A girl [26/f] I rejected went berserk on me [24/f] for months afterwards. Now she's decided that I'm bullying her by not wanting to be her friend, and she's slowly making me seem like the asshole in my friend group.

I had been interested in this girl at work for a little while (I know, I know...stupid fucking decision. In my defense, we barely worked together and I'm about to quit. Also gay dating is hard, okay!!). I found out the interest was mutual and decided to see where things could go. But she immediately got very needy and 1: no thanks, kind of a red flag. But more importantly 2: it made me realize how little time or energy I have to emotionally handle another person in a relationship context. So before things could develop any further (at this point it had been a week), I told her about everything I was dealing with and that I didn't want to lead her on because I would not be a good person to date right now. And I was honest about that; I haven't so much as attempted to get romantically involved with another person since then.

I knew it would hurt her because hey, whiplash. It must've sucked to feel like things were going well only to see it end after a week. But what followed was months of her doing a bunch of toxic, manipulative bullshit to me. I'll leave the specifics out of this post so it's not ridiculously long, but I've mentioned parts of the ordeal to a couple friends without naming her as a vague "bad dating experiences" story and they were shocked.

Now, she's decided that she wants to be friends again, and even though I've told her directly that the things she did were too much for me, she's basically refusing to take no for an answer. She told me that I need to just "get over it" and that she did nothing wrong--she was "just acting a little crazy cause [she] liked [me]." She'll butt into my conversations with people and loudly talk to me, but of course only in front of other people so I look like a jerk for not enthusiastically talking to her. She's literally made no attempts to contact me outside of work or in private except for when she told me to get over it (though that was also at work and she immediately got all upset in front of everyone).

My workplace is one of those really small places where most of us are friends outside of work too, and now she's becoming a part of that group because of course to everyone else she's just this bubbly girl who wants to be friends with everyone. The last straw for me was when my friend organized something small to say goodbye to someone, and when I asked about her being there I was basically told to "just be nice and it'll be fine."

I have never been rude to her, not once. All I want is for her to leave me alone and we can be polite and professional, just not friends. But she refuses to let me do that, and I hate the fact that I'm starting to seem like some petty asshole because I'm trying to do the right thing and not humiliate her at work by telling people what happened. I'm just so frustrated and angry and I don't know what to do.

TL;DR "Dated" very clingy girl from work for a week before I realized that I was stupid to think I had the emotional energy for a relationship. Told her so, she went berserk and basically harassed me for months. I never told anybody because I didn't want to mess with her reputation at work and I hoped that it would eventually pass. It didn't, and now she's trying to use social pressure to get me to be her friend again. Slowly making me seem like an asshole to my friends. h e l p

Submitted February 24, 2021 at 09:52PM by Critical-Course-7619 https://ift.tt/3qUE3DF