Am I a bad person?

...I am someone who prides myself on being able to critically analyse myself ...

I go to a law university where the community is very tightly knit and because we live in close contact all the time in the hostels, everyone is sort of in each others business.

I am a pretty friendly person with varied interests and I am friends with different people in different groups. I had 3 friends whom I would hang out with most of the time (a girl and 2 guys). Mostly because the girl (lets call her rachel) and one of the guys (call him dean) were interested in each other and his best friend tagged along (and I started being friends with her because we liked the same tv shows mostly). The guy's best friend would rarely hang out with us, usually just when we go to a pub or something.

And this is when we were 18.

We are from a pretty conservative society where any pre-marital relationship is kind of taboo, so we dont have the whole "casual dating" thing. So rachel and dean decided the best way to get to know each other before they become 'boyfriend and girlfriend' was to have study dates with me so that it wasnt an actual date because someone else was there (me) but they'd still spend time with each other.

So all this is in the first month of university, like a month since all of us met for the first time. Now Dean asks me if he should ask out Rachel and I knew she wanted him to and so I said that yeah, she seems interested go for it.

They start dating, its all sunshine and rainbows until a year later she loses her virginity to him and then the fighting starts for really stupid reasons like he hasnt texted in the last hour or that she called him when he was talking to someone, things like that.

I try to stay away from taking sides because they're both my friends and its none of my business.

They start having an on-off relationship which is very confusing and tiresome.

Then they start getting angry at me for not solving their problems and "mediating their relationship" since I know both sides. I told them that their relationship is not something that I had to or wanted to be involved in and they are the ones who should be working on it.

Dean's best friend stops coming to hang when we go out of our campus and I constantly ended up having to stop Dean and Rachel from making a scene when we are out in public.

Then there's the time that Rachel thought she was pregnant and it was a bad time for all of us, especially because she came from a political family and their relationship soured even more.

Now while all this is going on with them, my depression (that I had since high school) was getting worse, I started developing self-harming tendencies, I went from being an all A's class topper to someone who barely passed my classes, my parents were emotionally abusive, and mental ailments are not considered "real sickness" in my community so I was basically muddling through all of it on my limited knowledge through the internet.

And while I'm curled up in my room trying not to add another scar to my collection, they keep trying to involve me in their fights, starts using me as an excuse, when she dumps him over a fight for not paying enough attention to her.

Dean calls me with threats of committing suicide if Rachel doesnt take him back and after a lot of grovelling from him, they start their on -off relationship again. Things start getting more complicated; they both cheat and they both suspect that the other person did but dont know for sure, start flirting with others in front of each other. We're almost done with 3 years of university when Dean dumps Rachel saying that he cant keep up with her jealousy and constant need for attention and that he needs to concentrate on his studies; this is in January. They hook up one night and Rachel thinks she's pregnant again though she'd taken the morning after pill. Rachel comes up to me and asks me to help her get him back and aid her into manipulating him to get back with her because " you're his friend too and good at convincing people and how dare he dump me; no one dumps me, I dump them". She starts saying that she identifies with Amy from "Gone Girl" and talks to our other friends and classmates about how in love she is and in pain from heartbreak. She talks to Dean's friends to help her, cries in front of them till they comfort her, flirts with them and when they leave promising to talk to Dean about it, she starts talking about how hot they were and once Dean gets back with her, she'll dump him and show him who's the boss. Rachel starts acting really possessive about me and wont accept that I have other friends that I spend my time with. Her behavior starts scaring me a little so I placate her and say that a break is good for them and maybe she should take a little time to think about what she really wants from the relationship. But she says her ego is hurt and cant let this go and starts emotionally blackmailing Dean saying that he is the father of the child in her and that he is trying to shirk his responsibilities and involved most of our friends in it.

I start getting very uncomfortable with how both of them are acting and talk to our other friends about it for help when she starts threatening with suicide and self harm because things like this are triggers for me and I cant handle it on my own.

This goes on till March when she starts talking about how she might need an abortion when Dean calls her and tells Rachel that he's interested in a girl and that he's going to ask the girl out but he didnt want Rachel to be surprised so he's giving her a heads up because he's nice like that.

She starts screaming at me about how I didn't tell her that he was interested in some other girl and that its all my fault and that I was sabotaging their relationship because I'm secretly in love with Dean and to stay out of her life.

I get a panic attack because of that and start cutting myself again. I stop speaking to Rachel and talk to my other friends about it thinking that maybe I did do something wrong by not helping them get back together even though I thought I was right and they said that Dean and Rachel's relationship was not my fault and stopped me from blaming myself. Rachel acts very passive aggressively, telling her friends and our classmates that I'm a b**** who left her when she really needed me.

She convinces Dean to stay with her because now she has no one for support in this 'difficult time'. I'm trying not to break because the 2 people who called themselves my best friends not only stopped talking to me, used their knowledge of my depression to make me do things for them by emotionally harassing me and turned most of our common friends against me.

There were maybe 4 people out of our 12 friends who would even look at me anymore. So I ended up relying more on my other friends who weren't friends with Rachel and Dean than before and ended up telling them everything when I was close to a breakdown.


They helped me get through it and convinced me to work for our exams ans forget about the incident. We're on our summer break right now and after months of having no contact, Dean texts me accusing me of telling other people their private things. This hurt me a lot because even the friends that I'd told things about already knew what was going on with Rachel either from her or her other friends. The very reason I'd decided to trust them to tell me if I was in the wrong and my experiences with Dean and Rachel were because they already knew about things going on with them. But because of Dean and Rachel's constant accusations I keep doubting myself.

I am someone who prides myself on being able to critically analyse myself and be able to admit it when I have done something wrong and try to make it right. But this whole experience has been very traumatizing for me and I need to at least make peace with my actions (wrong or right) and move on before I get back to university next week. I need to be confident on my analysis of my actions as right or wrong. At times I believe that I was justified in my actions even if it might not have been the best way to go about it. But sometimes I keep blaming myself for everything. Can you help me? Did I betray Rachel and Dean? Am I a bad person?