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Finding out people have been talking behind your back can destroy a friendship in an instant.

That’s what happened after the woman in this story realized her entire friend group had spent months criticizing one of their closest friends whenever she wasn’t around.

Yet, rather than joining in, she stayed out of the conversations and even defended her friend more than once.

Still, she never said a word about what was happening. She believed telling her friend would only cause more pain, so she kept the secret to herself.

Then everything came out anyway, and now her friend feels just as hurt by the silence as she does by the gossip.

Read on for the full story.

AITA for not telling my friend that our entire friend group was talking about her behind her back??

I (26F) have a close friend, “Vini” (fake name), and a larger friend group that we’ve both been part of for years.

A few months ago, I started noticing that whenever Vini wasn’t around, people would talk about her. At first, it was minor stuff: complaining that she was always late, canceled plans a lot, or made everything about herself.

But over time, it got a lot worse.

People started criticizing her personality, her relationships, her appearance, and even things she’d told them in confidence. Some of the comments were pretty harsh, ngl.

Unfortunately, everything blew up on her.

I never joined in. In fact, there were times I defended her or changed the subject because it made me uncomfortable. But I also never told Vini.

My reasoning was that telling her would accomplish absolutely nothing except hurt her. I knew she’d be devastated, and I didn’t think repeating every nasty thing people said would improve the situation. I also didn’t want to become the group’s messenger and create even more drama.

Eventually, everything blew up.

She somehow found out that people had been talking about her for months. I don’t know exactly how, but she confronted several people, and there was a huge fallout.

Now, they’re not speaking.

A few days later, she asked me if I knew about it.

I just didn’t want to lie anymore, so I said yes.

She immediately got quiet and asked how long I’d known. She said she expected strangers to talk behind her back, but not her closest friend.

I told her that if I’d repeated everything people said, I would’ve just been hurting her and fueling more drama.

She said that took away her ability to decide for herself what she wanted to know or something like that.

Now she isn’t speaking to me.

AITA?

Eek! It’s never fun fighting with a close friend.

Let’s see what the folks over at Reddit think about it.

It does seem like she was playing both sides.

Well, when you put it this way.

Exactly. That probably was not good.

Here’s a reader who would’ve also ditched her.

It’s easy to see why she felt so torn because this wasn’t really her fight to begin with.

Nobody wants to lose an entire group of friends over a situation they didn’t create.

However, watching people tear apart someone who considers you a close friend would be hard to ignore. At some point, that friendship deserved someone to speak up or set a few boundaries.

This is one of those situations that was never going to have a perfect ending. She may lose the friendship over it, but at least she’ll know where she stands if something like this ever happens again.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a mom who is angry after finding out the group leader she gave lunch money to made her kids pay for their own meals.