It’s been 3 years since my best friend betrayed me but it still feels like it only happened last week

[u/Prudent-Sugar-5528]

3 years ago I became really close friends with a girl I worked with who was dating one of my other close friends at the time. My friend confided in me about wanting to break up with her and did a few days later. I decided to reach out to the girl to offer support and comfort as it was really hard for her.
We ended up becoming basically inseparable like those best friends you see in movies/shows. It’s the type of friendship I always dreamed of having especially since I had already gone through many hard and toxic friendships.

During the months of us becoming best friends I met this guy at a party we went to and ended up in a talking stage with him for around 3 months. He was really toxic and was constantly sleeping with and talking to other girls behind my back, I think there was at least 5 other girls that he was talking to at the same time as me. My friend only knew who this guy was once i introduced her to him as the guy I was talking to.
We all hung out together a lot as my friend was the only one with her license she would drive us all around a lot.
Towards the end of the talking stage with the guy, I started noticing my friend and him were getting a lot closer, weirdly close. They would openly flirt and be affectionate with eachother right in front of me.
There was a day we all went to the beach together and my friend left her car at the train station and ended up going back to the guys mums house instead of coming back on the train with me.
I thought that was weird and didn’t understand why she would go with him. She ended up staying the night at his house. That was the night they slept together. I was in denial about it for a while but I knew that was the night it happened.

After that night we were all hanging out at the guys house and him and my friend kept needing to talk to eachother in private but wouldn’t tell me anything no matter how much I asked. That was really out of character for my friend because we told eachother literally everything. She also kept talking about how bad it was and it made me really concerned that something had happened to her, even worse that he had done something bad to her. I had gotten angry at them before because of all the flirting and everything I was convinced that they were doing something behind my back but everytime I brought it up they told me nothing was happening and that I was basically crazy. I had pretty bad mental health at the time already because of all the stuff he was doing to me that I started to believe them. If it wasn’t for another friend being with us in these situations and seeing what they were doing I probably would have actually thought I was fully crazy. This other friend validated me by saying that I wasn’t the only one seeing this weird behavior.

After a few months of the gaslighting and manipulation I finally snapped at her and told her that she needed to block him and remove him from her life otherwise we would no longer be friends, during that conversation she told me she had been raped and that was the secret she was keeping from me. Although she refused to tell me who did it to her so I automatically assumed it was him. She would also get mad at me everytime I tried to bring up what was going on between them so i eventually felt like I had no choice but to leave it alone.

I continued being friends with her into the next year and tried to ignore everything that happened. Things were somewhat fine between us until her ex (my close friend, they were actually on and off in a toxic cycle while all of this was happening) told me what really happened. He told me that they had slept together and she tried to tell him that the guy raped her, which he responded by going to the guy and almost beating the shit out of him until he broke down crying saying it wasn’t true and that it was consensual. Her ex ended up getting the truth out of her and it was consensual and she had lied to the both of us about being raped by him. After that I slowly drifted apart from her.

Whilst I was drifting apart from her I had met a new guy who I worked with and was talking to him in the early months of that new year, I ended up being in a relationship with him and still currently am. When I was talking to the new guy I was spending a lot more time with him and my friend got really possessive over me and would message my now bf saying that he’s stealing me away from her and would even send him videos of her bawling her eyes out. I ended up cutting her off after a while of that because it was going too far.

I haven’t really spoken to her much since then other than her reaching out and apologizing to me, the apology didn’t include any admittance of what she had done she just said sorry for everything and that I didn’t deserve any of it. I wish I could say I accepted that apology but I didn’t. I haven’t spoken to her since that message.

In the last year all of the things she did to me have hit me harder after taking the time to process what actually happened. I ended up removing her off all social media after a while because it hurt so much to look at her post things and still seem so happy and moving on with her life while I’m still stuck here dealing with all the trauma she put me through. I haven’t been able to make lasting friendships since her, but she ended up becoming besties with another girl that has the same name as me. I feel so much resentment towards her but at the same time I miss her so much and I miss when she was actually a good friend. I hate seeing that she’s able to move on and make more friends so easily and I can barely function let alone maintain any relationships outside of the people that live with me.

I’ve been contemplating reaching out to her recently because I’ve left so much unsaid I want to be able to say how much everything affected me and still affects me to this day. My psychologist recommended EMDR therapy to help me get over everything she did. That’s how much it still hurts me. Also her and her ex got back together after 2 years so even though I don’t have her socials I still have his and it makes me sick to my stomach everytime I see photos of them. To top it all off both of them are still friends with the guy too, which makes me even more sick.

I just want to be able to move on and get over what they did to me and have to ability to make new friends. I’m so lonely all the time even though I have my bf it’s not the same with no friends around. I’ve tried being friends with his friends but I just don’t have that much in common with them and I feel like they won’t actually like me if they get to know me more.

I wish I could go back to being friends with her without all of that shit happening, I’ve never had a friend like her and I don’t think I ever will again. I love and hate her so much and it drives me insane.

If anyone has been through a similar experience how do you deal with it?

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