AITAH If I ended up liking my bestfriend’s crush who is also my now-ex boyfriend’s friend?
I’ll call myself Claire, I’m 19 (F) and I broke up with my boyfriend around late November last year. At first he was chasing me around, begging me for another chance but I simply couldn’t. ai’ve brought up going our separate ways since May because I couldn’t bare with the disrespect with the time, for my friends (he talked to them disrespectfully or say shit about women he shouldn’t even say as a man), and my final straw, had s3x with me despite my refusal multiple times that day because I was exhausted.
The chasing around and bugging my friends about my condition went on for a few weeks until I told him that if he truly respects me and my decision, he’ll leave me and my friends alone. And he did, for a while.
Mid-December, during our Christmas break, in a drunken-state, I confessed to Mark (my ex’s friend) that I was interested in him (take note that this was only a few weeks after me and my ex’s break-up) and that if he was willing to, we could try dating once we graduated (we were in our last year of highschool at the time). Initially, he said no because he couldn’t bare with the judgement of what other people would say if I dated him and how it would affect our friend group. And I sensed some hesitance in his answer so I bugged him a few days later.
Throughout December, he kept going back and forth with having no as a firm answer and considering with the dating plan if we graduated in college. So, he told me he’d give me an answer after talking with another friend.
Around the first week of January, Mark and I, alongside with another friend, drank together. As the night went by, they eventually stopped talking to me and started communicating through their notes app which I figured was about my confession and the college dating possibility. So I stayed silent until they eventually had to go home.
The next day, I asked that friend, who we will call Lauren, what they talked about. According to her, Mark was firm with saying no to the entire confession and dating thing which left me dumbfounded because the entire point of December and their conversation was because he couldn’t decide what to do.
So after that conversation with Lauren, I felt like I had to tell my bestfriend Kayla about what happened between me and Mark during our Christmas break. I felt like I could tell her because she’s been telling me since October that she didn’t like Mark anymore and she was tired of chasing after him. She has confessed before and was rejected.
I sat with Kayla on a table and told her everything that happened except for the part that Mark actually considered trying with me. Her initial reaction was amusement, she laughed at me. Then she confessed that she’s been lying the entire time and still liked Mark but all was well. After that talk, we went our separate ways to go home. On the same night, I texted her about the part I left out, the fact that Mark was willing to try and ever since then, she’s been upset and told me that we should stop talking for awhile.
At some point, my ex-boyfriend sensed something was wrong and asked our groupchat what was happening and asked for the truth. I told him because I planned to anyway, but I was hoping that it would be on my terms when I got answers from everyone. He was hurt, but he accepted it. He just wanted Mark to give me a firm answer. On the other hand, Kayla was angry. Angry that Mark and I ever considered dating and because it’d only been a few weeks since I broke up with my ex. She mentioned that it should be girl code or bro code to not date your friends’ crushes. And in my defense, I didn’t even she still liked the Mark and if we’re going WAY back, some other people in our friend group also liked Mark and therefore she’d be breaking the girl code she’s enforcing on me. I know to myself that my feelings for my ex and Mark never existed at the same time and that I gradually moved on from my ex during the relationship because of how tired I was with his excuses. So, am I the asshole
