Woman's friend (Becca) claims that OP's BF (Nate) slept with her; 'Nate denies it. I NEED THE TRUTH!' UPDATED 3X OVER 1 YEAR

When this woman is caught in the middle of her friend's relationship scandal, she asks the internet:

"My (31F) best friend (32F) is telling me that my boyfriend (34M) cheated with her, but he says that she’s lying. How do I get to the truth and then salvage whichever one of these relationships is worth saving?"

I’ve been best friends with “Becca” since 2010, we were college roommates and then after we graduated we still lived together up until I moved in with my boyfriend “Nate” in 2019.

One thing about Becca is that she’s always had a drinking problem for as long as I’ve known her and she’s done stuff while drunk that has sometimes caused problems in our friendship.

She does try to stay sober but every few years something will happen to make her start drinking again, which is what happened earlier this summer.

So last Saturday Becca called me because she was drunk somewhere and needed a ride home. I couldn’t go pick her up because I had the flu and I was on cold medicine, so Nate went to get her instead.

A couple of days after that I started noticing that Nate was being weird with his phone.

Normally he leaves it out on the coffee table if we’re watching tv or whatever, but he started putting it face-down so I couldn’t see what notifications he was getting. My first thought was that he was trying to plan a surprise and because of the timing I thought that maybe Becca was helping him.

Yesterday I saw Becca I told her that Nate was being sneaky all of a sudden and asked her if he said anything about maybe proposing soon. She asked me if I looked through his phone and I said no.

Becca started crying and told me that she and Nate hooked up in his car the night that he came to pick her up, her excuse was that she was really drunk and didn’t fully know what she was doing. She said she’d been texting him since telling him that he needed to tell me what happened or else she was going to.

I asked Becca to show me the texts but they were all in the app Signal which deletes messages after a day, so all I could see was that she and Nate had a chat thread but nothing that they said.

I told her to text Nate in front of me so I could see what he said and she did but we got no read receipt and so no response at all so it didn’t prove anything.

I asked Becca if she was sure she wasn’t so drunk that she maybe imagined it or thought a dream was real, and she absolutely lost her shit on me and said that she knows that she’s horrible when she drinks but that she’s not fg delusional and she doesn’t make shit up.

She said that I could believe her or not and it’s my choice but she was telling me the truth. I said I needed to go home and talk to Nate.

So when I got home I confronted Nate with what Becca had said, and he acted shocked and denied that anything like that had happened at all and said he didn’t know why she’d think so or say so.

He said that he had just given Becca a ride home and the only thing that happened was that they talked about how he and I had been together for a long time and how we should get married already.

He admitted they were talking on Signal the next couple of days but he said that it was about exactly what I thought, that he was asking her about engagement rings and what kind of proposal I would want.

Nate replied to Becca’s message from before asking her if she made up a story about them hooking up to not ruin the surprise about his proposal, and she texted him back that there was no proposal and to stop playing dumb.

So then Nate called her pretending like I wasn’t in the room and told her that she needed to stop whatever she was trying to do because we were on the verge of breaking up and he’d rather just have the surprise be ruined, but Becca just kept telling Nate to stop lying until he got angry and hung up on her.

I really didn’t know what to think and I still don’t. Right now Nate is really upset and not really talking to me much, he says that it’s bad enough that...

Becca acted insane and ruined his plan to propose but it’s even worse that I believed her lies even a little and would think that he would ever cheat on me.

Becca texted me saying she was sorry but otherwise I haven’t talked to her either.

I don’t want to think that Nate would cheat on me or that he’d take advantage of Becca if she was that drunk, but I feel like I can’t be 100% sure because I’ve known Becca for 13 years and I also just can’t believe that she’d lie to me about something this important.

And I know that she does have a drinking problem so I can believe that she’d sleep with my boyfriend if she was drunk out of her head, she’s done some pretty awful things in the past when she’s been drunk. I don’t want to wrongly accuse Nate of something he didn’t do but I don’t want to be an idiot.

Before we give you OP's updates, let's read some top responses:

criems writes:

I'm inclined to believe Nate over Becca after reading through your replies, OP. Let's take a tally:

Nate: - Has stated he doesn't like Becca but he still offered to give her a ride home when she was drunk, which means he places your relationship with her and her importance to you over his personal feelings about her.

- Allegedly has asked your best friend about what kind of engagement ring you would want (I'm not sure why everybody thinks this is weird; wouldn't Becca know your style best?) and has again put aside his personal feelings about her to ask for her help to make sure you're happy.

- Has point-blank told Becca that you are not responsible for her staying sober, aka came to your defense, when she tried to blame you.

While Becca: - Has placed some (or even all) of the responsibility of her staying sober on your shoulders and proceeded to use you as a scapegoat should she fall off the wagon when you were trying to start a life with Nate.

- Brought no receipts whatsoever with her accusation and just tells you to "check his phone". I'm sure she knows those messages wouldn't be there if you all have that feature turned on, which leads me to believe those messages never existed.

- Most likely knew you were listening in when Nate called her; you've stated you've both used that trick together in the past, so she's fully aware of how the two of you operate.

I hope this stranger's perspective helps to clear things up for you, and I hope you're able to get to the bottom of this.

ouadg78 writes:

I don't know the people involved here, maybe Becca is a truly pathological person. But it sounds like Becca is more likely to be telling the truth than Nate is.

The way Nate is acting doesn't sound like the way I'd expect a person to act when a friend has been telling enormous deliberate lies about them. Calling her on the phone and saying that she needed to stop whatever she was trying to do because you were on the verge of breaking up and he'd rather just have the surprise be ruined?

That to me sounds like a person signaling "the lie I'm telling is that this is a proposal surprise, get on board" and hoping she'd back him up. If my wife came home to me and told me her friend accused me of rape, I'd call the friend and say "What the f?!

Why would you say that?! What is your game here? What did I ever do to you? I don't understand. This morning we were just talking about rings for her!" I'd be demanding details of what happened, knowing that I would probably be willing to provide counterevidence to something she said.

I'd be pulling out my phone, showing my wife any evidence I could come up with that I'd been planning a proposal. Internet search histories with rings and proposal locations. I'd be coming up with as many ideas as possible of how I could prove my innocence.

I'd be asking for details about what she said had happened and coming up with ways to provide proof that it didn't. I wouldn't be avoiding her, and getting mad that she believed Becca's lies. I'd be understanding at how bad this looks, desperately trying to find a way to prove that my story was correct.

Like, think about what Becca's motive and timeline would have to be here. Why would she lie about this? It would have to be that she hates you or hates Nate and wants to torpedo your relationship with him, right? Would this be the most rational way for her to do that? She didn't call Nate and ask him to pick her up.

She called you while she was drunk. You were sick. You sent Nate. So if he is telling the truth, and they talked about wedding planning, then what happened was that they had a completely normal drunk interaction with no animosity whatsoever, then, while completely sober, the next day, she suddenly decided she'd concoct this lie that they slept together...

happily chat with Nate all morning about wedding planning, and then didn't say anything to you when you saw her and instead waited for you to ask about wedding planning, at which point she popped her trap and told the lie about the two of them having se%.

Why would she do that? If she wanted to lie, would she really be that patient? Why not call you first thing the next morning? Or why not invent a lie that wouldn't implicate her so badly, say that when he came to pick her up he made a pass at her and she said no?

To me, she's acting exactly way more like how I'd expect a person to act who hooked up with their best friend's boyfriend while drunk and feeling really bad about it, than I'd say she's acting like a pathological person lying to get Nate in trouble. She didn't bring it up until you did. She hasn't swayed from her story. Her story is one that makes her look bad.

Update 1:

It's not the automatic default, but if Nate created the chat with Becca and set it for messages to disappear after 24 hours then all of her messages with him will do that without input from her.

I think what I initially wanted was just a sounding board for who sounded more believable. But someone gave me the tip that you actually can recover messages from Signal so when I have a chance later tonight I'm going to try to do that to see if I can get some actual proof of what happened.

But so far I haven't talked to anyone else about this though, I really just don't want to spread around what did/didn't happen to the rest of my friends or family without actually knowing for sure.

So in the past when she's been drunk, Becca's blacked out and started fights with me or other people.

She'll say really out-of-line insulting things, she's kicked people out of our apartment because she didn't remember inviting them in, she's accused me of stealing clothes from her because I was wearing an outfit that looked like something that she also owned, that kind of thing.

She's never hooked up with anyone that I was dating but she's definitely hooked up with guys that she knew I was interested in.

Becca did have a big problem with Nate when we first got together, and she was really really upset when I moved out of our apartment to move in with him. I could see her still being angry about it or still not liking him but just not saying anything.

From what Nate said they weren't making the plans on Saturday, but Becca brought up that it's been 7 years and asked why we're not married yet, and then the day after he asked her about rings.

So at the time she was in one of her longest stretches of being sober and she said that I was abandoning her for some guy when she needed my support the most.

And then when I moved out, she tried to make it out like she wouldn't be able to stay sober without me living with her, and Nate basically had to step in and point out that she couldn't stay sober anyway so to stop guilting me.

It's possible she "blames" you for her current drinking and Nate saying he wants to propose triggered her anger for some reason:

Everything you say here makes sense to me. Becca has said stuff like this in the past, not specifically about Nate but sometimes when she starts drinking again she acts like it's unfair that I'm not getting dragged down with her or doing more to help her...

and I think on some level she might still think it's his fault that I moved out and don't keep as close an eye on her as I did back when we lived together. I don't know if she'd really go as far as to lie about something like this just for that reason, I really hope she wouldn't, but I could completely believe that she feels like this.

Update 2 (2 days later):

So on Thursday night after I got everyone’s advice, I told Nate that I had found out a way to recover deleted messages from Signal.

He immediately took out his phone and opened the app and asked me to show him how to do it, so I already thought that must mean he was telling me the truth because he didn’t panic or hesitate at all.

Which was good because when I tried to download Signal on my old phone it turned out that it’s too old to support the current version of the app, so it wouldn’t work.

Nate then asked me if we were going to have to go out and buy a new phone for me to believe that he was telling me the truth, and he said that he was willing to do it if that’s what it would take.

I told Nate it wasn’t that I didn’t believe him, I just wanted to have some proof because I just couldn’t understand why Becca would lie about it.

Nate said that she would lie about it because she’s a fg crazy drunk b&h and there’s literally no way for a non-crazy person to understand why she would do anything, and once the messages prove that he didn’t ever want me talking to her again. Then he said to get up because if we were going to go to the Verizon store we had to get there before it closed.

By then I completely believed Nate anyway, so I told him we didn’t have to go anywhere or get a new phone and that I believed him and I knew he didn’t cheat on me and that he would never do that.

Nate said that he would hope I know that and that he didn’t understand why I didn’t take his word for it in the first place. I started trying to explain why I didn’t want to just immediately dismiss what Becca had said happened, but Nate said that he really couldn’t listen to that right now. I said that was fair and agreed that I would cut Becca off, but that first I wanted to try to get her to admit that nothing happened. Nate said fine, but to call her with my phone on speaker because he thought he also deserved to hear her admit that she was lying.

So I called Becca and I said the same thing to her that I said to Nate, that I figured out how to recover deleted messages on Signal. She asked me why I would need to do that, so that was when I knew for sure that she was definitely making it up and not just confused somehow.

I said it was because I wanted to have proof of what she and Nate talked about. Becca asked me if I saw their messages, so I lied and said yes. After that Becca just went silent until finally I asked her if she was going to say anything. Then she asked me if that meant that we were engaged now.

So then I really just lost it on her and screamed at her asking her if she was fg serious and what the f was wrong with her and how could that possibly be all that she had to say.

Becca started screaming back telling me to fg calm down and about how obviously I never believed her anyway because it’s not like we broke up over it.

I was crying by that point and because of that I couldn’t really say anything else, so then Nate told Becca to go f herself and to never ever contact either one of us ever again and hung up on her.

A minute later Becca sent me a completely unhinged text that I’m quoting here verbatim (apart from changed names):

“Courtney. You are supposed to be my friend for life. You are supposed to be there for me. You are supposed to be my person. But then you meet Nate and now you only care about Nate. EVERYTHING IS ABOUT NATE.

Tell me why NATE comes to pick me up when I call YOU?? I called YOU not your precious fg NATE. I only want you to see how FD UP this is but do you?? NO. Of course you DON’T. Of course you choose NATE over me like you ALWAYS do and like you ALWAYS will.

You PRETEND to care about me but I can see you DON’T care. It is PATHETIC Courtney. You are a PATHETIC woman who would choose a man over a friend. But since you can’t say it yourself I will. Since you have to have your sweet perfect little baby NATE do it for you I will. Goodbye Courtney. Is that what you want?? Goodbye FOREVER. I HOPE YOU FG GOT WHAT YOU FG WANT!”

There were the three dots after that showing she was still typing more, but I blocked her before she sent it. I don’t care about anything else that she has to say, I’m sure it’s all just going to be more bullshit about why this is my fault or justifications about why what she did wasn’t that bad and I should forgive her.

I know Nate is probably right and there’s no non-crazy logic behind why Becca would stoop to doing something like this, but obviously I’ve still been thinking about it and my best guess is that whoever said that Becca still blames me and Nate, apparently mostly Nate, for her being a drunk mess who can’t get her life together is right.

It seems like she somehow thought that if she said she hooked up with Nate, I’d break up with him but still want to be friends with her and then everything would magically be fixed.

As far as stuff with Nate, I asked him if he thought he could ever forgive me for doubting him and he said that since I came to my senses and I cut Becca off he guesses we can try to put it behind us. I don’t think he’s still going to propose anytime soon, after this I probably wouldn’t if I was him.

And from what Nate said he didn’t actually do any planning yet other than asking Becca about rings and if I’d think a public proposal was tacky or not, all he was doing so far was trying to get ideas without me knowing he was talking to her about it. So just based on that I think probably it’s not going to happen for a while if it still does at all.

Also thanks to everyone for the advice and support, I know I didn’t respond to many comments but I really did appreciate everyone who cared enough to want to help.

Relevant Comments:

Commenter: I'm curious if Becca ever said anything to you when she hooked up with guys you liked? Do you think she was blocking you in purpose to keep you for herself? Did she try anything with Nate before you were exclusive? Or was she just drunk and looking for hook ups?

OOP: I don't think she ever put enough thought into those hookups to be malicious like that, she was just inconsiderate and would go after whoever.

Commenter: Did you ever confront her or just let it go? More than one time seems like a pattern.

OOP: We definitely got into arguments about it at the time, but it was mostly just kind of college bullshit and not really an actual confrontation about why she kept doing it, I guess.

One last thought from OOP:

I'm sure she won't just go away, I'm already expecting her to try to get our other friends to get in the middle of everything as soon as she figures out she's actually blocked and I'm not just ignoring her. I hope she won't try to do anything else but I guess at this point I really can't know with her.

Update 3 (A YEAR LATER):

I haven't logged into this account for about a year, but I got a few messages asking for an update so here it is. I’ll keep it as short as I can. Unfortunately I have nothing good to report.

It turned out that whatever was going on with Becca that caused her to make false accusations about Nate was the beginning of some kind of a psychotic break.

After I blocked her she made a whole bunch of fake accounts and started sending me completely unhinged shit about how I ruined her life and threatening to get revenge on me and Nate, this went on for literally months with her sending me dozens of messages a day.

I found out from other friends that she was making multiple posts on Facebook every day that were semi-coherent rants about how much she hated me and how I was evil and ruined her life intentionally.

I tried to talk to the police two different times to get a restraining order because I was afraid that Becca was going to show up at our apartment and attack me or Nate, I literally even got a front door camera because I was so scared that she was going to hurt us.

The police said that because Becca wasn’t threatening actual violence she was just a nuisance and they couldn’t do anything, they acted like I was an idiot because it isn’t illegal to talk shit on Facebook and they basically told me to just keep blocking her whenever she made a new account and eventually she’d get bored and move on.

Then finally there was an incident where someone broke the windshield of Nate’s car while he was parked at his work. I guess it could’ve just been a random act of vandalism because his wasn’t the only car that got windows broken, but at the time I was 100% sure it was Becca so I went to the police again.

Eventually an officer went to talk to Becca, and she said she didn’t touch Nate’s car and again I have no proof that she did. But after the police talked to her, Becca got put into a psych ward for a week because apparently her apartment was filthy and she was drunk out of her mind 24/7 and a danger to herself.

I have not heard anything from Becca after she left the psych ward, I don’t know if she was diagnosed with something or if she’s medicated now or what. I found out that she moved in with her dad who thank god lives in a different state. I look at her social media every so often to make sure she’s not posting about me again and that she’s nowhere around me.

I haven’t mentioned Nate much in this update because we’re no longer together. He broke up with me after the windshield incident because he couldn’t handle being constantly harassed by Becca and to be honest I don’t think he ever forgave me for not taking his side immediately when everything started.

It really hurt but I can’t blame him. I tried to talk to him about fixing things between us after Becca was gone but he just wasn’t interested. tl;dr: Becca went crazy for real, Nate dumped me.