'AITA for telling a friend that what she did wasn't 'petty revenge,' it was just crazy?'

"AITA for telling a woman in my friend group that what she did wasn't petty revenge, it was just crazy?"

So this story comes with a lot of context. I {26F} live in a small, midwestern town where even if you aren't close with everyone, you know everyone. My grade growing up was the largest, with ninety eight kids.

It was a Pre-K-12 school, so at some point or another, you were in a class with every other kid your age, especially by middle school when you were attending about eight classes a day. And drama got around fast. Especially relationship drama.

The woman in question, lets call her Diana {Also 26F}, had a lot of relationship drama. The ideal that was pushed on a lot of us girls was to lock down a guy by high school, and then get married as soon as possible once you graduate. Diana was determined to find her high school sweetheart, and as a result said yes to literally every guy that asked her out.

To be clear, I'm not judging her for it. The pressure was high on all of the girls, even teachers talked to us about it. I was lucky enough that pretty much every woman in my family who had done just that was more interested in being brutally honest about how stupid of a choice it had been for them to jump into marriage so young, and with the first guy who would ask.

But Diana didn't have that, she had more people selling how perfect of life she would have if she just got a good guy young. The guys who asked her out, however, weren't great. They were teenage boys, and they acted like it. Her name came up a lot in the gossip mill, and it was usually about how she was dumped for some stupid reason.

At this point, we weren't friends yet, but I knew her and had seen the aftermath of a few breakups she'd been in, starting in middle school. In hindsight, most of them weren't too bad, but for a young teen girl it probably did feel like the end of the world every time she was broken up with. As far as I know, she was never the one who did the breaking up, only ever being broken up with.

Senior year, she and I ended up in the same friend group. At the time, she was with her longest term boyfriend, and she was thrilled because he seemed to be on the same page as she was about getting married fast and starting a family. We were happy for her, and it seemed like a good thing. Until he cheated on her at a party, and broke up with her after she caught him. She was devastated, understandably.

She was once again the main topic of teenage gossip, and her latest ex and the girl he cheated with started dating and were very much trying to rub in how happy they were in Diana's face. Just petty, stupid, teenage drama. Diana swore that she was going to be single for a while, and decided to work on her life outside of guys, which we all encouraged her to do.

She stayed single for about a year, until she met Jake {Now 27M}. He wasn't from our town originally, but he'd moved there with his family for his dad's work. They hit it off, and Jake was really into her. He was honestly a fantastic match for her, being the kind of guy who just liked making his girlfriend happy he was willing to do anything she asked.

He was as touchy as she was, liked spending all of his free time with her, and since he didn't really have friends in our town yet she was his primary hangout choice. They were together for a little under two years {Diana was 21 when they broke up, and Jake was 22}.

The breakup was a mess, and it divided our friend group even then. Diana had become convinced that Jake was cheating on her, and there was no convincing her otherwise. Some of the reasons, and logical explanations, I can remember are:

- Jake always went clothes shopping with Diana, and let her pick out his wardrobe. However, he came home with a new shirt one day. It was for work, and it was just a black polo. But Diana was convinced that it was the start of him changing his wardrobe to appeal to another woman at his workplace.

- Jake had started to form his own friend group. He brought Diana to their hangouts and get-togethers, but she didn't like the group because other girlfriends were also present. Jake asked her to stop openly sh!t-talking the other girls because his friends were getting mad at him, and she took that as him defending the girls because he liked them.

- Jake changed his phone password. It didn't matter that he gave her the new password as soon as he'd done it, the fact that he'd changed it at all felt sketchy to her. I have no idea why he changed it, but I don't think he'd give her the new password if he'd changed it to hide anything.

Anyways, Jake ended up having to fully cut her off after they broke up. He kicked her out of his apartment that she'd partially moved into, had a third party give her back all of her things, and just generally did his best to avoid her.

Diana kept telling everyone who would listen that he was a lying cheat, and our friend group was split in half between the people {Like myself} who didn't think that he'd cheated, and the people who were egging Diana on. Still, we all tried to be there for her at the time. And we thought she'd moved on, as she currently has a new boyfriend and hasn't mentioned Jake in these last few years.

Well, Jake recently got engaged. I guess his mom never blocked Diana, since Diana never reached out to her, and when she posted it on Facebook Diana saw. And it set her off. She badmouthed the girl, lets call her Julie, in the group chat immediately, sending pictures off her Instagram to make fun of her.

Now, not that making fun of her would have been okay anyways, but Julie is an upgrade from Diana in every way. She's absolutely stunning, currently going to school to be a nurse, and from what I could tell from my own snooping, she spends most of her free time volunteering.

I'm sure she's got skeletons somewhere, but she seems great and all the pictures of her and Jake make them seem very happy. And thats probably whats driving Diana so nuts.

Well, I was the first to tell her she needed to let it go. Its been years, and she's way too hung up on this for a grown woman. A few of the other women in the group echoed the sentiment that it wasn't good for her mental health, and that she was happy in her current relationship, so why did it matter what Jake was up to?

Well, she apparently just made a new group chat with the girls who were encouraging her, and they all used Julie's profiles to snoop on her and Jake. And they kept encouraging her to get some revenge on Jake.

Diana realized that Jake still lived in his same apartment, and still had a lot of his clothes that Diana had picked out for him. So, she got the bright idea to dig up old pictures of her and Jake, and send them to Julia claiming that Jake had cheated on her{Julia} with Diana, presenting it like the pictures were new.

She was bragging about it the last time we all met up, and how even if it doesn't lead to a breakup, she's sure that it caused issues for Jake. And how now she can finally move on from "what he did" to her after some petty revenge.

I pointed out that what she did wasn't petty revenge, it was crazy. She went out of her way to make another girl think that she was being cheated on, which is sh!tty. Diana defended herself, saying that if they really did have a strong relationship it wouldn't do anything but cause Jake some stress, and if he hadn't changed then she probably saved Julia.

I still think what she did was just crazy, and she thinks its because I never believed her about Jake cheating to begin with. Which, is true. I never did believe her about Jake, and I still don't. And our friend group is split in half all over again.

Diana hasn't spoken to me, but apparently, she hasn't been doing very well. I've been getting messages from our other friends about how upset she is, and half the friend group is also mad at me for kicking her while she was already down and calling her crazy.

The other half of the group is on my side and agree that we're almost thirty, she shouldn't still be hung up on a guy she dated that long ago and a breakup she caused with her paranoia.

But, one of our friends thats usually really level headed and agreed with the Jake didn't cheat situation is against me currently. She says that Diana was clearly just going through a lot, and that of course she was feeling badly about seeing her ex getting engaged when she herself hasn't been able to even get her boyfriend to have a real conversation about it yet.

I do know how touchy of a subject marriage is for her, and how much her mom has been on her about still not having a ring at our age. But I still think trying to make a girl think she's being cheated on is way too far. So AITA? Should I apologize for calling her crazy at the very least?

Edit: Those of us who think she's acting crazy have made a group chat to talk and share information, apparently Diana has been texting everyone but me. I'll post an update if anything actually happens, but I think for now I am cutting off quite a few old friends.

Honestly, wish I could be more said about it, but the girls I'm cutting out aren't the ones I was close to anyways. And I think I will be much happier with Diana drama in my life.

This is what people had to say to OP:

S45h4R said:

NTA you nailed it, it wasn’t petty, it was crazy! Poor Jake. Are you in contact with him, I’d be sending him screenshots from that group chat.

Mental-Woodpecker30 said:

You're nta. There was never any kind of ACTUAL proof he was cheating, and she up and decides to try and fabricate evidence that he is cheating now WITH her to mess with him and his fiance? YEARS later? That was foolish, senseless, and flat out strange behavior. Oh wait, there's a word for all that. Crazy.

NeverRarelySometimes said:

NTA. Don't try to make it OK with Diana. You've grown apart. (Well, you've grown, and she's coming apart.) You don't need this in your life.

cx4444 said:

Nta. She's crazy and spiralling. Trust me, she's the worst thing that's happened to him and she knows it too. She can't let him go because she's miserable and needs to make sure others are too.

repthe732 said:

NTA. It’s been 5 years and she’s still obsessed with her ex. She also is a bad person and needed to be called out. It blows my mind that any of your friends are saying that it was ok for her to try and ruin her exs life

OP responded:

Some members of our group are still living in high school, and I'm starting to think its about time for our friend group to split in half. Obviously I can't control what anyone else does, but I think its time for me to cut off Diana and the women who are encouraging all of this

Wise_Control1787 said:

Did I get it right? Is she currently in a relationship? Why doesn't someone tell her boyfriend that she's stalking her ex? Because that's what she's doing. Actually, what's worse is she's stalking a woman she doesn't even know.

OP responded:

Yes, she's been in a relationship for about a year and a half now. The guy is alright, not sure what he even knows about Jake let alone her current re-obsession with him.