Hi Frantic Friendship Fail,

Yikes! Okay, I’m going to be real with you. That was NOT cool and your friend totally deserves to be mad. Beyond mad! 🙁

Can you imagine how you’d feel in HER shoes?!

You say you were just trying to help. But even if your intentions were good, this was a huge betrayal. In the future, there are lots of ways to help that DON’T involve pretending to be someone else and telling their big secret.

But we all mess up. If you can recognize that you were wrong, and make clear how sorry you are and that nothing like that will ever happen again, hopefully your friend will forgive you. It might take time, though.

In some cases when you mess up big like this, you should try to fix it if there’s a way. I don’t think there’s anything to do in this case, though. Saying something to the crush about how it was really you writing will probably just make a bigger deal of everything. Only do something like that if your BFF wants you to.

No matter how sorry you are, you can’t undo this. It’s done. So the thing now is going to be earning back her trust.

Here are some steps to earning back trust.

1. Apologize, genuinely and without any excuses. Take responsibility for messing up.
2. Listen to your friend’s feelings and don’t get defensive.
3. If she’s too mad to speak with you, write a letter.
4. Show her she can count on you, even in little things. If you say you’ll be somewhere at a certain time, be there. If you say you’ll bring the candy to the movie, bring it.
5. Be patient if she’s distrustful for a while. Give her space if she needs it.

I’m sure it’s easy to feel defensive when you believe you were trying to help. But this was a betrayal. The sooner you can own it, the sooner you can both move on.

And let this be a lesson to all readers – never share your passwords with anyone! Not even BFFs! You never know how they’ll try to “help” you!

Have you ever betrayed a BFF? Have you been betrayed? Were you able to forgive and move forward? Tell us about it in the comments.