Hi all. This is a bit more complicated than it may seem, and may be confusing for a lot of people, including me! I’ll do my best to explain, let me know if I need more clarity. Fake names, obviously.

I have four best friends: Lisa, Tara, Sophie, and Jane, and the five of us are very incestuous. Our larger social circle is too, because we go to a small school and are all in a particular clique, ya know? Not many options. For example, 4/5 of us have dated Sam, and 4/5 of us have dated Bill, with only 2/5 of us not having dated both, but all of us at least one. Again, incestuous and messy but we make it work. It’s never been a problem until now.

I’ve dated this one guy twice before, let’s keep calling him guy A. Lost my virginity to him, all that jazz. As of recently, I’ve started talking to him again and we decided to let loose and have a FWB sort of thing before graduation. Sidenote: Sophie and Lisa are doing the same thing with Bill- very senior thing to do, FWB triangle, right? So I figured talking to Sam again was harmless and less messy than the situation with Bill. So I went for it!

Out of nowhere, this is a problem. My closest friend out of the five, Jane, is devastated. She says she’s loved him all of high school and was heartbroken the first two times we dated, but now it’s even worse for some reason. I told her that her feelings matter more than a casual relationship with a guy, and I’ll always value her more than any penis. I guess I was being deceitful here, because while I mean that, I’m continuing to see him. She cried when she heard about us going on a date, but Sam does not have any interest in her and she claims that she could never be in a relationship with him again (doubtful, but still.) 

Sophie and Lisa both “side” with me that I’m not doing anything wrong, Tara has taken to talking shit about me, calling me horrible things (not very out of character for her, but it’s gotten so bad that teachers are noticing and talking to me about it.) I firmly believe that only Jane gets an opinion, and that Tara is out of line for being intentionally rude to me and humiliating me in public.

It’s causing more strife that I won’t get into. Me and Sam like each other, and it isn’t fair that I have to end it because Jane is jealous or sad. But it’s also not fair that I continue to see him while my friend is being hurt. It’s such a messy, gross situation and I hope a neutral party can tell me who’s being the asshole here! I don’t want to stop talking to him as it’s helping me through a breakup that really fucked me over (see my embarrassing throwaway history), but I don’t want to hurt my friend. 