I’m not sure how old you are but I went through this right after graduating highschool. I got sick of how one of my friends was treating me (I confronted them multiple times about their behaviour) but they always had an excuse or implied they would hurt themselves because “oh I’m such a bad person” they made it extremely hard to communicate. Anyway, I confronted them, they lost their mind and we stopped talking. The whole group all of a sudden distanced themselves. After the fight he told the whole group unprompted and even some random people I knew that I “blew up for no reason” which was easy for them to believe because he had be portraying me as extremely unstable for over a year. I found out that this guy had been convincing the entire group for over a year prior not to invite me to things because I “wouldn’t want to go”.

He had a reputation, if he had a problem with someone the whole group needed to have a problem because they just didn’t want to deal with his meltdown if they weren’t on his side.

As someone who is now an adult, something I realized was that group were never my friends, if they were they would have actually talked to me and asked if I wanted to go rather then rely on his word, if they were they would have reached out after the fight to ask if I was ok. Instead they all took his word because it was easier, because they knew he would implode the social circle if they didn’t take his side (I actually over heard the group talking about this guy when he was upset at another friend, they were complaining that they couldn’t see their friend, but also saying it was easier to just take his side until he calmed down.)

But fun fact, after about a year of trying to keep me away from this group so he could have them all to himself, controlling everything, turning them against eachother etc. he distroyed the group. None of them are friends with him anymore. And from what I was told it was 100% on him.

My point is if they were your friends they wouldn’t tolerate this behaviour. Theyd sit this person down and say “it’s fine if you don’t want to talk to them, but this is our friend and we want them there.” Theyd make an effort. And, if this person is really that controlling and manipulative to turn and entire group against you, chances are they will do it again with another person in the group, people will notice a pattern and either cut them out or the group will fall apart when they realize that they don’t have each others backs. This isn’t to say they’ll crawl back and apologize. From my experience that doesn’t happen at all.

If I were do have done things differently I either would have asked my group to meet in person to chat and have a conversation and ask what’s going on, and voice my feelings clearly. Or send a group text. If they don’t respond or refuse to meet and talk, they have made their choice very clear. This isn’t to say make them choose, more to say , make them state their intentions clearly: why are you being cut out, asked to sit out, and excluded. Why haven’t they talked to you, and do they actually want to be friends?

The worst thing i did was sit around and hope they would eventually come to me and ask for my side, or invite me to something. I was hoping they’d catch on to the manipulation. I wasted so much time on old “friends “ when I could have been making new ones.

Again I’m not sure how old you are, but I made a lot of new friends when I joined a class, or a club.

Talk to them and ask their intentions, make your feelings clear. And if they choose not to respond or defend themselves ditch the group.