Making friends can be difficult for some people.

This college student started getting casual texts from her male classmate. She started feeling uncomfortable, so she reacted harshly when he asked her why she stopped responding.

Read the full story below.

AITA for not excusing my classmates weird behavior?

I (21F) am currently in college. My school is mostly science-focused, but I’m in the social sciences, so my program is small. Because of that, there are only around 20 people I regularly have classes with, and we are all at least familiar with each other.

One of these people is K (21M). This started because I met him briefly at an event in the fall, so when I found out I had a class with him, I sat by him without thinking much about it.

All I knew was that he was big on talking frequently in class, but he seemed pretty normal. We ended up exchanging numbers explicitly for a class assignment, reviewing each other’s midterm papers.

That’s when the problems started: he began texting me about more casual things. At first, I didn’t totally care, but he kept going and started messaging me at odd hours (11 p.m., 1 a.m., etc.).

He also started waiting for me after class and following me where I was going, usually to my next class.

This woman told her classmate they aren’t friends.

I ended up telling one of my guy friends, who also knew K, that it was making me uncomfortable. This friend, L (22M), said that I was overreacting and that K was just “socially awkward.”

I was a little upset by that but brushed it off because I thought he might be right. After a few weeks of texting (never anything explicitly bad besides the odd hours and frequency), I stopped responding to him.

After I did that, he came up to me in our school’s dining hall asking me why I wasn’t texting him back, which was my final straw.

I ended up being very upfront and texting him, saying I wasn’t comfortable with him messaging me or being around me anymore and told him we weren’t friends. After that, he moved seats in our class and wouldn’t even look at me, so I did feel a little bad.

Telling L and a few other friends later, they said I was too harsh for what I said to him and that I could’ve tried to explain how I felt instead of calling him out and cutting him off. I do feel kind of bad since K didn’t exactly do anything wrong, so am I the jerk?

Well, that could’ve been handled with more compassion.

Let’s read what other people have to say about this.

This makes sense.

This user shares some insight.

A valid observation.

This one takes her side.

And this reader puts things into perspective.

Clear boundaries prevent messy confrontations later.

If you liked this post, you might want to read this story about a teacher who taught the school’s administration a lesson after they made a sick kid take a final exam.