When your best friend’s relationship insecurities turn into personal insults, what do you do?

This woman thought brushing off the short jokes was fine—until her friend’s constant digs went too far.

Read on for the story.

AITA for ‘not caring enough’ about my best friend’s insecurities?

My best friend, Gina (22F), of 5 years just lashed out at me (23F).

For context, we met in our senior year of high school, and went to college together as roommates.  We never really had big fights, only small quarrels that were later solved.

What we did have were deep and personal talks, as any two girls do, including our insecurities.

Uh oh…

Now, I’m objectively a small person (4’10/148cm) and she is a bit taller than the average girl (5’9). We never let this come between us before, instead made jokes about it all the time. I thought we were all good about it.

But things changed when Gina met her new boyfriend, Jason. He’s of average height, maybe 5’10, and they seemed super happy together, she could not stop gushing about how great he was.

That was until she came back for a formal event with him and started complaining to me about how in heels she was taller than him and she ‘felt weird’.

Huh?

I initially comforted her, as I don’t believe in judging/being ashamed of height, being of mine, but these complaints kept on coming.

It started small, like the heels, but then she started making small remarks to his face which I thought was really wrong.

I told her this in private, and she agreed she was projecting her insecurities.

Noted.

I thought everything would stop, but a few weeks later, I was struggling to reach something high up while she was in the room watching, and as I grabbed a chair to stand on, she told me that she couldn’t imagine being a midget like me.

Now, I said this before and I’ll say it again–we did used to make jokes about our height quite frequently especially when we met, so it wasn’t uncommon.

However, this time, she had a venom in her voice that didn’t quite match the kind smile on her face. I ignored it and moved on.

Way to be the bigger person.

However, she kept on making these small jabs at me, which I brushed off because she had been going through a rough patch with Jason recently.

I laughed them off, which looking back probably just encouraged this behavior.

But a week ago, I was at her place and she said something again, to which I just started being fed up and told her in a polite tone that I didn’t like her speaking like that to me.

Alllll set.

Instead of admitting her mistake, she raised her voice and told me that she didn’t know I was so sensitive.

At this point I felt very annoyed, and I raised my voice back and said that she was just being impolite and rude.

Then she started crying, which immediately made me feel guilty, because she was talking about how before we met she was bullied relentlessly about her height.

Oh, come on.

Gina told me that beauty influencers on Instagram had made her feel ‘not feminine enough’ and being next to me was physically painful.

Now we haven’t talked in days and I feel really guilty, because looking back, there were some comments I made in high school that could have impacted her.

I don’t know at this point. AITA?

At some point, being someone’s emotional punching bag isn’t the same as being a supportive friend—it’s just enabling bad behavior.

Most people on Reddit said OP was NTA.

This person says to be the bigger person and remind her how it feels.

This person says her insecurities are spilling out…but doesn’t make it right.

And this person says she was way over the line.

One friend’s “too tall” crisis turned into another’s last straw.

If you enjoyed that story, read this one about a mom who was forced to bring her three kids with her to apply for government benefits, but ended up getting the job of her dreams.