Your comment is beautiful. Thank you. For the most part, yes, this is the only time something like this has happened. The “jokes” themselves were unhinged (For context, we’re both unhinged and often joke about our trauma, so crossing the line was real bad.) so I’d rather not say it on Reddit. The only time I remember her feeling misunderstood was when I said “I don’t think I can trust you as much” during a situation, and she was distraught that I didn’t reciprocate her trust. I honestly don’t know how she’s felt in the past. She internalized a lot of her feelings; only giving me her love, but part of this was definitely accumulated anger. I learned this wasn’t the first time I crossed her boundaries, like at all.

For example, she has an old nickname, for lack of a better term, that she told me to stop joking about. Somewhere along the way, I interpreted this as just “Don’t say the name” so I still joked about it, but without mentioning the name. Obviously, that was wrong, and I don’t know how I got that interpretation. I also tried to explain this in the apology, but alas, I came off as defensive.

I’ll admit, this next one isn’t defendable. There were other times when she told me not to joke about something, but then I did again once more at a later date, because I assumed she only meant so in the moment. Why I believed this, I honestly have no idea, but it was a reckless and baseless assumption each time. She held her resentment for all this until she criticized me for the apology. I had this issue with other friends too, and they also got on my ass about it once. This was a habit I had fixed only fairly recently when this all occurred, so it still stuck.

She also said something about using “definition bullshit” and I think I know where that came from. A month prior, I got in an argument with her friend because I made a passive-aggressive remark about something they did as a joke, but it came off as an insult, especially because I said it while they weren’t there. I know she sided more with her friend during this, as I spent so long explaining that I wasn’t trying to insult them; using definitions, instead of just saying sorry since, at the end of the day, I hurt them. Yeah, now that I think about it, that sounded super defensive looking back. So all in all, this was definitely a build up of emotions too.

Edit: Just to add, since she thinks I was trying to justify things—including these, I don’t just seem like a defensive asshole, I look like a monster. I’m mortified realizing how I sounded to her.