I (19M) cut off my closest friend (20M) for gaslighting everyone into believing I changed because of a girl I met in the summer of 2023.

Rac (not his real name) was like a brother to me. We were so close that we even exchanged Instagram passwords in 2023. He used to read my DMs, which I didn’t mind since I had nothing private to hide. Sometimes, he’d provoke me by teasing me about messages girls sent me but I never cared, which was the first red flag that I ignored.

In the summer of 2023, I met Han (23F), and we quickly became close friends. Rac also knew her but wasn’t close. Han began opening up to me about her traumatic past, and I completely forgot Rac still had access to my DMs and was reading it. He never mentioned anything until one day, while I was making dinner for us, he grabbed my phone and tried to impersonate me while talking to Han.

When that failed, he revealed private things she’d told me to convince her it was me. She was infuriated and told me about it, but somehow Rac convinced me it wasn’t a big deal. Later then, she cut contact with him in January 2024. After that, Rac switched.

He started calling her disgusting names and even pressured me for a week to block her, using a fake story from a “friend.” Eventually, I gave in and blocked her, thinking Rac was my only real friend. By May 2024, I had a girlfriend which is important for later.

By the summer of 2024, Rac’s treatment towards me had gotten worse. He’d humiliate me over petty things like borrowing $2 or accidentally touching his console. In August, I kissed my girlfriend at her friend’s house, which is kind of a big deal due to our religious beliefs. But when Rac found out, he lost his mind and started shouting at me and insulting both me and my girlfriend for being “unfaithful” to our faith. Again, I tried to convince myself he was just looking out for me. The breaking point came when I found out the story he told me about Han, the one that led me to block her was completely made up. When I confronted him, he brushed it off as a “misunderstanding,” then switched again when I asked for an apology. Still, I didn’t cut him off which still impresses me to this day. But the next day, he tried to behave like nothing happened, and after I unintentionally gave a dry reply to one of his messages, he insulted me and told me never to talk to him again. That was the last straw. I blocked him and went NC.

Later that summer, he called me out of nowhere, said I wasn’t a “real man,” that I had changed because of a girl, and even threw around slurs like “fa**ot.” and told me “bros before ho*s” but I stayed calm but warned him shut his mouth or I’lltear his eyes apart. Later then I found out he’d been spreading lies about me, telling people I’d abandoned him for my girlfriend and painting me as part of some “toxic high school couple.”

Eventually, he went to a mutual friend to fix things, and I agreed to talk to him. The moment we met and started talking about our problems, he started ranting about how I was “obsessed” with my girlfriend, but our friend shut him down and defended her. When I confronted him again about the names he’d called her, he rambled bs so I told him to stfu or I would rip his mouth. He finally went quiet but still didn’t apologize. Instead, he behaves like nothing happened.

After that, he started regretting it and was flooding me with calls and messages apologizing and telling me that he wanted us to go back to the old times before the problems and that I was his only brother, should I forgive him?

Tl;dr: I cut a friend because of his disgusting behaviours and his nosiness, he was the first to cut me but everyone turned on me and blamed me for cutting him because of a girl and how I changed over a girl (which they didn’t even notice)