Hi,
I’m an 18M school student. I’m in my final year and have been going to school with two close friends, 18M (Jacob) and 18F (Sophie) for around 5-6 years.
I was friends with Sophie first, at the end of primary school and I became friends with Jacob before he and Sophie did.
A few years ago, Jacob and Sophie started dating, which was great, and I’ve been good friends with both of them since.
I never really felt a change in our friendships (although looking back now i think there may have been). For the most part, everything seemed fine and I felt like we were all close friends.
Fast forward to a couple days ago, and one of my mates (Wade) was talking about Jacob’s birthday party which, to both of our surprises, I hadn’t received an invite to. Wade even said he thought Jacob and I were closer than he was, so we figured he must’ve just forgot the invite.
The next day (yesterday) Wade ended up managing to sneak into conversation with Jacob to ask if I was going.
Apparently, according to Jacob, I’ve been “flirting on and off with Sophie” for the past year or so which he hasn’t appreciated.
For reference, no one has ever said the way we interacted was inappropriate (if either of them had said they thought I did something that was uncomfortable I would’ve obviously not done it) and I feel like I never acted in a way with her that she didn’t with me.
I have issues from primary school with friendships and I’ve always had imposter syndrome when it comes to friends. I honestly feel like there are are only 4 or 5 friends I have that I trust and feel like I don’t need to worry about their approval. Now , in one day, I feel like I’ve been betrayed by half of those friends. I don’t think I can really speak to Sophie again, at least for a long while as I’m going to constantly be thinking about this.
With Jacob, I have no clue why he never told me anything. It hurts me that he’s been pretending to be my friend whilst secretly holding this against me, as it is literally one of my biggest fears that people don’t actually like me. I wish he’d told me so a) I could not do whatever it is he thought was ‘flirting’ and b) so I can actually address it and not been tricked into a fake friendship.
I also find the fact he told Wade so readily worrying. Now I’m going to be constantly fearing that he’s spread this rumour and my reputation is going to be damaged.
I hate drama, and I’ve always tried to stay as far away from it as possible. I hate this.
Last night, I literally could not sleep and my mind couldn’t think about anything else but this. I tried to sleep and I close my eyes at around 2:30 to try get some rest. I opened my eyes what felt like at least 4 hours later to find that it was 3:05.
I don’t know what to do, this is the worst.
p.s. Just to be clear, I’ve never intentionally tried to flirt with this girl nor have I caught feelings.
Also today is my 18th birthday. Yippee. :/