Is OTHER wrong in the post ? POST : I'm gay and around March last year began getting close with a bisexual friend of mine. By 'close' I mean platonically so. I did have feelings for him but he didn't feel the same way. We spent a lot of time together, spoke a lot, and seemed to think very highly of each other. 

I got a big red flag when he tried to make out with me at a party we were both at. This wasn't uncommon behaviour for him, but I took issue with it being directed at me. I forgave him -- he was drunk, after all -- but asked him not to do it again because it was messing with my feelings a little bit. He tried it twice more on two separate occasions before I finally decided I needed some space to deal with my feelings properly. The decision to distance myself was a complicated one; I knew our mutual friends were fed up with him and were on the brink of ditching him, but at the same time I felt suffocated in the relationship and wanted that to end. The problem was that he would be completely alone (he didn't have much of a family at the time) and I didn't want that for him. Nonetheless, I chose to distance myself anyway and made it clear why. I thought that the least helpful thing would be to freeze him out without explanation and that knowing would perhaps make things easier to process. 

This lasted for a week. It turned out we were, once again, both present at the same house party. I avoided talking to him and generally stuck to chatting with random people and seeing how it went. Little did I know he was going to try to hang himself in the home-owners garage, or at least that is what it looked like. After seeing him stumble in there, I figured I ought to check on him because I knew there were loads of dangerous tools in rather precarious places and he might knock something over and hurt himself or something. Well, I caught him as I did and we ended up having a long -- rather touchy, on his side of things -- conversation about what was going on. He blamed me for all of it and told me that it was because I'd made him feel guilty. He explained that he loved me, that things could be different if he wasn't afraid of his sexuality, and how he wanted me to promise I wouldn't leave him. Foolishly, I made that promise, if only because I wanted it to make him feel better.

The next day I spoke to him about it because I couldn't really sleep after seeing him all strung up like that. I wanted to know if there was anything I could do to help. He said no, but that he would consider the account of everything I'd told him and get back to me. In spite of saying very little about anything else, he told me to discount what he said about loving me. At this point, I just rolled my eyes and waited patiently for a reply that I didn't get. Instead, I heard three different versions of that same story from our mutual friends all over the course of the next month, all which painted me in a bad light. I began to wonder if there was something terrible I'd done but deluded myself into thinking I hadn't. This time I was a little more direct and asked him about it straight up. He then admitted that he was self-harming and blamed it on me, again. From that point onwards I have had recurrent dreams about it and have not been able to absolve my guilt for something which, I can reason now, was not my responsibility. Our mutual friends speculated that he was self-harming, based on something they'd noticed, and I confirmed it for them hoping they'd treat him a little better.

A week later all of our mutual friends had ditched him, and to this day I don't really know why. I can make some educated guesses, but I've never heard any proper explanations. Either way, I thought it was unfair for them to ditch him despite knowing what they did. This meant that I was the only person he really had any more, which wasn't great for me but I accepted that and tried to help. I stayed up night after night to keep him company and, combining that with the guilt of what he'd accused me of, I became very depressed. I gradually isolated myself from everybody but him and neglected the advice of all the friends who told me to stop helping him. I wasn't going to, though, because they were unwilling to give him a second chance and he'd still be all alone. 

Suddenly he froze me out and started trying very hard to get back in with these mutual friends again. My poor judgement in isolating myself meant that it was now I who had nobody I was particularly close to anymore and, having become rather unpersonable and irritable in person, nobody was particularly interested in my company. Most of all, I felt betrayed. I'd tried to help him the best I could and after all they'd done to him he was in the process of ditching me in favour of them. I spoke to him about it and he called me selfish for talking about my feelings. I warned him about them -- they'd not only hurt him but countless people in the past, and I think they're pretty callous -- to which he accused me of attempting to manipulate him because, apparently, I wanted control over him. It was at this point I learned that he'd turned to drugs to cope. I told an official trained in pastoral support because I was no longer in a position to help at all and I didn't want to see him running himself into the ground like that. I know it has helped him in the long-run, and it has also meant that his family are looking out for him a lot more now and making sure they're present in his life.

We argued at this point more than we talked normally. I often got angry and was generally scathing to him in these instances, and he'd accuse me of doing all sorts of heinous things that I wouldn't even dream of doing. Depression worsened and my feelings for him hadn't gone, neither had the guilt or the dreams, and any attempt to talk to him about any of this he took severe issue with. On one occasion I lashed out verbally and, I'm told, really hurt him. I remember that I was not pleasant whatsoever and I take responsibility for that. After this, he nearly hit me at another house party and I decided I'd had enough. He ended up in with our mutual 'friends' -- who, at this point, had ditched me -- and I wondered if I'd been so unreasonably terrible that this was what I deserved. I decided to go see a counsellor from this point onwards.

I hadn't spoken to him in four months and have only recently been in contact with him again. The dreams haven't gone and neither has the guilt, and I've asked him if I can talk to him about it. I understand it might be hard for him to talk about all of that stuff, but I feel that if I can reconcile what happened and understand my place in it all I might be able to sleep properly again. Having asked him, he refused on the basis that I'd try to manipulate him again (not that I see where I did this in the first place) and try to turn him against his friends. I pushed for it and he's finally agreed. I'm asking here if I'm the arsehole in this situation because my current friends all become very shifty when I ask them for advice. I don't want to push him, but I'm at a point in my life where I can't afford to be losing sleep over something I think can be ended like this. 

Thanks in advance.