I am still traumatized by the events that have taken place. Me and my best friend who we’ll call T met as bandmates at school two years ago. I was the bassist in the band and he was the frontman. We bonded over music and were part of the same friend group. We often hung out due to being extremely close. I cared for him a lot and was the only one to speak to him directly and initiate conversations with him in the group. The friend group included multiple mutual friends and T’s girlfriend, who we’ll call O. O and I were also good friends due to our mutual care for T and we both were musicians as well. After a year of the dynamic, unexpectedly, O and T broke up. O cut contact with all of us so I couldn’t ask for her perspective but T was devastated so I consoled him and helped him out. He proceeded to explain the scenario, saying she broke up with him because they weren’t good enough for each other and gave me updates on the scenario week by week, stating that she wanted him back and more.
I helped bring him back up and protected him and our relationship went on for another year. A year after this whole incident, T got a new girlfriend and officially moved on with my help. A month after, I broke up with most of the friend group as they decided to hurt innocent people in the group for no reason whatsoever by creating group chats specifically to exclude and hurt them. I was hurt as well and wanted his support at my time too. However, he immediately decided to ditch our friendship. He proceeded to say that I wasn’t there for him and all I did was try to be funny and joke about, which wasn’t true. I was so hurt by this betrayal that I cried for 2 months but I was conflicted as I couldn’t bring myself to hurt him after what he did to me, kicking me when I was down. Months after this, he decided to hurt me again by texting in the old band chat, making subtle remarks about me when he knew I was recovering. Each time I saw him when he ran into each other in real life, I saw a scowl or a subtle devious smile on his face. I avoided and ignored him for the most part but it got to a point where it was really affecting my mental health. Coincidentally, I saw O’s contact resurface on my phone and I messaged her after a year of no contact. We immediately talked like we used to and began talking about music and more but the topic of T came up when I asked her what happened with him. I apologised that I didn’t get her perspective and asked for it.
She told me, with evidence, that she was incredibly hurt by the situation with T, even now. She told me that T was emotionally abusive to her and controlled her life, not allowing her to spend time with her other friends and even her family because otherwise she was “a bad girlfriend” to him. I was taken aback by this and it took me minutes to fully process this information. She then told me that a month prior to their breakup, he verbally abused her in public and embarrassed her, causing her to finally snap and ask for space. After that, T then began playing the victim and threatened to hurt himself if she decided to hurt him again. As O was conflicted now, T then proceeded to constantly invade her space and finally caused her to break up with him. I then realised that T lied about saying that they broke up because “they weren’t good enough”. I realised that he manipulated me and the group all this time and twisted the story. I then asked her if she asked to come back to him and as you can guess, no she didn’t. It was made up. Everything was a lie. I confronted T about our own relationship after this and made sure nothing was spilled about me and O becoming friends again and found out that he faked EVERY bit of kindness towards me, he stated that nothing was real between us. After this, I became terrified of him and realised he was a psychopath who manipulated his own girlfriend after abusing her and proceeded to backstab his best friend after using him. Fortunately, I tend to avoid him a lot nowadays and I hope it stays this way.