Sorry if I make mistakes since English isn't my native language. I met my girlfriend of 6 months about 8 months ago. This is both of our first relationship with a woman. We met when we started taking the same class at university. She intrigued me from the moment we met. I realized I wanted her in my life, whether as a friend or a romantic partner. Living in a third-world country, people's reactions to different sexual orientations are often unpredictable. So, to get her thoughts on the topic before our frienship progressed, I mentioned a girl from class I'd previously liked. After a while later we talked about our past relationship struggles such as forced intimacy(not grape level but definetly sa territory) Then she asked me about how i realized i am interested in women and i told her about my crush on a friend. We didn't go in too much detail, i told her name but since she didn't meet her yet she didn't know who she was and probably assumed i am no longer friends with her. Then she said that she recently realized that she also might be interested in women too and told some stuff that might hinting me but i didn't want to assume things. Later on, on another occasion i told her about my mental state during that time. I will go in detail about this later on. Then one day i confessed my feelings and she confessed too. She told me she was planning to confess around that week too. Turns out we both wanted to wait for our group homework to finish just in case things don't go as planned. So we have been dating for 6 months now and recently we were talking about my mental health and she asked me about the friend i had a crush on. I thought she knew wo she was but i only mentioned her name the first time we talked so maybe she didn't think it was the same person as my bff. Se knows my bff's name ofcourse but maybe since it's not a common situation she didn't think it was her. (I don't know if i could explain it properly. It's a bit hard to explain it in English) So she just recently realized who my crush was. Later on she wanted to talk to me about some stuff and i knew it was about this topic. I never intended to conceal anything but it turned out this way and i feel really guilty about this since i didn't make sure she knew about the whole situation before we started our relationship. So we met and she told me she feels uncomfortable about this understandably. She said she didn't know it was my bff and my bff also knew my crush on her. She asked me how she learned and when i had a crush. I told her about 4-5 years ago i was hospitalized and was staying in a psychiatric clinic where we didn't have any access to many things and it made me overthink about stuff and i thought i had a crush on my bff. during phone call time(we had specific times we could call people. we were not allowed to have phones.) i called her and told her about it and ended the call saying my time sis up, didn't giving her time to respond. After that we didn't talk about it with my bff. We both ignored it. During the talk my gf also told me that she knows(?) she is a difficult person and she can be very jealous but i told her i don't agree. Maybe she thinks about herself this way because of her past relationships but i never thought she was difficult. I think it is more than reasonable to be uncomfortable about this situation i have put her to. I was actually really anxious about this topic even before she wanted to express her discomfort, since the conversation i realized she didn't know who my crush was, because i was concerned that she wouldn't voice her thoughts with me and struggle by herself. I was trying to come up with a solution to make things better. I thought i could limit my interaction with my bff or completely cut contact but it felt like i would be punishing my friend for my own mistake. Or maybe i could let my gf go because it might be better for her but then i thought i don't have the right to break her hearth by breaking up with her and i should let her choose if she wants to leave. But this also makes me uncomfortable because i feel like breaking up is a burden too. So i couldn't decide which one is the worst and stuck without making a move. Anyways I asked my girlfriend if she would want me to cut contact with my bff and she said she doesn't want to make me do such a thing. Ofc she doesn't because she's way too nice to ask for such a thing even if she has the right to. She said she wanted know more about my friendship with my bff and see how she feels. Ofc i accepted it and now i am trying to schedule a meeting between 3 of us. What i want to ask is what can i do to make things better for both my gf and bff? I am not asking how to make them get along or anything, i just want neither of them to struggle because of my actions. I don't want to put on an act to make my gf to accept this situation because it would be decieving so i am not asking for that type of answer. I hope i was able to explain what kind of advice i request.
For people who might want more context about my friendship with my bff and the mental health issues i have i will provide more details below down.
Note: I came back to add this while still writing the original post because it is getting longer than i exected. I wanted to add the possible reasons why i might have mental health issues to give a broader perspective so i started telling from high school. I fyou don't want to read it you can pass the first paragraph.
My high school years weren't great. I never felt like I belonged there. I'd spent my entire life trying to silence the voice in my head that criticized religious matters because i was taught that non-religious people were evil. Most of the students in my high school were religious, but there were also a few atheists. For the first time in my life, I'd met someone who wasn't religious, and they weren't bad. Seeing this shattered my entire worldview, and I couldn't silence that voice in my head anymore. I'd hear my other religious friends talking about the atheist friends' back. So, I never shared my own thoughts with them. I never felt like myself around them. I even ran errands to make them like me, but it was as if they always knew I wasn't like them. I slept between classes all the time during the last year. I didn't realize it at the time, but that was my first period of depression. During my last month of high school, I got into an argument with a girl from the religious group for some ridiculous reason. She was Facetiming with the others, trying to choose a dress for graduation. I happened to see her and told her I'd tried on one of the dresses she was showing the other day and was thinking about buying it. She chose red, mine was black, and she hadn't decided on a dress yet. I had, but I hadn't bought it yet because I didn't have any money with me the day I went to try it on. She said, "Well, don't buy that dress; I'll buy it" I said, "No problem, we can wear the same dress," but she didn't want it and told me to buy another dress. I said I'd try on some more dresses, but if I couldn't find anything else, I'd buy it. I went to look at a few more dresses, one with another friend and one alone, but I wasn't happy with my body at the time, and nothing seemed to fit right. The day I went alone, while i was on my way back home I called that friend and said I couldn't find another dress, and with the university entrance exam coming up, I wouldn't have time to try on more dresses, so I'd buy the black dress. It was different colors anyway, and we were going to wear a robe over it. That year, a student from our high school had died in a terrorist attack, and there wouldn't be a party, there would only be a ceremony. The next day was a terrible day because all the other girls called me and blamed me for upsetting their friend. They said she couldn't afford another dress, so I had to buy a new one. But my financial situation wasn't any different, and I wasn't the one insisting on not wearing the same dress, but for some reason, I had to take responsibility. Finally, the situation was resolved after one of the girls spoke to me separately, and they left me alone. But I cried so much on the phone that I started vomiting, and for two days, I threw up anything I tried to eat except bread. I acted as if nothing had happened during the ceremony. I'd never been my true self anyway, and I'd had to fake it, so it wasn't that difficult. Then I took the university entrance exam. I got a good score, so I was accepted into the second-best architecture school in the capital, but I was afraid I'd experience the same thing I did in high school because it was also known for its religious students. So I decided to re-enter, but that year was also bad. I enrolled in a private tutoring center, but I didn't do anything except attend classes. After classes ended, I'd come home and go straight to bed, and wouldn't wake up until the next day when the class starts. Recently, when I was talking to my sister about that year, she said "It's like you're not even alive that year" I didn't realize how bad I was at the time. But looking back now, those two years were the beginning of everything. I didn't get into the school I wanted that year either. I enrolled in a different private tutoring center for the following year. The night before it started, I cut my hair short. I'd never cut my own hair before but i did it for the first time that day. I don't know why, but I think I wanted to let go of something from the past.
I met my bff(27F) and two other really close friends around 8 years ago in the private tutoring center. Four of us became close really quickly. People would usually ask when where we know each other from and would be shocked to hear we just met. They understood me in a way any other friend did and it was mutual ofc. It was one of the best years of my life. We bonded over religious trauma but with my bff we had much more in common. So even though i am really close with other two friends as well i still feel a little bit closer to my bff and she also feels the same. The year we met with my bff i started dating a guy i met in high school but it didn't last long. We broke up after 2 months and my friend group was really supportive. During this time my bff had a few crushes but didn't date anyone. After the exam we all scattered around the country. My bff and one other friend was accepted to med schools in different cities, ote friend was accepted to dentistry department in another city and i was accepted to architecture department in my dream school in the capital where we all lived. I met with a guy from my school before the first semester and we started dating. Even though we were seperated we still stayed in touch with my friend group and met occasionally. At one of the meetings, only my bff and I were able to attend due to busy schedules of others. At that meeting she told me she thinks she is a lesbian. i cried and hugged her because i was overwhelmed by the thought of her struggling due to people being hostile towards queer people. I told her i was very happy that she trusted me enough to tell me. Also i learned i was the first one to hear about it. I've always felt more comfortable around women and was able to form deeper relationships with my female friends but during that time i wasn't aware of my orientation. If i knew i would have shared it with her too to comfort her a bit more.
In the first year of college i was in prep school and everything was great. Then I started taking departmental courses and i loved it. Before my undergraduate studies began, a friend from the psychology department told me to be careful because architecture has the highest selfoffing rate and that I should contact him if I had any bad thoughts. At the time, I didn't think there was any chance I'd be iclined to offing myself. I was studying at the school I wanted, in the department I wanted and loved, I had a brilliant boyfriend I loved dearly, my family was very supportive and I had great friends around whom I could be myself. Everything was perfect. I had everything I could possibly want in life. Then i started having problems with my bf. Even though i had bfs in the past i was still very new to physical intimacy. Coming from a religious background, i was scared of disappointing my family and this created major problems in my relationship with my boyfriend. In fact, there were problems that I was unaware of at the time, but since all of this was new to me, I couldn't understand whether my feelings were normal or not. For example, the first time I met my boyfriend in person after we started dating, he pressed himself against me while we were hugging, and I could feel his p. Although I was uncomfortable, I joked it away. One other time, we went on a picnic in the school forest, and while we were kissing, he suddenly pulled out his penis and wrapped my hand around it. All I remember of that day is the shock. For some reason, my brain erased everything else, but I don't think he did anything else. If he had, I probably would have remembered that shock too. Initially, because I was inexperienced and grew up in a religious family, I thought it was normal to feel uncomfortable, and the discomfort was at a level I could handle. But things got worse when my boyfriend moved from the dorm to a student house. My mother didn't want me to go to his house; I didn't really want to either, but I didn't want to make him unhappy. My mother would call me several times a day, sometimes on FaceTime. Whenever my mother called me at my boyfriend's house, I felt like my blood was draining. I felt guilty for not living according to my mother's religious values. I told my boyfriend about this. He too had grown up in a religious family. His family was in another city. He pretended to be religious in front of his family, but I had told my family about my religious views, which made my mother even more anxious about my realitionship with my bf. My boyfriend said we were in the same situation, but I didn't think so, and he didn't understand how overwhelmed I was. As much as I loved it, classes were also incredibly stressful, and I was barely sleping. I would sleep five or six hours every other day, then take an exam, then work on projects for two-three days straight without sleeping. I often felt like I was drunk from lack of sleep. Sometimes, walking around, I felt like the world was slipping away from me, and I felt like I was about to pass out. I was starting to have panic attacks, but I couldn't tell my family that I wanted to seek professional help because I didn't want to have to explain why. My boyfriend told me to call him when I was feeling down, and I did at first, but they were getting more frequent. Every time I called, I would cry on the phone for hours. My heart would pound, and I would be breathless. I was afraid I would have a heart attack or develop heart disease if it kept happpening. I stoed calling since he was also very busy, I didn't want to take up too much of his time. That's how I finished my first semester. My grades were excellent, and I was at the top of my class. Although I was experiencing relationship problems, I still told myself it'd get better, so I had hope. But after the semester ended, I learned that my father was sick. He was already sick, but he had gotten worse recently and was hospitalized, but my family didn't tell me because they didn't want me to fall behind in my studies. If you ask me how I didn't realize my father wasn't home, it was because, towards the end of the semester, I started sleeping mostly on my desk at school so I could spend my time sleeping instead of commuting. I only went to take a shower, and since it coincided with my father's work schedule, I didn't find it strange that he wasn't home. After learning of his hospitalization, I began to feel a great sense of guilt. I was so preoccupied with other things that I wouldn't have known if he had died. I didn't tell my boyfriend about it. His family was going through a difficult time, too, and even if he had known about my father, there was nothing he could do. So I didn't want him to worry. But the guilt, combined with everything else that was going on, reached a level I couldn't handle. As thoughts of offing myself began to creep in, I realized I had to do something to relieve the stress. I couldn't quit school; there was nothing I could do about my father's condition other than trying to be there for him. So I asked my boyfriend if we could take a break from s,e,x because, no matter how much I thought I'd get used to it, it was still causing me extreme stress. I told him I'd feel more comfortable about it once I started working after I finished school, since i would be independent, which would take at least three years. He said that was a long time and he doesn't want to do it. Around this time my bff started dating a girl from her school. I met with her and liked her a lot. She was very sweet and charismatic. But on the way home, I cried for some reason. At the time, I didn't have a crush on her, but maybe I did because I felt that way. Because my bff would never treat me the way my boyfriend treated me, but now she had someone else in her life. Was this why i was crying? At the time, I couldn't really understand why I was crying. These are possibilities that came to mind in hindsight. I hadn't told anyone about what had happened with my boyfriend back then; I didn't want them to think badly of him or worry about me. Maybe if I had, things wouldn't have escalated this far. A while later, at the end of my second semester, I broke up with my boyfriend. That summer, I was supposed to do an internship at a construction site. Before the internship, a friend from my department and I decided to enter a design competition. There wasn't much time left for the deadline, but I needed to focus my mind on something, so I decided to do it anyway. As soon as classes ended, we started working. We stayed at her house for ten days, sleeping five or six hours a day and working every waking moment. Finally, we submitted our project and I began my internship without a moment to rest. During my internship, I learned we had won the competition. At least it wasn't for waste. Right after the internship ended, we entered another competition. By the time we submitted it, it was almost time for our third year of school, and I hadn't rested at all. My boyfriend and I had talked and met up twice over the summer, but despite how much we missed each other, our opinions hadn't changed. So, we didn't get back together. I was the last to initiate our conversation. He asked why I kept talking, and I told him I thought maybe we could start again later, when things were better. He said that wouldn't happen. We haven't spoken since. So, I started my third year. That year, the design course was taught by multiple professors, and the decision was made by drawing lots. I had no friends in the group I was put in. Of course, I knew most of the people, but our class had 130 students, so it was impossible to get to know everyone. Being away from everyone i am close with when I needed someone's company the most felt very lonely. I couldn't stop crying on the way home. We decided to form a group with two people I knew from my group. After I decided to do this, someone in my close friend's group asked me if I wanted to switch places with her. I explained the situation and told her I'd ask my groupmates and get back with her. My groupmates said no, so I declined the offer. I thought it would end there, but right afterward, a mutual friend of mine (the friend I entered the competition with) texted me saying what I was doing was wrong. I tried to explain the situation that I'd asked the group, but they'd refused and I wasn't going anywhere; I was just asking for permission, and when I couldn't get it, I accepted the situation without pushing. I told her there might be a misunderstanding, but for some reason, she didn't understand. She started acting distant towards me and everyone close to me. The fact that others were affected by the situation was the most upsetting thing for me. My other friends didn't blame me at all, but I felt guilty anyway. I think that was the final straw. I couldn't focus on anything anymore; the only thing on my mind was offing myself. My thoughts were so scattered that I started stuttering and couldn't follow conversations. Finally, I decided to seek professional help. I went to a psychologist twice, but then realized I needed a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist suggested I might be predisposed to depression because my family has a history of it, and prescribed the same medication my mother was taking. I had pinned all my hopes on that medication, but it didn't work. At the time, I didn't know finding the right medication could take time, so I felt like all my options were exhausted. I had made up my mind, but my sister was taking the university entrance exam that year, and I didn't want her to be negatively affected by what will happen, so I waited until the exam passed. The night of the exam, it happened, and I was hospitalized the other day. We didn't tell anyone what had happened, except for my close friends from school who I saw often. We tried different medications, but it was medication-resistant depression. My grades started to drop, I also started gaining weight, and I hated everything about myself. One day, I met up with my bff and her girlfriend. I'd put a bracelet on my wrist, but she still saw it. I promised I wouldn't do it again, but I did it again, and this time I was admitted to a closed psychiatric facility. I only stayed there for a week, but I had more than enough time to think. I wasn't allowed anything to kee my mind occupied. We were allowed to go out into a wire cage to breathe for half an hour a day on weekdays, and it was forbidden to go out at all on weekends. I couldn't focus on books. One of the other patients was obsessed with me and was constantly following me. We were allowed to talk on the phone with acquaintances for 15 minutes a day. One day, I called my bff and told her I liked her just before hanging up. Without waiting for her to respond, I said my time was up and hung up. We never talked about it again. This happened about 4-5 years ago. After leaving the clinic, I applied to the rehab center, but there was a line. I couldn't complete any of the courses for two years. Then i was accepted to rehab center and stayed there for about a year. While i was there i was diagnosed with type two bippolar. Finally, I took the same course for the last time last year, and that's where I met my current girlfriend. After we started dating, I learned that she had actually known me before. Her dorm roommate was my third-year groupmate. So, when she saw me, she immediately wanted to be in a group with me. Thanks to her, I was able to complete the course last year. Now, we're both fourth-year students and still in the same class. So, anything I do could have a bigger impact on her. Even if we break up, she'll have to see me in class, and I don't want her to be bothered by me. What do you think would be best for both my bff and my girlfriend?