I had known my boyfriend (now ex) for a year and recently we got close and he asked me out. We’d been dating for 3 months and everything had been going well for the most part until it crashed and burned.
He has this female best friend whom he’s known for years who apparently dated his best friend and then got burned very badly by that relationship. She is now dating another guy for the past 2 years whom he hates. He told me he used to have feelings for her but now she’s like a sister to him. He also told me early on that all of his past girlfriends hated her but that she really really really wanted to meet me.
There were some things I started to find odd about their friendship but I never said anything bc I didn’t want to be controlling. He would send me baby pictures of her unprovoked, talk about her love life often, got visibly upset after hanging out with her and her boyfriend, and randomly told me “so I don’t like the inside of Oreos right? Well Sally always splits them in half when we’re together and gives me the side without the filling” to which I just kind looked at him and then we changed the subject. She sent him and their other guy friend body shots of her belly button ring when she got it. I saw in their group chat them complaining about me saying early on things like “Sarah (me) sucks” whenever he would tell them he was busy and hanging out with me.
All of these things on their own didn’t really stand out but together I thought were peculiar. Recently, she dm-Ed me on Instagram asking if he was ticklish. I was honestly at a loss to I sent a screen shot to my boyfriend and asked him what boundaries he was comfortable with in opposite gender friendships. He immediately insisted she meant nothing by it and sent over screen shots of their conversation. Apparently, she had seen a boyfriend-girlfriend tik tok and sent it in their group chat with the other guy asking to paint their tattoos. My boyfriend said no and the other guy said yes. She badgered my boyfriend repeatedly and was saying things like “I’m so small and tiny. I’m basically still a child. Lemme do it”. He told her no several times to which she said he was making her out to be a monster. Then she said, “is it because your ticklish is that why you won’t let me??” And he said, “NUH UHH. Don’t ask Sarah”. For me this is where he failed. They went back and forth and he basically goaded her into dm-ing me.
I told him it made me wildly uncomfortable and that it wasn’t something any of my guy friends would ever ask or say to me and definitely not something I would encourage. He continued to defend her saying she meant it all innocently as he views her as immature until I said if this continues then I won’t stay in the relationship. I basically told him he had to set boundaries. He switched to saying that he felt sexually harassed by her comments and didn’t want to think she meant them like that but swore up and down he’d set boundaries with her the next day and agreed it was out of line. It important to note this all happened on the day he got his new puppy.
Fast forward and him and I are hanging out and I decide to try and extend an olive branch to her telling her to come meet the puppy. She says she’s out of town and he takes my phone and tells her she’s betraying him and the new puppy as a joke. Her response is “Tell Joey I’m not betraying her because I named her I’m just betraying him” I felt weird about it so I didn’t answer.
I finally meet her for the first time and ask her about her trip. She responds and then only addresses him for the rest of the time I see her.
A few days later him and I have plans and as I’m leaving to see him he calls and tells me she was at the store so he asked her to get him a treat. He says she just decided to show up and wait for him at his house so now we can all hangout and their other friend is on the way. I ended up deciding to stay home bc I was feeling blown off.
I tried to hangout with him later but we had a fight that culminated in us breaking up and in it I told him that I felt when she sent him that message asking to paint his tattoos which are on his whole chest I felt she cheated on her boyfriend and that her behavior screamed territory marking to me. Now he says he can’t ever forgive how I spoke about her even though he said he agrees what I said was true because she’s like a sister to him. I can understand that saying it’s cheating is harsh but not unforgivable.
TLDR my boyfriend’s gbf wanted to paint the tattoos on his chest. AITA for taking issue with this? Am I controlling?