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The original was posted on /r/relationships by /u/nasty_nasss on 2024-01-23 00:09:02+00:00.
I [30s F] had a group of friends [30sM, 30sM, 30sF] that I hung out with, and saw nearly every other day in a major metropolitan city. We got along great and I thought they were my best friends. One of them I had known for the past 10 years and lived with for 1 year, and we've had virtually no issues.
We traveled for a vacation this summer together with a few other people. The day before we left, I had to go to the emergency room for major abdominal pain. It turned out to be something non-emergency related, so I got anti-biotics and planned to still go on the trip. Separately, I suffer from PMDD (shout out r/pmdd), a very severe and debilitating mental illness. For the most part, I used to be able to have my mental illness in check, but I think the antibiotics somehow counteracted with my meds and stopped working.
I started feeling horrible mentally on the trip - depressed, hopeless, could cry at any second. At this time, I feel like my friends on the trip just weren't really talking to me. The 3 of them would always be in a group together whispering but never tell me what they were talking about. If I tried to enter their conversations, they wouldn't really pay attention to me or would even just leave. This combined with my mentally ill brain made me think. the worst - they're mad at me, they hate me, something is wrong, they don't like me anymore.
On the last night of the trip, I couldn't help myself but was feeling terrible so I blew up at them and said how they made me feel ignored. They immediately denied it, said they have no idea what I'm talking about, its a two way street, etc. I got frustrated and went to take a shower to try to calm down. Then, two of them come into the room to try to talk to me again. But they immediately ganged up on me . They said things like "the three of us are best friends, this is how we are and how we've always acted, you need to get used to it", "you are really quiet so we don't feel like we have to talk to you", "You want me to include you every time we hang out? UGH NO WAY". They threatened to not be friends with me anymore. Screamed at me while I sobbed and just repeated "I'm sorry, I'm sorry". One guy even said "Yeah I actually was ignoring you at one point, but you were being annoying about {a particular subject} so I blew you off". I also found this dynamic to be really unfair because it was 2 against 1, I was still naked in a towel from my shower, and was in a foreign country and couldn't go home. It felt very just vulnerable and awful.
After a few of these insults, they finally said, "well we're all extroverts and we talk alot so maybe we'll just quiet down so you can talk sometimes. There, do you feel better now?". I've never been called quiet in my life before and don't feel that way with other friend groups. None of this logic made sense to me, so I told them I didn't feel better. This made them frustrated and angry, they started yelling even harder about how I'm not even trying to feel better and they actually flat out refuse to include me when they hang out.
This honestly shattered my entire world. I thought the 4 of us were best friends, we hung out multiple times a week, always texted/chatted etc, went to the all 4 gym together, etc. It didn't occur to me that they just considered themselves to be best friends and me to be outside of that. I had known one of the guys for almost 10 years and I couldn't believe that him and the girl were just screaming at me while I sobbed hysterically, said "I'm sorry I'm sorry" over and over again. I really feel like they just ambushed me, and the mean way the girl spoke to me in particular made me feel verbally abused.
When we all got home, maybe a day or two later I asked them all to meet up with me. I apologized and completely took the blame. I was really ashamed of being so emotional due to my mental illness, and really thought that since I had such a big reaction, that the situation was my fault and they were just being defensive since I was inconsolable. I told them about my mental illness, how depressed and awful it makes me feel, and I took responsibility for how I acted. They kind of reciprocated, but I felt like they still thought I was crazy and kind of gave me a "sorry you felt that way" instead of a "hey sorry it seems like we actually really hurt your feelings", but they did say that they would try to make me feel more included. They also made me promise to respect the fact that they have their own relationships amongst each other. Honestly I really wanted them to admit that they came down on me pretty hard for bringing up my feelings. But at that time I just wanted to keep the peace and was fine with that outcome.
That same weekend, no one texted me to hang out. We always hung out every weekend and I thought it was weird that the one time we have tension, they didn't reach out to me. So I looked at their locations and it showed they were all out at the bars hanging out. Again this hurt a ton so I reached out to each friend individually, met up with them in person and apologized again, made sure that they were ok and had nothing left to say on their minds. Everything seemed to be fine again.
The next week, 2 of the friends delete me off our location app and they are all suddenly on another trip together that I didn't know about. This again punched me to my core. I took the location app to be a sign that they are definitely planning on hanging out without me and they want to hide it so I can't call them out. But, I thought to myself, these are my friends, they would never do anything like this, there must be an explanation.
I asked the guy who I've known for nearly 10 years if he had deleted me, and he said he did delete me because he "doesnt want any more drama". Again, punch to the gut. Me bringing up my feelings and talking about my mental illness being chalked up to "drama" was really hurtful.
On top of this, since the initial trip, the three basically stopped texting me individually, in our usually pretty active group chat, instagrams, tiktoks, etc. I felt the silence was really loud and started to think that this group is icing me out.
Once I learned that 2 of them deleted me off the location app, and all 3 were on a trip together, I decided that I would move back to my hometown. My mental illness got even worse, my housing situation in the original city was shaky, I lost my job and went home to my parents. I also stopped trying to communicate with these friends. For my own sanity, I unfollowed them on instagram, thinking they wouldn't notice since they stopped interacting with me on it.
This all happened in the summer. It's been about 4-5 months since. Now, one of the friends has come to me and said why are you so mad, why did you leave, why did you unfollow, etc. We talked on the phone for an hour and I basically recapped the above saying that my feelings were really hurt, I didn't feel like their apology made up for their hurtful words and actions, and deleting me off the location app and going on a trip together 1 week after telling me they would include me just felt so wrong to me.
He basically invalidated my entire experience (again), said that deleting someone off of a location app like find my friends isn't a big deal (but me unfollowing them on insta is), and they have no idea why I left or why I'm hurt. He also doesn't understand why I didn't make more of an effort to tell the two others who ambushed me that they hurt me, but I don't want to do that because they were so mean to me the first time I told them they hurt my feelings. I'm much more protective of myself, my mental state, and who I hang out with now. If I had another instance with that friend group where I had a mental health episode and they got mad at me for it, I would surely end up hurting myself or in a psych ward. I figured that I didn't want to be around these people for my own health.
I tried to make it clear that deleting me and going on a trip together made me feel even more excluded and was kind of the final straw in me deciding to leave the city, but he was insistent that i was deleted so I don't hurt my own feelings when I see them hanging out without me i.e. they did it with my feelings in mind so it wasn't hurtful. I asked why they didn't just talk to me about deleting beforehand, but then he just got defensive again. We ended the call in an awkward silence basically. I said I could be interested in rebuilding our friendship but I've lost alot of trust and its going to be hard.
I feel like I've gone crazy. This situation hurt so much in the summer and still hurts a ton now, but they can't take any accountability. I tried to separate myself from the situation for my own sanity but now they are saying that I left for no reason and no one was icing me out and everyone was including me?
I'm not perfect either - i told some mutual friends in confidence some nasty words that did get back to the 3 of them, and for that I apologized again. I said I was just really hurt by their actions and didn't help that I was waist deep in very severe mental health issues.
After reflecting alot over the past few months, I figured that their version and my version of inclusion wasn't the same, so they were just going to keep hurting me even if they truly didn't intend to. We've talked about this issue many times now and never see eye to eye. It seems like...
Content cut off. Read original on https://www.reddit.com/r/relationships/comments/19darft/my_friends_dumped_me_but_now_want_me_back_like/