Explaining your feelings to people is hard enough, but it gets even harder when doing it might blow up an entire friend group.

So, what would you do if your long-time friend group knew something was wrong between you and another member, and they wanted you to explain what happened?

How would you handle it? Would you tell them the truth? Or would you try your hardest to avoid talking about it at all?

In the following story, one young woman finds herself in this situation and doesn’t want to cause problems.

Here’s what’s going on.

AITA for ignoring a “friend” in our friend group?

I (F23) have been in the same friend group since I was 17. There are five girls and four guys. We’ve stayed friends over the years, even though we’re all in different places now.

During the pandemic, when I was 18, one of the guys (Jay) confessed that he liked me. I didn’t believe him at first because I knew he used to like one of my friends (Lily), and I honestly thought he was joking.

When I realized he was serious, I rejected him and said I only saw him as a friend. After that, he stopped talking to me and left our group chat. I didn’t tell anyone because I didn’t want to cause drama in the group.

She feels very uncomfortable around Jay.

A few years later, Jay was added back to the group chat. I didn’t really mind since we barely talked by then anyway.

Later on, I had a sleepover with Lily and another friend (Ysa). That night, Lily told me that Jay had also confessed to her during the pandemic. She rejected him, too, but he kept messaging her afterward and tried to guilt her about it.

That made me really uncomfortable, especially since he confessed to both of us around the same time. After that, I decided to distance myself from him.

When our friend group met up at a café, I ignored Jay completely. Ysa noticed something was wrong, and I finally told her what had happened. She got upset and removed Jay from the group chat, which confused everyone else.

Now, her friends want to know what’s wrong.

Jay denied doing anything wrong, and since I never explained my side, the others assumed it was just a small misunderstanding.

During my college graduation, I didn’t want Jay there, but he still showed up with the rest of the group. I felt awkward and ended up ignoring him again the whole time.

I chose not to confront him directly to avoid drama within the group. Now my friends can tell something is wrong, but they don’t know the full story, and I’m scared they’ll think I’m overreacting if I explain everything now.

AITA?

Wow! There’s a lot to unpack here.

Let’s see what advice the fine folks over at Reddit have for dealing with this.

This person thinks she needs to explain to her friends.

That was not a good look on him.

According to this comment, she needs to grow up and act like an adult.

For this reader, the girls are all wrong.

She should speak up.

It’s okay to ignore him, but only until people start noticing. Then, they deserve an explanation.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.