AITAH for not prioritizing my best friend
For context, we’re both in high school and this was the first REAL friendship both of us have had. Using fake names for privacy.
To start, My friend, we’ll call her Lily(F16 at the time) and me(F16 at the time) had became friends freshmen year of highschool through our mutual friends. I had known lily since middle school where she had micro bullied me for my sexuality (someone had announced to the school that I was bi unconsensually)
I didn’t hold it against her once we got to high school due to her known toxic home life, I realized she was different and more mature than my previous interactions with her, or so I thought. We had grew close over our first two years of high school together, so close that I told her things I thought I’d never tell anyone, and she did the same. Our families had grown closer together and I felt like she was my platonic soulmate. Lily was decently popular and I was not, she connected me to so many of my now friends and gave me a lot of confidence overall. One day sophomore year she hadn’t talked to me in two days and I just thought nothing of it, eventually our parents planned a hangout together where she admitted to me that she was, “mad at me but I didn’t know” and laughed it off, I asked why and she said “I don’t know you just said something stupid”. Whenever we finally stopped being friends, it was over the summer of sophomore year. We had a group with two other girls where we would go to a theme park a lot, eventually we decided to go skating to change things up. We get to the skating rink, she was my ride there and back due to my parents being out of town. My two friends, same age as us, were good at skating, I wasn’t as good but I was better than Lily. We skated separately most the time but occasionally meeting up and talking then skating off. Lily goes to the side and stops skating, I ask if she’s okay cause she has been ignoring the 3 of us she came with, she stated she was going home and said I could either leave early with her or find a ride, I called my mom to ask where she was and if she could pick me up, not wanting to leave early, my mom informed me she was out of town and when I looked back to tell Lily she had been gone. I had to get a ride home with one of the other girls. We got food and while there Lily had blocked me on everything and put on her instagram status, “don’t even call yourself my best friend anymore” and wouldn’t respond to my messages. Side note, I forgot to mention earlier that Lily was very weird about me having friends separate from her, at first she didn’t show it but the longer we were friends the more she would accuse me of forgetting about her. About two weeks after her leaving me at the skating rink and blocking me she messaged me, to sum it up she said that she didn’t think we would be able to be friends anymore because she couldn’t be friends with someone who had other friends.
Am I the asshole?
Lily has no business asking you (or telling you) not to have any other friends. This is just another way she’s bullying and manipulating you.
At your age, your priority shouldn’t be *one* friend, it should be school, a healthy social life, and your future career (deciding what you want to do and what it’ll take to get there).
You’re NTA for having multiple friends.
NTA
Learning that you don’t have to be friends with everyone, even if you were good friends for a while is a really difficult lesson to learn, let alone apply. But as you let this friendship go, I think you’ll see how much lighter you’ll feel not having to carry this burden of so-called friendship with Lily. You can still be cordial and just put your energy and time into those other friendships.
NTA. The problem is Lily’s. You did nothing wrong. It’s her choice whether to end your friendship. I hope she learns sooner rather than later that her life will be very lonely if her friends aren’t allowed to like anyone else.
NTA. Rule of thumb for life- dont be friends with someone who gets weird and territorial if you have other friends
NTA Best friend doesn’t mean only friend. You did absolutely nothing wrong. She’s being a big baby. Her attempt to control your life is way out of line.