Since they were high School students, this 27-year-old woman, Tom, 31, and Sam, 29, have been friends.

While she was a freshman, Sam was a sophomore, and Tom was a junior.

The three of them had a lot of common interests, including video games, anime, Pokémon, and art. Over time, they became extremely close.

When she started high school and met Sam and Tom, the two of them had been in a relationship for almost a year at that point, and they seemed like the perfect couple.

Tom always took Sam out for romantic dates, surprised her with flowers in her locker, wrote love notes to her inside the margins of her school notebooks, and other cutesy things that a lot of high schoolers did while dating.

After they graduated high school, they grew apart because she went to college in another state.

While she didn’t talk to Sam much, she would catch up with Tom from time to time. They would message each other occasionally about new Pokémon card sets being released, the DnD groups they were both attending, and the new seasons of their favorite anime series.

Later on, she found out on social media that Tom proposed to Sam, and they eventually got married and had a magical wedding.

Several years ago, she got into a relationship with a terrible guy whom she referred to as “Terrible Boyfriend,” or TBF.

Sign up for Chip Chick’s newsletter and get stories like this delivered to your inbox.

“I was in a bad Mental place and just wanted to be with someone who acknowledged my existence. During this time, I had been isolated from a lot of my favorite hobbies and friends and was sort of drifting,” she said.

While she was dating TBF, he introduced her to his best friend, who turned out to be Tom. As the story goes, TBF and Tom met not long after high school, and they became close right away.

Since she was spending more time around Tom after so many years of distance, she started to feel alive and more like herself again.

For so long in her relationship with TBF, she’d felt so limited, but now that she felt free, TBF took notice and wanted her to hang out with Tom even more.

As time went on, she developed a friendship with Tom that felt just as close as the one they had when they’d been in high school.

“One day, TBF was talking about past romantic partners (or his ‘conquests,’ as he was calling them) and mentioned all the times he had been with Sam. I immediately froze when I heard him say this. I asked when they had been together since I thought he had met Tom and Sam after they had graduated. He shrugged and said Sam had complained to him multiple times about how bad of a romantic partner Tom was. I felt like I was going to be sick. I called him a liar and said that there was no way that Sam would cheat on Tom,” she explained.

But then, TBF gave her his phone, and he had his messages open between him and Sam.

When she started reading their text messages, she was instantly nauseated. Both TBF and Sam were making fun of the qualities Tom was most insecure about, and they talked about how insufficient he was. Included in the texts were tons of photos exchanged back and forth.

After she’d seen enough, she gave TBF his phone back and told him to leave. TBF seemed stunned, as if he couldn’t comprehend why she was angry. He claimed that he “‘just helped Sam finally feel good.'”

Then, TBF told her that he stopped hooking up with Sam as soon as she started dating him, which revolted her that much more.

As she was forcing TBF out of her home, he told her that because of Tom’s emotional and mental state, she couldn’t tell him about Sam and TBF’s cheating.

Sadly, Tom has been diagnosed with severe depression, and he has hurt himself several times. Throughout Tom’s relationship with Sam, he often said that she was what was keeping him alive.

Once she ended her relationship with TBF, she felt conflicted. She debated endlessly on whether or not to tell Tom the truth. She has had unfaithful partners, so she knows firsthand how heartbreaking it is to experience.

Understandably, she was afraid that if she told Tom what Sam and TBF had done, he would spiral downward. At the same time, it didn’t feel right to hide this information from him.

But after several months of agonizing over it all, she planned to send Sam a message with all the information she had. From there, she would tell Sam that if she didn’t tell Tom the truth, then she would.

“The day I finally made up my mind, I opened up social media and went to her page to message her. However, the moment I clicked her page, my heart just sank in my chest. People were posting comments on her wall like, ‘We will miss you more than you will ever know,’ or ‘God takes back his kindest souls too soon.’ And finally, I found out what had happened. The night before, Sam had gotten in a horrible car accident. She was gone before paramedics even arrived. I remember just shattering. Even though I was furious with her for what she had done, she had been my friend, and now she was gone,” she shared.

After Sam’s funeral, Tom was hospitalized for his mental well-being. For the first several months after Sam passed away, he was in and out of several health wards. He wasn’t eating, communicating, or sleeping at all. He was struggling immensely to cope after such a traumatic loss.

For a long time, Tom didn’t do much besides lay in bed, deeply depressed.

During this time, she did her best to spend time with Tom as a support system for him.

“He was a good person who had lost too much, and I couldn’t bear to lose another friend. On the other hand, I couldn’t live with the secret I was carrying,” she shared.

For seven years, Sam was unfaithful to Tom, cheating on him with his best friend. Horrifically, Sam made fun of Tom in her conversation with TBF.

Even though she knew it was awful, due to her complicated grief experience, she sometimes felt glad that Sam had passed away because this meant that Sam couldn’t cause Tom any more pain. She acknowledged that she has had to work through these types of thoughts and confusing feelings as she coped with the loss.

Currently, Tom’s Mental Health has improved from what it was right after Sam passed away. He has become more social and hangs out with her and other friends and plays video games. Tom seems to be experiencing moments of happiness again, which is wonderful to see.

Understandably, Tom talks about Sam often, and he doesn’t want to date. In his view, Sam was the love of his life, and she was the only one he had ever been in love with. He expressed that Sam “will be always lovingly watching over him.”

Up until now, she hasn’t told Tom about Sam cheating on him or the horrible things she said about him to TBF. She understands that if she ever told him any of this, his mental health would regress back to how it was right after Sam’s passing. Because she doesn’t want this to happen, she feels like she will never tell Tom what Sam did.

What would you do if you were in her shoes?

You can read the original post on Reddit here.

If true crime defines your free time, this is for you: join Chip Chick’s True Crime Tribe

She Went On A Hiking Date And Started Throwing Up In Front of The Guy Because The Fast Food They Grabbed Beforehand Didn’t Agree With Her

She Got Accused of Being A Gold Digger After Admitting To Her Husband How She’d Rather Not Have A Spouse If She Somehow Became A Millionaire

She Doesn’t Trust Her Husband’s Therapist Because His Mental Health Has Only Gotten Worse, And The Therapist Keeps Doing Sessions With Him Out of The Office While Saying It’s “Only Unethical If They Get Caught”

She Packed Up Her Life And Left The Country After Her Best Friend Admitted That She Doesn’t Love Her Back And Got Married To A Guy

In 1977, She Left Her New Job At A Law Firm To Run Some Errands During Her Lunch Break And Was Never Seen Or Heard From Again

How To Decorate Your Home In The Art Deco Style

She’s Credited With Facilitating Peace Between Native Americans And White Settlers In The Colorado Plains During The 1800s