Definition: Given a real-life anecdote of a complex ethical situation, generate a suitable title that describes the main event/root cause of the situation. Imagine that the given text is a social media post, and you have to write the title of the post, so the users can decide to read the main text or not.
Input: So there’s a bit of long context here which I feel is important, so bear with me.
My husband is in the military and while we were stationed in Japan we became great friends with a woman we’ll call R. R is also enlisted and dated a mutual friend for a while, and while they had a bit of an ugly breakup we stayed friends with both parties because we feel that whatever happens between them, baring any kind of abuse, shouldn’t affect our friendships with either. A little over a two years pass and we get a wedding invitation from R and we’re happy for her, but there’s some lingering concerns because she marrying a guy she’s only been dating for 2 months...
Fast forward a year later, my husband gets stationed near R and we meet to catch up since we haven’t seen her in 2 years. Since we just moved to the area, we don’t have our own place yet and staying at a hotel while we try to find an apartment is draining our finances quick, so R happily agrees to let me and our 3 pets (2 cats and our 5lb dog) stay with her and her husband while my husband stays with another friend until we find a place. I didn’t find out until the night I came to stay she didn’t at least ask her husband, just sprung it on him, but despite the awkward introduction her husband, T, turns out to be a really cool guy and we bond over video games and other mutual pop culture stuff.
While I’m staying with them, I cook and clean up after myself, buy my own groceries, and basically do my best to not disrupt their daily lives; we only have one car that my husband obviously needs to get to and from work, so I’m pretty much housebound in a new town where the only people I know are R and T and spend my free time filling out apartment applications and playing video games.
Finally, after nearly 2 months, we get approved for a place perfectly in our budget and have a move-in date. Two weeks before I left, suddenly R’s skeletons come tumbling out of the closet.
During my stay, R and T got into a lot of petty fights over seemingly nothing, with R always instigating due to her having a short temper and it always made me super uncomfortable that they would do this in front of me almost every time. It had gotten to the point I was looking into staying with a friend nearly 5 hours away, worried that maybe my staying there was putting any stress on them, but when R found out she wanted to sit down and talk about it, asking what she could do to help me feel more comfortable. I was honest with her about my concerns, how I felt that she and T needed to work in their communication together and she needed to reign in her temper. Since they were already seeing a marriage counselor who had told her the same thing, she agreed with me and apologized and things were okay for a while after that, even T insisting they enjoyed my company and help around the house. R occasionally came to me for advice and I was always honest with her but did my best to word things gently so she wouldn’t feel like I was shouldering all the blame on her; at this point in our friendship I already knew she had some issues from childhood trauma that affected her behaviors and how she dealt with situations, and encouraged her to continue seeing their marriage counselor and to consider a personal one for herself.
I had also noticed during my stay that she drank a lot of wine, even on nights she worked early the next day. Now I enjoy a glass or two myself, but it was concerning to me that she would drink nearly a whole bottle every other night and apparently had a few stashed upstairs that she laughingly said T didn’t know about, which was another red flag. One night when I tried to tell her I was worried, especially because she was taking medication at the time, she snapped at me and didn’t speak to me the rest of the night. T served her with divorce papers the next morning.
R left two days later on a sort of deployment for a month, and I discovered through T’s sister (who had visited for Thanksgiving that I had cooked for everyone) that R had complained to her that I was “an overweight, lazy couch potato with no motivation” and it hurt me pretty deeply. I have clinical depression and have struggled with an eating disorder since I was 12, things R has known since we became friends, so for her to have allegedly said those things cut to my core. Rather than confront her, I chose to temporarily block her on social media, my reasoning being she was going through a divorce and clearly had a lot of her own issues to work on and I didn’t want her to feel attacked, deciding I’d rather talk about it in person so there wouldn’t be any misunderstanding over text, but that turned out to be the wrong decision as she almost immediately lashed out at my husband, telling him I was being petty and had no right to be angry with her. My husband gently diffused the situation, emphasizing that I was simply hurt by the accusation and for her to simply focus on herself and that we would get together when she got back.
But soon I had evidence via screenshots she’d said these things more than once to multiple people; mutual friends, one of T’s other family members, coworkers, even going so far as to tell them I was “a bisexual in a poly marriage” and to “not be surprised if she flirts with you.” Admittedly that may not seem like a big deal to some, but in the military atmosphere people can get in trouble for what would be considered adultery, and I never disclose my sexuality or open marriage to people I don’t feel comfortable with, so having complete strangers know these things made me extremely uncomfortable and worried about how it could potentially affect my husband’s career if someone took it to his command; most don’t care, but it’s not something I’m comfortable gambling with.
At that point I had decided I was done, that I didn’t want to talk to her about it because she’d repeatedly tried to blame everyone else around her rather than just owning up and apologizing, but yesterday my husband received a message from R that said, “Is Catsocks done being mad at me for something I didn’t even do?”
Something about that wording just feels so dismissive of my feelings, but am I really the asshole for stepping away from this friendship?

choosing to step out of a toxic friendship