Hi guys. So I had a previous post on here about a specific situation between my new bf and my long-term girl-friend that actually helped me get a lot of clarification on it. However, I now need help with the aftermath. A little bit of background:

I have two friends (25-26 F) who I met in graduate school who have both been in previous toxic relationships (although haven’t we all) and they are currently in their “we hate ALL men” phase. One of the two can be very controlling and kind of likes to make you feel dumb if you don’t listen to her advice. She’s tried to control me our entire friendship and I try not to let her. My other friend is a good friend (for the most part), but she definitely does/follows whatever my other friend says/does. After we graduated college, I wasn’t entirely sure where I wanted to move but my 2 friends convinced me to move to a city I was unfamiliar with, that was 6 hours away from my family, AND they knew I had no other friends that lived there other than them. I was up in the air for quite awhile as I had several people/friends tell me it probably was not a good idea—but these two convinced me otherwise.

Flash forward to 2-ish months later and I’m lowkey miserable. My job is better than it was at first, so that’s not a huge issue, but I hate the apartment/area I live in (another thing they convinced me to do—although they wanted me to live even closer and in even more expensive apartments like their’s). I chose this apartment because it was $400 a month CHEAPER than their’s but management sucks, I hate the parking, etc. etc. I also literally NEVER do anything fun because they both either never want to do anything OR they both don’t want to do what I want to do (it’s majority of the time a 2 vs 1 situation and I usually cave because why am I going to try to convince them to go out when they won’t). They actually did do something I wanted to for my bday and it was a movie in the park and they were on their phones the entire time :-) I could go on and on about previous experiences with them that either I “got over” or just “swept under the rug,” but that would be an essay.

So on the other hand, I FINALLY met a guy I liked after THREE YEARS of being single and out of a toxic relationship. I have never really had feelings for a guy (aside from my toxic ex) like I do for him. We have been dating for 6 months and most of it has been long distance. He’s extremely smart, from a good family, played college sports, buys me thoughtful presents, makes me laugh, and tbh something I never thought I’d want—he challenges me. I’ve always been a biiiig people pleaser and this man challenges me to challenge him (if that makes sense). He’s a big debater—like my dad, who also challenges me—and having that confidence that he gives me when we are arguing something and he backs down/changes his opinion because of me is insane. He has flown to see me 2 times already and already has plans to do more (because where he is stationed won’t allow me to stay on base with him).

Anyway, I’ve told these girl friends about how great he is and how I honestly could see this getting pretty serious (I tried not to talk about it a ton because I don’t want to rub it in their faces or anything while they’re all single and in the phase where they’re just hooking up with guys who don’t want to date them, sorta). But they did ask and I told them and ever since then I have felt some push back from the controlling friend (just a tad). Like when he came to visit me, instead of asking if we wanted to hang out with them, she planned alllll of this fun stuff without me (stuff she knew I wanted to do) so now of course I won’t be able to experience it because I have no other friends here (I am trying my darndest to make them so please don’t tell me to find other friends). But whatever, there’s not much I can do about that aside from start a fight which in the end will just end with them going 2 vs 1 and me feeling like my feelings don’t matter.

So my bf comes to see me a SECOND weekend (for my birthday) and the plan is for him to meet a few of OUR friends (including these two girls) that live almost an hour away at a party they were hosting. Of course I’m nervous because this is the first time I’ve brought a serious bf around my friends EVER (I didn’t know them when I was dating my ex).

So him and I down some alcohol and get a good buzz going. We decide us two and my two gfs are going to get an Uber together because it’ll lessen the price and he even has some Uber cash that he needed to use before the end of the month and he offered to just pay for the 45 min Uber ride and asked if we could pay it on the way home (which I thought was very nice as we’re all making about the same amount of money and he had already bought me lunch, a new pair of raybans, and a round trip flight to see me). Not once did they even say thank you (I guess I shouldn’t expect that, but it almost felt like they assumed he should pay for it because he was the guy—they’ve made comments before about how the guy should pay for everything always—and I just don’t agree with that).

So we get in the Uber, everything is going fine, we’re all talking in the back, they make convo with him, and then he gets on his phone because he’s in the passenger seat and we were talking about work. They proceed to ask him out of nowhere what he’s doing and who he’s texting (I could clearly see his phone and he was watching reels on insta). Then my bf and my Friend 1 (controlling one) proceed to have a bit of back and forth. It was a little stressful because both were giving little zingers back and forth (she said something about him being 12 years old aka a joke at his age compared to mine; he’s 23 and I’m 27).