'AITA for leaving my friend and going home after I asked her not to sleep with my BF’s roommate?' UPDATED

"AITA for leaving my friend and going home after I asked her not to sleep with my BF’s roommate?"

My (20sF) friend Vanessa (21F) came to visit my college for her 21st birthday this fall. I wanted to surprise her for her birthday, but I am the only one out of our friend group who is over the age of 21. I got a bunch of my school friends together at my boyfriend's house, and we all went out and celebrated her and bought her drinks for her birthday. There were probably around 20 people.

I was so excited to celebrate her, but before we left my apartment, I asked her not to sleep with my boyfriend's roommate, Alex. My other friend, Haley, liked Alex, and I knew it would make things awkward between her and I, if Vanessa pursued him. I told Vanessa this.

For context, Vanessa has slept with one of my past situationships shortly after I had seen him, and with my sister's ex-boyfriend. I wasn't confident that she wouldn't pursue him unless I asked her, because she is single and Alex is conventionally attractive. Alex is also the only single guy in the house.

After, we went back to my boyfriend's house for an after-party. My boyfriend, his roommates, Vanessa, Haley, and I were all there. I could tell that Vanessa was flirting with Alex, and I was watching Haley while this was happening. I briefly pulled Vanessa aside and asked her again not to sleep with him. She replied, "But he's soooo cute, and I'm not going to date him, so why does it matter?"

I knew she had a lot to drink, and it was getting close to 4 am. To top things off, I was not feeling well and wasn't even planning to stay at my boyfriend's. I gave my friend a 30-minute warning, and Haley had already left at this point so it was just us and my boyfriend's household left.

I then told my friend that it was time to go, and I needed to go home. She said "okay I need to go get my phone, it's charging." It was charging in Alex's room. They both went upstairs and never came back down.

One of their other roommates was blocking the stairway so I started calling her name. I waited around another 30 minutes or so to see if she would come down. I then called her phone multiple times trying to reach her before I gave up and texted her that I was leaving and walked the 10 minutes back to my apartment by myself.

She texted me back later that she was ready to come back, but I felt really sick and didn't want to get out of bed to let her into the building. I may be the AH here but I told her to just stay there and I would get her in the morning. I walked back over to my boyfriend's at 9 am the next day and let her know that I was there. She didn't come down from his room until 2 pm.

I was really upset and frustrated, but decided to ignore it since it was her birthday and we were celebrating her again that night.I even covered for her when her dad texted asking where she was, and I told him we were at my place and she was sleeping. A few days later, I ended up in the hospital for a week due to my illness. I had to spend Thanksgiving in a hospital bed.

I went back to school after and thought nothing more of the situation, but now it's February and Vanessa hasn't texted me back since and now I am starting to worry. In our groupchats, everyone answers me except for her. Is what I did really enough for her to ignore me in this way?

In the end, I don’t care that she slept with him. I wouldn't have left Vanessa there if it wasn't my boyfriend's house, and I wasn't so close with all of his friends. But I was in so much pain and trusted them.

AITA?

Here's what people had to say to OP:

ConfidentRemove5719 wrote:

NTA, Vanessa is an AH. There is no respect. OP knew Vanessa would be safe. she said she wanted to leave, Vanessa is the one who chose to not go when OP did. Drunk or not, she's a big girl and she big girl messed up, now that she has had to face consequences she's throwing a fit. In this case, Vanessa is a guest, that behavior alone is rude as hell regardless of what she was doing or the context.

On objectifying the man, I really don't think saying "Hey my friend has feelings for this guy can you not" counts as calling dibs or whatever. ALSO, saw someone saying you used your illness as an excuse but uh girl no. You ended up in the hospital. You were sick with all the implications of capital letters. She disrespected your time and the fact that she probably knew you weren't feeling well. I'd let her go tbh.

Fireatmidnight wrote:

Speaking as someone who has had a friend who sleeps with everything, if a dude doesn't say no, then he's not for the girl who likes him. There are no "dibs" on human beings. He's a person and gets to decide what he wants to do with what is presented to him.

Haley either hasn't told him or will never tell him. However, Vanessa said 'wanna have fun?' and he agreed. Sorry...that's the way things are. It sucks, it's toxic, it's how it is.

However, your response? Yep, perfectly fine with that. Girl wants to have a one night stand? She can certainly put up with staying over. Don't ever expect this girl to ever change. Don't expect her to respect this boundary. It's not going to happen. You know how she is, if you and your other friends can't deal with it, don't be friends with her. It's time.

Bedroomeducational94 wrote:

You should leave Vanessa in your brake lights. You asked her one VERY simple thing and she went out of her way to not only do it, but wait until you wanted to leave and hold you up. She seems inconsiderate and self-centered. NTA.

Radiance115 wrote:

NTA. Drop this AH expeditiously lmao. Who cares about her sleeping with Alex? It’s the complete lack of care for your feelings and time that makes her a bad friend. What type of crap is Vanessa on? She slept with your situationship and then your sister’s ex? She’s going to try to screw your boyfriend next since she clearly has a goal of one-upping every other woman around her.

Two days later, OP shared an update:

Just wanna clear things up before I get into my update. One, I’ve known Vanessa my entire life, we grew up down the street from each other. She’s in my direct friend group. So for everyone calling me an idiot for not keeping my boundaries, it’s hard to cut out a friend who you’ve known for so long.

Now on to the update. On Friday, Vanessa visited my sister out of state. Vanessa’s always dodgy with texts so I thought maybe she was just busy with school but when I saw that she visited my sister hours away when I’m in the same state as her I knew it was more than that.

I texted my sister when I knew that Vanessa left and asked her if she knew why Vanessa was ignoring me. She said she did and asked if I was free to call. The first thing my sister said to me on the phone was “I would never ever leave my friend at a house full of guys by herself without telling her.”

I was confused and asked what she was talking about. My sister and I had a long conversation and she told me that Vanessa said that I left her at the house without saying anything. She seemed disgusted by this. She also told me that Vanessa had wanted to talk to me about the situation but then I ended up in the hospital, so she never did.

I was furious and sent my sister screenshots of our texts and our call log with time stamps. I told her exactly what happened and explained the texts. I asked her who else she told this to and turns out our entire friend group thinks that I just left without saying anything. I was in tears just thinking about how my sister and closest friends have thought these things about my character for months at this point.

My sister believes me after seeing the texts and apologized for not asking me about the situation. I still haven’t talked to Vanessa but I don’t think I really need to after hearing what she told everyone. I will definitely be keeping my distance from now on and only seeing her when our group gets together. I also plan on telling the group of friends with the screenshots.

I don’t know why she did this, but some comments definitely shed some light. Other than that, I know who the people in my life are that actually care about me. Thank you for everyone’s comments, they helped motivate me to talk to my sister and realize the truth about Vanessa.

To those calling us immature, we’re 21 and our brains aren’t fully developed, there’s a big difference between this happening at 21 vs 26. To those saying ESH, I appreciate your thoughts and agree with many. And to those who defended me or had my back, thank you for not making me feel crazy!

Here's what people had to say to OP's update:

xedm112 wrote:

Do you plan to clear the air with your other friends?! Because I sure as hell would. Not only was she an AH during the party itself, she lied about the situation to your own damn sister (and I assume many others.)

The balls on her to assume you two would never talk about that or that you wouldn’t defend yourself?! My first thought was to send the screenshots and a written out recap of the night to the group chat.

OP responded:

Absolutely will be doing this.

Frankandbeans4ever wrote:

I actually wasn’t expecting to see an update on this, but I’m glad for the one we got. That girl is terrible, my original point stands that you are NTA and that that woman has a lot of growing up to do and you should absolutely cut her out of your life.

What I actually think you should do, because I think it’s incredibly messed up that some of your friends have been told this information and haven’t even bothered to ask you about it, is send screenshots of everything that you sent your sister into whatever group chat you have with a couple sentences explaining why you’re sending what you’re sending and what I actually went down.

Anyone that still wants to be friends with Vanessa after that is not your friend and anyone that thinks that you’re the bad guy in that situation is also not your friend. Best of luck OP, enjoy your early 20s without the drama of fake friends and terrible people that don’t have any concept of boundaries.

Edit: I also think it’s worth examining why your sister and your friends wouldn’t even take pause to think that you wouldn’t do that to someone else and that maybe you should either evaluate some things about yourself because of that or if you know that that’s not the kind of person that you are, evaluate that maybe you shouldn’t be hanging around people that think that little of you

Old_Cheek1076 wrote:

Call me crazy, but your sister strikes me as the true AH in this story. How little she must respect you to believe Vanessa’s story until proven otherwise. Anyway, NTA.

BoredBKK wrote:

It was abundantly clear what sort of person this Vanessa was in your first post. Her lying to make you the bad person and herself the poor misunderstood victim in any action that reflects badly on her is just to be expected.

There are a lot of Vanessas in the world. The only saving grace is once you know them for who they are you don't have to associate with them. In fact, it's far better for you not to be associated with them.