with directions why are you being so rude? And secondly, she proceeded to take the phone from Hazel and walk off to the restaurant with guess who? Tristan next to her leaving all of us slightly shocked because they were too far and we could barely see them).

Prior to this we asked the both of them if they liked each other and they said no and that we shouldn’t worry about it. I also want to add that we had made it clear in the group that we like to take the piss and make jokes that lowkey only us as a group would find funny. Also, we collectively had said we didn't want dating in the group since it'd be hard for us to help if they were to argue because we had biased opinions about them so it'd be a thing of who would we defend? and it would've been slightly weird since we had that close sibling like bond.

This situation took a slight toll on me and made me start to feel replaced by him because she wouldn’t tell me anything anymore and would go to him, calling him her guy best friend which I didn’t appreciate because I didn’t have any other best friend but her (i also don't believe you can have more than one best friend and that will be important later) and it made me upset and want to not be best friends but still be her friend. When I texted her and poured my heart out to her explaining how I’m feeling replaced she said “well you’re closer to Aria now and I don’t see the issue really” which firstly, Aria already has a best friend and I don’t believe you can have more than one best friend at a time but sure, and also that didn’t make sense to me because the main reason me and Aria were so close was because we had the exact same schedule and were assigned to sit together in every lesson but sure that's a good enough excuse to not tell, your "best friend" stuff anymore. Then I continued to tell her it feels like she’s choosing a guy over me and cried to her and then she proceeded to tell me "actually about that, we've been hanging out so much because i like him and he likes me and we've been talking for a while now" which caused me to be a bit taken aback because i was telling her i felt replaced and she basically brushed me off to tell me they like each other. I then told her that we needed to talk and brought up the idea of not wanting to be her best friend and that i still wanted to be friends which caused her to get very upset with me so. things had started to simmer down slightly, them two still together all the time but we had started to not care anymore and started giving up on trying to tell them anything because they'd always get annoyed or mad when we brought it up.

however, throughout the two years he started to make some jokes that some people might not have taken in the same way that we did because we already established our banter level. on his 18th birthday we were playing uno and it was between me and him to see who'd lose. i put down the shuffle cards card and he started to get really mad, like you can tell when it's jokes but he genuinely started yelling stuff like "you're so stupid why'd you not put it down before?!" to which i said "i didn't have it before i just got it" and he kept on yelling which caused me my breaking point and i started yelling (i wanna add that i don't like yelling, being yelled at or yelling at people) "Why you yelling at me? Are you my dad? What the fuck is up your ass? You're a big man now you're 18 you think you can yell at me? Shut the fuck up man?" which he then got mad and left saying he's going home. Nia then looks at me and tells me "Dior, you shouldn't have said that. You ruined his birthday" which pissed me off more and then i left too.

Some time after that whole incident, we were all on the gc making jokes and Cleo had made a joke back to Tristan which he then left the gc. We then found out from Nia that he wanted to leave the group permanently and it was because of Cleo. Cleo then felt bad and wrote him a whole paragraph apologising and taking accountability for the joke which to this day he never responded to. He didn’t speak to any of us except Nia for a good month or so and then when he did he said to Aria “I missed annoying you”. Still didn’t speak to Cleo and later said “I missed fighting you” referring to their banter before. A few months after when he was back in the group I randomly asked Nia about the whole him leaving situation asking if he actually said he wanted to leave or if it was because of Cleo (she made it seem like it was purely Cleo’s fault that he wanted to leave), she told me that it’s not exactly what he said and basically contradicted herself when asked a second time.

Along with this people always thought Cleo and Tristan were together which pissed Nia off a lot because no one in the school knew they were together (our school was a bit weird with dating, everyone was always too in your business) and when he would get asked he’d exaggerate and say he’d “never date her” which was also a problem for her. She would also get really annoyed when he would be close to us or act like our friend and since we were technically a friendship group we didnt understand it. During the time when he wasn’t talking to us she would spend it all with him unless he wasn’t in and when he wasn’t she’d be with us but sulk because he wasn’t in.

When we asked her what she likes about him she would tell us he’s different when texting her but never gave us a reason, not even a simple reason like his eyes or something. Nothing just the way he texts. She also told us how she was numb to the feeling of wanting a relationship from him which we then found out he never wanted to be in a relationship because he wasn’t in the right mental state and he didn’t want one because he had one, prior to meeting us, which he had just gotten out of. For him it was a casual thing more than commitment. Also, she kept on changing her story as to why he wasn’t asking her out or why they weren’t together. One day saying he wasn’t ready for one and the next saying he’d ask her when she’s 18 because of her dad but when we asked him he told us he never wanted one, and matter of fact he had stated that from the beginning. Which is the same beginning she had told us that he said “I love you” to her in.

I wanna add that hazel was also seeing a guy and was going through some stuff and Nia was the first to criticise her for the smallest thing and their situations overlapped in some aspects sometimes.

So AITAH for wanting to cut her off?