aita-throwaway

[aita-throwaway]

op here! saw my ask got posted and thought i'd reblog to say a few things.

first off, i want to say i really do love L so much. rereading this post it's a little embarrassing how bitter i seemed to come off while writing this, but that was just my frustration with the situation talking. she's one of my best friends and if i knew how much this would have hurt her, i would have dropped it immediately. i just assumed that this was just another case where she was playing hard-to-get because she was too shy to accept our advice, or that she would have come around to the idea of letting us help eventually. obviously that was wrong.

she's almost a whole year younger than a lot of us since she skipped a grade so the friend group sort of babies her a little. sometimes it's actually helpful, like reminding her to eat, but other times it manifests in more.. pushy ways like what i described in the post. she has a habit of missing out on great opportunities for herself (refuses to speak up when she needs help in class, didn't get to be president of her club when she was the only member who had stuck around consistently for 4 years because she didn't think she could take on the work, has chickened out of telling her doctor and parents she probably SERIOUSLY needs therapy on multiple occasions). i didn't want this to be another good thing she'd regret not pursuing later on.

reading all of the responses to this post made me think about how we've treated L even before all this happened. it hasn't always been the greatest. and in hindsight, i'm almost surprised that things went on for so long before something like this happened. still no word from her (i'm not blocked thankfully), but she's going to move to her dorm at the end of the month. i'm gonna reach out to her to apologize and im holding out hope that she'll forgive me, but if she doesn't, i won't push it. if nothing else, i guess i can use this as a learning experience to be less of a shitty friend in the future.

peace out, thanks for the wake-up call ✌🏼

aita for trying to play matchmaker? for context, this all happened months ago but is coming back now. about halfway through my (18F) senior year of high school, my friend L (also 18F) started crushing on a boy she sat with in math class (18M). she only admitted it to me and the rest of our friend group after we begged her to tell us who she liked for weeks, but in hindsight, it was sort of obvious she really likes him. i have a lot of candid pics on my phone of her glancing over at him during class when she wasn't paying attention but that's beside the point. she wasn't making any moves at all to let him know how she felt and start going out with him, so after a while, we decided to give her a little push. we encouraged her, made subtle hints towards him that someone in class had a crush on him, and when that still wasn't enough, i wrote a love letter for her to sign and give to him. it was easy. prom was a couple of months away by that point and if she was going to struggle so hard to find the words, it made sense for her to just give him a note telling him what she wanted to say. but still, L was stubborn and continued to claim that she wasn't interested in dating at all. apparently she didn't like him *that* much and she was happy just being friends with him (not very convincing when she was constantly making googly eyes at him). she's always been shy, though, and if she doesn't get out of her shell, she's never going to survive in college. for more motivation, i gave her a time limit: if she didn't sign her love letter and give it to him within two weeks, i was going to go up to him and tell him that she liked him. the time game and on the final day, she told me she did it. i trusted her even though she was acting suspicious (barely speaking to him, practically running out of the class they shared together that day, avoiding the friend group for most of the day) but i found out after talking to him later that she lied to me and actually threw the note away. when i confronted her the next day, she apologized and told me that she was terrified i would actually tell him about her crush (i was joking about that, and it hurt that she didn't trust me). out of spite, she ended up asking out one of her childhood friends to prom as her platonic date just so she could say "oh no, sorry, but i already have a date" whenever we tried to help her get with her crush in the future. prom and graduation passed, and the two of them haven't talked much since. i thought this whole situation was over with, but recently, L has been avoiding all of us and makes excuses to not hang out with us. we only have so much time together before she moves out of state for college, so i got a mutual friend to check on her and see what's up. apparently, L's still holding a grudge about how we tried to set her up with the boy. she claims that she was so stressed out for all of senior year that she started getting constant nightmares because of us, and she's upset we never respected her boundaries. however, i think that she's overexaggerating. if it was that serious, she knows that she can always just talk to us instead of keeping it all in so she can make me out to be the bad guy to other people. besides, we were doing what was best for her. he was the first guy she's ever had a crush on, and L has a history of letting her shyness get the better of her. i didn't want her to miss out on this opportunity to be happy, and if she just took our advice instead of acting childish, i'm sure she would have thanked us. i reached out to tell her i'm sorry if she thought i was being too pushy, but it's been days and she still hasn't replied to me. aita?

What are these acronyms?