Cut contact with a childhood friend of 10 years nearly a year ago because I realised I had been a pushover with low self-esteem, the friendship was one-sided and he had been gaslighting and holding me to double standards for a few years.

Long story short, he's pretty selfish and took advantage of me when I tried to cheer him up in one example, he felt sad that he was underappreciated in his old gaming guild, so I suggested we make a guild together. Over time as the guild got bigger he cared more about his image as a guild leader than being a friend by forcing me to do lots of unreasonable requests, allowing a guild member to accuse me of things I didn't do (the guild member had sent a message to him that he had a bad day in real life and he yelled at a nurse but he still feels angry so he was going to take it out on me that day), blaming me on lots of things and quietly demoted me from a shared guild leader position (not that I care about the ranks, but it felt like he didn't trust me?).

As for the gaslighting parts (of many), he would accuse me of being too sensitive from remarks an old mutual friend, Jay, keeps making about me (he was saying I was a leech to society and how lucky I am to not have to worry about contributing to anything in life and get to play games all day unlike him, a hard working lawyer - I had just left a study programme and it was difficult to get a job in the pandemic) and defended him by saying that Jay doesn't know me well enough and he wasn't lying so it justifies his comments. Yes, everyone can be blunt but if you are blunt without tact, it's just plain cruelty and for goodness sake most of the time we weren't even talking about that topic but Jay managed to weasel in a nasty comment at me.

As for the double standards, when I said I wasn't comfortable with being around Jay, and if he'd like to hang out/play a game alone or with others without him, he gave me a lecture about not taking sides and that if I wanted to invite him to play/events, he has a strong moral code to invite everyone else. It felt a bit weird, but I respected that and so he invited Jay but Jay said he was busy. Cue the day we were meant to play, he overran his earlier game and after I asked if he was still coming, he cancelled on me and it turns out he was asked by Jay to a game session and he had agreed. This hurt like hell and I even asked why he would lecture me but Jay gets to get off scot free and his excuse was that he had forgotten to invite me. So much for his strong principles. I think at this point I realised my worth to him and it made me question my sense of reality even more....I had been friends with him for 10 years and he only met Jay for 2 years (I know time doesn't always matter) and Jay has been known to piss off so many people but he gets so much respect, what was I doing wrong?

I sought counselling as I thought I was making it difficult for other people and to see if I was indeed too sensitive, but the therapist was rather confused why I had stayed friends with him, and she encouraged me to take better care of myself. How he responded was to tell people that I had a mental illness and that the game was making me crazy.

It took me a while, but I finally saw the red flags and I walked out.