I'm a 22 year old male in college, and in my spring semester of 2023, I befriended this girl who I met in school club. We got really close, at least close enough where we were sharing more personal stuff about each other. I became good friends with her two best friends who were also in the club, as well as other people she was friends with but weren't related to the club. As well as being really close I had an on and off crush on her which I kept to myself because she said she just wanted to be friends the first time I met her which I was happy with. Like the title says, sometimes when we would hang out (usually I would be with her and another woman or femme-presenting person) she would say something about hating men or about how only few men were worthwhile in this world which was obviously shitty of her to say but I didn't mind it cause I knew she wasn't talking about me (doesn't mean it's okay, of course. Should've realized that earlier).

Anyway, in October of the same year I admitted to having had liked her but keeping it to myself because I liked being friends more, which for many reasons was a bad idea. I did this so I could get it off my chest and she nicely rejected me but was happy with still being friends. The next day she DMed me vaguely accusing me of treating her poorly and doing things I don't remember doing. She also used my mental illness against me and claimed the reason she couldn't tell me was that she was scared I would hurt myself. She could tell me anything and in fact there was a time I did something as a joke and she didn't like it and she told me and we resolved it. Anyway, because I cared more about keeping the friendship I admitted to doing those things, which was a bad idea. The next week she said we can't be friends anymore and her two best friends also cut me off. I felt like a shit person for two weeks over things I didn't remember doing. Despite them cutting me off I still looked for approval from them so that I could feel like I wasn't a bad man.

It wasn't until I talked about it with my therapist that I realized that I didn't really do anything wrong. Granted I should've left it there. Instead I decided to try to clear my name in a really dumb way. For context, that girl was a secretary in the cliv at my school and I decided to tell another board member of the chapter about how I felt she was lying about me in the club (she did tell two people which isn't a lot) which she then told her and that resulted in her boyfriend threatening to ruin my life and me almost getting kicked out. Since then, a lot of people there don't respect me and have shown it with their actions.

As well as showing me how a lotnof people don't really csrw about men's feelings andnwill happily use them as a weapon, it also opened my eyes as a black man on how my words mean less than the feelings ofna white woman. Even though it happened half a year ago and some of it is my fault, it still to this day doesn't sit right with me and has been a strain on my mental health and my relationships with people.