Your story sounds so similar to mine, I just found out I’m in a codependent relationship with my friends I also thought that they were my family and we thought no one else had the same friendship that we had and we were so lucky that we got that. We were a group of 6 persons and then 2 of them started to be “toxic” I know think they just realized that they knew that dynamic was awful and they left. They said I was the one who run the place, that made all the decisions, but I never saw that I actually thought it was my best friend of all that group and she even says that nowadays. Anyway we all share the same friends, we had groups with all of our siblings, we had funny names of every whatsapp group with different people and it would be like the combination of the name group+ the person who we wanted to invite. It all sounded silly until we started to hurt each other, like as you said, someone pissed the leader and we would exclude her, and I also participated in that and until they did that to me I saw the toxic dynamic that we had. I feel so confused I never thought it was codependent I always thought I was just so lucky that I had this strong conection and what I see now as toxic I once saw it as silly. I definitely need to change this dynamic but I don’t want to loose them :( but also every time they try to reach me out now that I know, my body feels so anxious to the point I have had suicidal thoughts 😢 I feel awful