so i had a friend for about three years who we’ll call sally. i considered her my best friend for at least a year of that time and i never saw unfixable problems in our friendship. she was a great friend.
at the beginning of our third year of friendship, sally gained a few new friends. sally and i had a close-knit group of friends, and her straying from that was a bit difficult for me to accept, although i always logically knew there was nothing wrong with it. sally’s new friends also often made comments about me that i struggled to find the tone of, but that i thought were mean or that gave me the impression that they talked about me behind my back. still, i didn’t notice a change in sally’s attitude towards me – if anything, we were getting closer – so i didn’t worry about it too much.
in the winter, sally began dating a guy. a lot of my friends were friends with him through classes, but i had never met him. everything i heard about their relationship came from sally. she seemed happy, but a bit anxious around him and the topic of dating, which i chalked up to first-relationship nerves. they seemed cute, so i was a bit surprised when sally decided to break up with him after a few months. she later told me she wanted to cut it off because she had felt somewhat pressured into it by her new friends. it seemed to be a very very amicable breakup; she claimed he seemed more surprised than upset and that they would remain friendly.
over the summer and nearing what would be four years of friendship, i took a trip that made me stop texting others for the month i would be gone, so that extra data fees wouldn’t happen. my friends — including sally — and i texted lots, so it was somewhat of a lonely time for me. when i got back, my other friends were estatic and immediately made plans with me. sally gave me no more than two or three messages, and remained oddly distant after that. i later saw her by surprise, alongside one of her newer friends, and it was an awkward conversation that i shrugged off, assuming we’d be fine. we weren’t. we didn’t talk for almost two years. i was the last person to text her, with no response, after about a month of trying to keep the friendship going. we remained on each other’s private instagram stories, but otherwise nothing.
about three months after we stopped talking, i befrended her ex. to clarify: i have **never** had any intentions of dating him. it’s always been strictly platonic on both sides, as he’s faithfully dating a mutual friend. about a week ago, sally dm’d me to buy some old stuff i posted about. we chatted very briefly, and eventually i decided to take a leap and to ask her what went down a few years ago. i thought her friends didn’t like me and that’s why she cut me off, but instead her exact words were: "well, you’re like *that* with my ex." i explained that we’re genuinely just friends and was told that it doesn’t matter.
i’m genuinely baffled about this. what happened?? aita???
NTA This sounds like a Sally problem not yours. She is not mature enough to see that you can be friends with her ex. and be friends with her with her. She should have come to you at the time to discuss this. It sounds like this is a friendship that has run its course.