NC for this.
I think often about a friendship I had and lost. We met in secondary school, we were both the clever girls who weren't at all popular and a bit into the non-mainstream things (we liked grunge when everyone else liked Spice Girls). We were very the very best of friends. My friend, call her Diane, had a boyfriend, Edward, during secondary school, we were friends, too. Edward was one year older than us, and when he went to uni, he and Diane sort of continued their relationship, long distance, but were open to seeing other people. So they were together for about two years and the relationship ended naturally, no big break up but just weren't a thing anymore. I ended up going to uni where Edward did and we became friends. A few years later, we both stayed in that city and Diane had gone on to do graduate work abroad. Edward and I developed romantic feelings for each other and had a sort of FWB thing, we didn't want to ruin our friendship but were really quite in love. This was back in the 90s/early noughties, so we didn't have mobiles and email to communicate with Diane. We did see her occasionally when she'd come round the holidays but never told her aobut our relationship/FWB (perhaps also because we never named it as such but also because it felt so hard to admit). However, we felt quite guilty but the longer it went on, the harder it was to say something. Eventually, he and I stopped seeing each other (we couldn't commit and it seemed like it was ruining our friendship) and he told Diane about what had happened over the course of the past couple years. He also started a new relationship with a new woman.
Diane was furious with me and said she never wanted to speak to me again. As far as I know, she and Edward also never spoke again. We were all 25 or so when this happened. I communicated with Diane by email a few times in the following years, we were cordial and then one day she said she'd prefer not to hear from me again. I still feel bad about it. Edward emailed me during the pandemic and asked how I was doing, we didn't communicate any further.
Am I the absolute worst person, or is this just bad judgement of your early 20s? We are all now in our mid-40s. For context, I have been in therapy recently (I can't even bring myself to tell my therapist this story!) and processing my very traumatic childhood (I was physically and sexually abused for many years by a close family member). I don't want to use that as an excuse, but I do think it helps explain some of my actions in seeking out solace in a trusted person and bad boundaries. I've never violated anyone's trust in that ever again (or before that!) and it still haunts me.