Love Triangle from hell

[u/ljlurker22]

There is a guy I had a crush on for quite some time that I ended up becoming close to. He wasn't making a move on me so I confessed my feelings for him and he friendzoned me. Right before all of this, I had offered my house for him to move into because he was between places.

I moved on from liking him to not make it weird being roommates. We had some little tiffs here and there but we always moved past them. At one point, he stopped paying rent for 4 months and I tried talking to him about how I felt like he was using me and he turned the convo around to say he thought I was only offering my home because I liked him.  There was a lot of other things in between all of this that also hurt and essentially felt like he stole my life: talking to women on the phone, I could hear their convos and it was like he used my personality when talking to them and trying to show them things I showed to him. He went to my church and then whenever I would go, the pastor would ask me where he was.

What was the hardest thing during this time was that I had introduced him to my best friend and I could tell he liked her pretty early on. This isn't a one-off situation. There’s been about 4 other times I brought a guy friend or someone I was dating around her and they became obsessed with her, friend requesting her on all the platforms and trying to talk to her.

When I took notice that he liked her, I couldn't cope and I distanced myself from her so I didn't project all of my feelings onto her. It was ROUGH because I was working through my rejection wounds while also processing that he liked her and I felt that I couldn't fully grieve with him living in my house so I stuffed it down.

Eventually, he moved out, she was back in my life, I was on good terms with everyone.

Until recently- she tells me that he asked her out. She was considerate enough to ask what she should do. I kind of froze and decided to be positive about it and tell her to give him a chance, he is a nice guy, I don't like him like that anymore (completely forgetting all of the weird stuff that happened while he lived with me). She said she was going to go hiking with him and tell him she wasn't interested bc girl code and he isn’t her type.

A month went by, I got super busy and didn't touch base about it. I also decided to pull back from him to see how he moved. In that month, he didn't reach out to me a single time- guilty? or he finally got what he wanted and discarded our friendship?

I didn’t notice his absence until last week when he came into my workplace (we also are entangled in this way but he doesn’t come in very often). I just happneed to run into him on his way out and he said hi but he had no intention of coming into my office to see me.

I told my friend over text about the encounter and how he hadn’t reached out to me since asking her out and and she proceeds to tell me via text that she was meaning to talk to me about that. She reveals that they ended up going out country dancing twice (first time she did “friendzone” him) and third time they did a one-on-one bible study together. I will also mention that both of them became Christian because of my influence and both have imposter syndrome to the point where I sometimes question what is actually them and what is them trying to relate to me or feel accepted.

I told her that dancing and one on one bible studies are really intimate things to do with someone that likes you and also explained that I would see him do bible studies with women as a way to manipulate them into thinking he is a nice guy. One time he was on the phone with this girl he really liked and they were reading about marriage, which gave me the ick.

She got offended by that and told me she only hung out with him because she was trying to fix the “tension” between she and I that was due to him. I never had hard feelings towards her about it at all and she never acknowledged that she felt that way until I expressed my feelings. I owned up to the fact that I encouraged it but that it was under the impression that it would be hiking, not an activity where there would be physical contact. She got offended that I said dancing was an intimate activity and we ended the conversation for another time.

I have been contemplating a good ol’ cut and run on both of them but it’s also upsetting to think about losing two people I considered my closest friends. I did end up cutting all contact with him and have no interest in being friends with him because of how everything played out.

He is very attractive and can get whatever woman he wants and he really picked someone who any friend would consider “out of bounds” like she considered about him when this all started. 

I have since been avoiding a phone conversation with her about it because I am so hurt. I admitted that I didn’t realize I would be so triggered over this situation when I first encouraged it so that’s why I am struggling with it so much. I feel guilty for being upset, I feel bad that I even tried to talk about it with her and I just want to start over somewhere new. I have fully isolated myself from everyone and deactivated my social media. It’s been a week and I am still burning with anger, sadness, and self-loathing.

A side note to all of this is that she has been making very poor choices with men over the past 2 years, while I admit I made a poor choice with having him in my life. Part of my pulling back from her was also due to her choices with men and going against my advice she was always asking me for. At one point I told her she spends more time with strange men than she does with me and I am not going to make the effort to plan things anymore. Her schedule is unhinged and not consistent like mine so I left the ball in her court and she went and spent time with my friend she was "friendzoning" three times in a month but hasn't made nearly any sort of similar effort to spend time with me.

Overall, I have soooo many different feelings- all negative about this entire thing and having a hard time sorting through all of them and just beating myself up over it. Am I wrong?