'AITA for not attending my ex-BFF's husband's funeral after she mysteriously ghosted me?' UPDATED

"AITA for not attending my ex-friend’s husband’s funeral?"

8 years ago, my best friend since childhood (30F at the time, I’ll call her M) completely ghosted me. She fully cut me off without a word of explanation. I honestly still have no idea why she did it - there wasn’t a fight or any incident that I could pinpoint. I texted her 2 or 3 times to ask her to please explain what I’d done and to at least talk to me one last time, but she never did.

It was traumatic and painful, and I was hurt and sad and angry. It took several years but I eventually was able to make peace with the situation. I’m no longer resentful with or angry at M, but I have no desire to interact with her ever again.

Another one of my childhood friends, V, is still close with both M and me but told me at the time that she didn’t know why M cut me off. I never knew if that was 100% true but I didn’t want to put V in the middle of anything so I let it go.

I found out a few days ago from V that M’s husband died suddenly. She started dating him after she cut me off so I never met him. From what I heard from V, he was a really good guy and M is obviously devastated. I genuinely feel really sorry for her.

I thought about sending some flowers or something as a small olive branch (not in an attempt to rekindle the friendship, just to offer my condolences) but then decided against it because I figured that hearing from me, a person she obviously doesn’t want in her life, may make her feel worse while she’s already grieving.

V and I live in the same city while M still lives near our hometown, about 2 hours away. V texted me yesterday to “make plans for the funeral.” I was really surprised and told her that I had no intention of going, and V blew up at me. She said that I was being selfish and petty about something that happened almost a decade ago, and letting my hurt feelings get in the way of being there for my friend.

I told her that M chose not to be my friend 8 years ago and hadn’t been there for me during anything since, so I didn’t feel that it was my place to show up for her. I also told V what I’d thought about sending flowers - that M probably won’t even want to hear from me or see me, considering that she hadn’t reached out once since 2014.

V told me that it was presumptuous to assume that so I told V that she was being presumptuous to assume that M did want me there. Then V called me a coward. I’m not nearly as close to V as I’d been with M back in the day, so if V decides to cut contact with me over this it won’t be the end of the world. But I’m curious, am I being the a$$hole by not reaching out to M or attending her husband’s funeral?

What do you think? AITA? This is what top commenters had to say:

1962Michael said:

NTA. Since you have zero clue why M ghosted you, you also have zero clue whether your presence would be a comfort or a curse. And no matter how close you were back then, you are not in her top 5 closest friends right now.

So, certainly you don't show up unannounced. If V wants you to go with, she should finally give up some information that she's been keeping from you, and explain why she thinks M would want you there.

Forsaken-Teaching756 said:

NTA. M chose to leave your life, you didn't know the husband. I think V knows more than she said she did, but also think that maybe she's been told a skewed view of whatever it was. You don't let go of being dropped and left for 8 years

SDstartingOut said:

NTA. I feel like V just wanted company for the 2 hour car ride. Frankly, I feel like you would be TA if you WENT to the funeral. Your ex-friend, for whatever reason, 100% cut you off. You tried to find out why... they ignored you. Going to a funeral after that is borderline stalkerish.

After confronting her ex-friend, she shared this UPDATE:

I ended up confronting V the day after my original post and insisted that she tell me why she was so insistent upon me going to M’s husband’s funeral. I was not expecting the response.

She spilled everything to me. I’d thought that M hadn’t met her husband until after she cut me out, but it turns out that she’d met him online and had been seeing him for several months but never told me about him. The reason was because he and I have major differences in our ideologies and values.

She knew that I wouldn’t approve so she kept him a secret from me, and when they started getting serious, she ghosted me because she knew I wouldn’t understand. V told me that she’d been really angry at M and tried to convince her to at least talk to me and give me some closure, but M refused. V wanted to tell me herself but M begged her not to.

Apparently, over the past year or so, M had started to get really frustrated with her husband as he got deeper into some of his ideologies, and considered leaving him. She once made a comment to V saying “OP would’ve warned me.” So even though their marriage was on the rocks, his death was still unexpected and pretty devastating to her.

V thought that, because M had recently mentioned me, that I should attend the wedding, but she apologized for getting angry that I refused to go. She also admitted that she was dreading making the drive and attending alone, which I (and several commenters) had guessed was the case. So V and I will be okay.

I thought about whether or not I wanted to reach out to M and I realized that right now, I still don’t want to. If she decides to reach out to me at some point, I may decide to talk to her, but I’m not interested in reaching out to her. Thanks for all the support in the original post.