A 24-year-old woman is friends with a 22-year-old woman who got blackout drunk at a Halloween party this year.
While her friend was drunk, a guy tried to sexually assault her. Thankfully, her 23-year-old boyfriend was at this party and saw the other guy trying to hurt her friend, and her boyfriend was able to stop this guy.
Her boyfriend then called his mom to pick her friend up, and he carried her friend out to his mom’s car.
Her boyfriend’s mom drove her friend to their house while he was out with his friends, and in the morning, her boyfriend drove her home.
“My friend was heavily impacted by that, and hasn’t come out in a while (understandably) but we’ve met her a few times to hang out and the such,” she explained.
“But since then she has messaged my boyfriend just trying to chat almost every day. My boyfriend usually replies maybe once every 3 days (he’s a notoriously bad texter).”
“This did sort of bother me at first but I thought you know, maybe talking to him is comforting to her after what happened so I pretty much ignored it and didn’t let it bother me.”
“This is until yesterday. On boxing day my friend group had a get-together at my friend’s flat. We had some drinks, played party games, and did a secret Santa.”
She and her friends agreed to spend no more than $135 on their secret Santa gifts, but her friend bought a $514 Balenciaga hoodie for her boyfriend as a gift.
kegfire – stock.adobe.com
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Everyone was stunned that her friend spent that much on her boyfriend, but her friend insisted it was to say thank you for what he did.
She was then annoyed by the fact that her friend was stuck to her boyfriend’s side for the rest of the party.
She tried to get over it and enjoy the party with her other friends, but later on in the evening, one of her other friends told her that this friend her boyfriend had saved revealed she had feelings for him after the attack.
She completely understands that what happened to her friend was terrible and that her boyfriend did rescue her, but she thinks there probably should be some boundaries with her friend in regards to her boyfriend.
She decided that the best way to handle this would be to have her boyfriend sit down with her friend to have a talk.
Her boyfriend asked her friend to meet him at a local coffee shop, and her boyfriend made it clear in a very kind way that he gets how her friend feels, but he doesn’t reciprocate her feelings.
“He also told her that her emotional response to him is just trauma bonding,” she said.
“She refuted this by claiming that she had feelings for him long before the incident, back when they first met but never acted on them.”
“That she only SAID that her feelings came after the incident so that people wouldn’t judge her/hate her.”
“My boyfriend told her that he wasn’t interested regardless, and she said that’s fine, but her feelings are real, and she has a right to speak “her truth.”
After that, she did try to reach out and speak to her friend, but her friend told her that she’s not sorry because she isn’t in control of how she feels.
She also learned that her friend never got her boyfriend for the secret Santa, she swapped with the person who did pick him so she could get him a present.
“I feel totally lost because now this feels like so much more of a betrayal than before,” she concluded, before saying she just feels sick about all of this.
She’s left wondering how on earth she can move forward from here, or what she should do now.
How would you handle this?
You can read the original post on Reddit here.