TL;DR, Since this is a pretty long story that requires a lot of context. My entire friend group turned against me in favor of someone I thought was my friend, and I dont know how to make peace with it. These were some of the first people in my life that I felt accepted by, and theres nothing I can do or say to change things.

I was a part of a service team that worked with a large retailer performing large scale resets and general maintenance. This team consisted of about 15 people, and over the course of nearly two years, the majority of the team had become rather close-knit. I had never been one to befriend my coworkers before this, but before I knew it, a few of these people I worked with became an integral part of my life. One of which, we'll call them A, became my best friend. We did everything together, and A had become a fixture in my home. During this time, A helped me realize that I am nonbinary, and our friends, along with my fiance who also worked with us, were the first people in my life to accept me. Unfortunately though, this changed with the introduction of B.

B and I had also become friends, though I was not as close with her as I was with A. As far as I knew, we were cool, but problems began to quickly arise when B was introduced into the friend group. When B started, we had another coworker we'll call P, who relentlessly hit on her despite her being married. She did nothing about this, and even seemed as if she liked the attention. I am not one to victim blame though, so I asked her about it and she said that she was just being nice because she was afraid of him. After this, he tried to hit on her during our lunch break again, to which I responded, "Hey, B, how's your husband?'. P immediately glared daggers at me, and after our lunch break he chased me out of the break room to yell at me for "not minding my business." This quickly resulted in a screaming match where I basically told him that he was to creep, and that he needed to leave her alone, as she was uncomfortable with his advances. After putting my job on my line to defend her, B thanked me. Corrective action was taken and he was asked to leave her alone, but then B gave P her number the next day.

After the P incident, we had another creep join our team, only this time, his sights were set on me. This man started his term with us by harassing me, making rude comments, attempting to touch me, etc. I had defended myself publicly on more than one occasion, and it was common knowledge among the team that this man had it out for me. I had said in our group chat on one occasion that he was an asshole, and almost everyone agreed.. except for B. B did not like this. What I had failed to realize at the time was that B had already begun to befriend this man, as she had literally every other man she came into contact with. It was becoming apparent that B was a pick-me girl, who had no problem flirting with other coworkers in front of her own husband. I usually ignored this, as it wasn't my marriage or my business. B decided to message me to express her disdain for my comments. I told her that she knew how he had been treating me, so I was confused as to why she would defend him. Little by little, she had told everyone on the team (behind my back) that I had attacked her over it, and showed them screenshots of selective messages taken completely out of context in which I basically was saying, "You're my friend, why are you okay with this man harassing me?". After this happened, she added this man to the group chat I had made for everyone. B also began inviting him to parties, and she vilified me for refusing to attend if he was present.

Slowly, my friends had started to treat me differently. A did not want to get involved. I eventually apologized to appease B, as I had been gaslit into thinking I had done something wrong. But then the same situation repeated itself. Another man who worked in our facility had attempted to cheat on his wife with a coworker. He had asked me if I could try to reason with this coworker, since the girl was basically trying to extort him for free food in exchange for not telling his wife. I told him that I thought he was disgusting and to leave me out of it. Sure enough, when I got home, I had messages from B demanding that I apologize to this man, because he was a "Good guy". At this point, I was beginning to grow tired, and I said, "You thought the same about P." She blew up saying that I was way out of line for implying that she was a bad judge of character, and I apologized, as I realized that what I said was a bit harsh and may have been taking it too far. A few months later this man was fired for telling our boss (who was an openly gay, married man) that he was a f*ggot, among other slurs, and threatened to kill him if he ever spoke out about it.

As this all went on, B became increasingly close with my friends, who were now distancing themselves from me. Until my fiance decided that he wanted to DM a DND campaign for us. This went really well for a few sessions, as B did not come to the first 4, due to having to take care of her kids. Understandable. Until she began planning parties on the same day we did DND every two weeks, and people began to not show. After talking to her about this, she actually did start coming to the sessions, as we were beginning to get to a point in the story where it would have been impossible to shoehorn her in. At the time I thought it was great that we could all be together as a group for our campaign. Until her Mary-Sue character threw everything completely off the rails. This character was apparently supposed to be a shaman of some sort, but B did not understand that you dont just get god powers at level 1. B had come into the campaign under the assumption that her character would be all-knowing and completely infallible. To sum it up, after a handful of sessions, something B's character had tried to do blew up in her face. There were no real consequences for this though, as her character was completely unharmed and things proceeded as normally. I thought everything was fine. This is where shit hit the fan.

(To give some context here, DND was held at A's house.) Basically, my best friend A, as well as their partner, accused my fiance of intentionally targeting B out of malice. A's partner called my fiance out at their job (different store). They had been friends for a while, and A's partner had even once confided in my fiance that they couldn't stand B, and that my fiance should "put her in her place" by sabotaging, and eventually killing her character in DND. My fiance chose not to do this, but also was not going to give B whatever she wanted either, because if he had, it would have derailed plot points he already had planned out for the story. So he had decided that while the situation would blow up in B's face, it would not cause any lasting harm to their character, and it would just be a teaching moment to show her that she was not omnipotent. A's partner then went to A and told them that my fiance had planned the whole thing as a way to punish B. A and their partner said it was unfair, and that they no longer would associate with him because he had disrespected their home.

I had attempted to do damage control by talking to each involved party and trying to figure out a solution that would appease everyone.. to no avail. Soon after this, my fiance and I fell on hard times and were forced to leave our positions to move out of state with my family, as we could no longer afford to live where we were, and could not find anywhere else to live within the area. Contact with A has dwindled over time, while all of the other members of our group have dropped us entirely. I understand that some amount of this is to be expected when moving away, but its been radio silence. These are people that we did holidays, birthdays, everything with. The one person that had actually defended me from B at one point was now dating her, as she is now separated from her husband. A now regularly posts B on her story with captions like, "Movie night with my bestie!", as if I never existed.

These were the only people I had in my life that I felt accepted me. Working with these people and being around them was the closest thing I had felt to having a home in a long time. And now, I have been replaced with B, and nobody has an issue with this. I am jealous, I'm hurt, and I feel very alone. I dont know how to make peace with losing everyone.

I know this is a ridiculously long post, and I apologize. To anyone who may have read this, thankyou for taking the time to do so. Perhaps I just needed to get this off my chest.

Thats just how it usually goes with friends you make at work unless you both actively try to remain in touch.

Are you still reaching out to A ? Or are you letting the jealousy get in the way of that ? (Pretty much the same thing is going on with me, and thats what I do. UGH. Why am I like this. )

I've tried my best to keep in contact with A, but they seem really cold and uninterested. I feel like I'm just being a nuisance :/

How your friends treated you is so hurtful. I’m sorry this happened to you!

Do you think you would have been able to maintain these friendships if they hadn’t turned on you, considering that you’ve been forced to move out of state? The end result of losing these relationships may have occurred anyway because of your move, although it may have been more gradual and less painful. I hope you and your partner are able to lean on each other for support.

Some of your friends don’t seem like true friends at all based on their behavior. It may be a blessing in disguise that they are no longer in your life. With friends like that, who needs enemies? You may be better off without them. I hope this post is helpful and that you make quality friends who deserve you.

Honestly, I'm unsure. I was extremely close with A. We told each other everything. They were almost always at my house, and they were the closest thing I ever had to a female friend (although they do not identify as female). A was the first person to use my preferred name and pronouns, and A always looked out for me (and vice versa). We went on little friend dates all the time, and they even helped my fiance plan his proposal to me. I truly never had a platonic relationship that felt as stable as ours. I thought we would be friends forever tbh.

I dont know how B managed it, but it really felt like she masterfully manipulated all of the tools at her disposal to slowly turn both A and all of our other friends against me, all while maintaining the charade of being my friend. I feel so stupid for not seeing it coming.

My fiance has assured me of the same things as well, and I understand that if this could happen so easily, they probably weren't my friends to begin with. That said, I dont think that A would have gone through so much with me if they didn't care about me. If anything, I feel afraid of even attempting to make new friends after all this.

That's a really difficult situation. It sounds incredibly painful. I would like to share with you my own experiences with feeling totally abandoned by my social group(s), because I am at the other end of that tunnel now and I'm happy (as much as my mental disorders allow LOL). I want you to now there is an end to the tunnel. But I'll start with a few key differences:

I was a teenager moving into adulthood, not initially an adult with other adults. So it was a little bit of a different dynamic. While I have dealt with a narcissist turning a core group against me (my dad, turning his side of the family against me), this is not that story, and... I have a different perspective on it now as an adult, but it still really flipping hurt at the time. There's some... other differences, too, but...anyway, my circumstances:

When I was a youth, my parents got divorced, and I was dealing with a lot of struggles. The biggest was probably said father, who emotionally and verbally abused the crap out of me. I was extremely depressed almost always, and a majority of the time I actively wanted to unalive myself. (It's kind of incredible I didn't tbh). I had two social groups that kept me alive. One was my group of friends at school. One was my local church congregation. While sometimes I felt like maybe I didn't REALLY fit in either group, because I was kind of dark and "creepy" for my congregation's tastes (read: gothy interests) but I was also pretty Christian for my group of gothy/outcast/that kinda vibe group of school friends. But they both accepted me, they both talked easily to me, they both let me air my grievances, they both let me participate in activities no problem, they both more or less respected me and my interests and beliefs. I dismissed any concerns any time they came up as silly. When I left for college, I still stayed in contact with my self-made family back in my old state. That's what they were to me. They kept me alive. They were my family. I made some new friends. And then I got married, and I wanted to of course celebrate with my friends. I had two receptions, one in the state where my college was and one at my home state. Basically no one showed up to the home state one. I was devastated. And it was impossible for me to explain why back then, I lacked the tools to explain, so it just looked like I was pitching a vapid fit about no one coming to my party like a huge baby. People weren't sympathetic. It's still... a little tricky to explain. How do you explain spending years with people that you thought you mattered to, that you'd go to when you were hurting so badly you wanted to die, who would help you find a rope to grasp? Who would try to patch the holes your dad left behind? Who then... didn't even care about one of your biggest life events, who didn't message you, didn't call, didn't write, and ultimately didn't show up and you realized the vast majority of correspondence and staying in touch was on you, and wow all those times you thought you weren't really their friend, you actually weren't. How could they just abandon me like this? Several members of the congregation later apologized about missing the reception - but only to my mother. It felt like, "Hey lady we care about, the one whose interests are at a speed that doesn't challenge us, sorry we hurt your feelings by missing your daughter's thing, who we recognize as an important accessory to you." It sucked.

My life following that incident were somewhat bumpy and transient due to married student life. The friends who I had still been close to, the college friends, a lot of them graduated and moved away and I lost contact with a lot of them, even ones that had been very close to me, including one of my bridesmaids. We got to a point where I'd just had a baby, we had just moved, and I had a panic attack at my new congregation, surrounded by people I was sure weren't going to be my friend and would lie to me about liking me, only to reject me later. The shake up of my hormones from my recent pregnancy didn't help and I developed crippling social anxiety, which made my few remaining friendships rockier and made the idea of making new friends, which had come so easily to me, seem impossible. It's still a daunting task. (lemmie tell you, as someone who was once an outgoing extrovert, I have really not enjoyed my transformation under social anxiety.)

So things were not looking so great for me. It took me a long time to stop hurting; I buried a lot of my pain because I had been so ridiculed as being immature for what happened (again, it looked like a tantrum over a party). In going to therapy for other issues, I realized that a lot of my social anxiety, which I thought was just something latent that had shaken loose with my first pregnancy, stemmed from the incident (although latent anxiety is likely, too, if I look at my super anxious grandma, and a hormone shakeup is also plausible. It's probably all three.) So I used therapy to talk about what happened, too. (I had to switch therapists, because the one I was with was fine for one particular issue, but didn't get my ADHD and didn't understand how I was upset about losing high school friends when it's "normal" and "natural" for one to drift away from those friends and it did sound like I was just mad about a party. I know it's normal to drift away from those friends. That's not what happened. I realized I'd never mattered to them. That's upsetting.) Finding someone who could listen to how I felt about it and help me parse and organize my feelings, without trying to reason me out of those feelings or justify what happened as not a big deal was extremely helpful to me. (I understand therapy isn't always an option for various reasons, but if you can do it, I recommend it. This is really hurting you. That's what therapy is for. Don't stick with a therapist who tries to make you think this isn't a big deal. It's only not a big deal if you decide it's not a big deal anymore.) I also just had to take risks and do the now really scary task of talking to new people around me. One of the main ways I've made new friends is in finding new D&D groups. That's always a mixed bag, right. You never know if your new friends are gonna actually suck or not. But if you don't currently have much of a group, spend some time either finding a short/one-shot module you like or writing one and go LFG in your local game shop. Focusing on finding friends specific to interests that have room to grow into more general friends, or not, is a good way to learn to trust other people again and remember that even though your experience took up all the space in your life, in a world perspective, it's a small group of people and it was poisoned by just one really crappy individual. Most groups aren't going to be like that. (I also have my writing groups that have become huge friends in my life, but first I had to learn to trust them. Because they were true friends, they gave me the space to learn to do that, and to make mistakes, and not always be a great friend to them as I calmed down from my anxiety that they were just gonna leave me, too.) Idk what other hobbies you have, but I'd suggest starting there to just find other hobbyists to talk to, whether on a Discord or Facebook group, maybe distantly, maybe not close-knit, but enough to remember the good feelings of camaraderie. Because a big part of letting this not hurt you so much is to let time work its magic. And letting old wounds fade doesn't work super well if you spend all the time still hurting from it. Active work on healing (therapy, or mindfulness practice, or some other thing you find helpful, idk, reading advice columnists, whatever) and on soaking yourself in good experiences (small, specialist hobby groups, healthy fb groups, hanging out here on Subeta around nice people, w/e), makes that time pass in a way that can soothe the old pain and you'll feel less scared to try to make friends again.

It's likely enough that the pain of A's betrayal might never totally go away. It'll almost certainly dull, however. What you have to remember now is no matter how unfair and painful it is, A will do what they will do, and you don't have control over that. There isn't any might have been at this point. There's just what is. Maybe A could have been your tribe, but for whatever reasons, A isn't. And can't be now. And won't. So the fact is, A isn't your tribe. You have to find your tribe, and it's not A. That sucks. That's painful. But it will be so much better when you let A go and go find your tribe, who will love you, and this time, perhaps, will not be turned against you so easily.

You are good, and you are deserving of love, and friendship. What happened to you isn't actually about you. It's about B. What happened is a reflection of what kind of person B is, not what kind of person you are. And because it has nothing, not really to do with you, when you find a new group, you don't need to fear this same thing happening, because it didn't happen because of you. It happened because of B who isn't here now. So block her on Facebook and don't let her keep affecting your feelings. You don't need that in your life. You are good.

And know that you can feel this kind of devastating betrayal and loss... and you can recover. And you can be happy. And in ten years (or very likely less!) you can look back and it will seem so far away, because it's got so little bearing on what you've got going on now. You'll be glad you didn't let it rule you because it'll become so small. You've got this. You can do it. Just be slow and graceful and gentle with yourself and your feelings. Feel what you need to feel, it's all acceptable.

And if you need one-shot ideas, hmu I have a couple I'm happy to tell you about. (I'm weak at encounters though so it's mostly just plot LOL)

When I first saw that massive wall of text, I have to admit, I was a bit shook. I didn't expect to get any responses on this post, but let me just say: Thank-you for sharing this with me and for your words of encouragement. It means a lot to me and I can really tell that your words come from the heart. I appreciate that so much.

As of now, A still maintains a snapchat streak with me that has been ongoing for almost two years, but we haven't had an actual conversation in months. I'm thinking I may let the streak die on the 1st of this upcoming year, and cease contact with them. It sucks because I do care about A very much, but I no longer feel that its mutual, and I don't believe its healthy for me to get a daily reminder of their existence when all it does is bring me sadness.

I've always been the sentimental type. I find that, while I have a difficult time making lasting friendships, I have an even harder time letting them go when need be. The validation you have given me in your response has helped me to solidify my decision.

As for B, I've had her blocked since I've made this post, and I haven't heard anything, asides from A sending me pictures of them together, perhaps out of spite? I'm unsure, because I know that if I asked I would be gaslit into thinking I'm just "making everything about me" again. Theres nothing left of the friendship to salvage.

I would love to attempt to make new friends, but I am chronically ill and have found myself mostly bedridden the last few months. I unfortunately lost my job, and things are a struggle right now. I'm hoping I can find a work-from-home job that can accommodate my illnesses better than a regular company job.

As for the one-shots, I would love to talk about DND with you and hear your ideas! I have a campaign right now that has been ongoing for about 5 years, and its about to end. All of the members of this campaign are people I went to elementary school with. Our DM recently moved to England, however, and its looking like after this one ends, we wont be doing another.

If you'd like to talk on discord or something, I'm open to it :) Again, thank-you for your response. Happy Lumi / Holidays <3