52. Sudden Rage
An ex broke up with me due to her being in a bad place mentally, as she was clinically depressed but trying to wean herself off her meds. While that was going on, her best friend died, and she was absolutely unable to deal with life and withdrew from the world.
Understandably, this made me seem too clingy for her, and she broke up with me, expressing the sentiment that she just can’t deal with life and people right now. I accepted her terms and decided to try to move on amicably.
Some time passed, and she presumably started feeling our breakup was too smooth and was paranoid. I was so accepting of the breakup because I’d already found someone else. This thought festered in private until she presented a conspiracy theory where she was absolutely adamant that I had been cheating on her with one of our mutual friends (whom I had only met once at this point but talked to on Facebook a couple of times)
This then snowballed into wild accusations of which she was extremely sure, to the point of convincing a large chunk of our shared friend circle into believing the ferocity of her crusade was itself a strong indicator that I must’ve done what she claims (because why else would she be doing this?)
As she gives a general honest impression and is not known to be a liar, I lost pretty much all my friends in this process, and rumors circulated about me in our shared social circle for years.
The truth, meanwhile, was that at the point that I got dumped, I had never even met the person I was accused of cheating with.