@len the groups in highschool were chill and generally interest-based and I think everyone thought they had it all worked out and didn't interfere with anyone else

well, from my perspective, anyway. there was mild drama but I was insulated from it, I guess.

the last few years have let me come up with a hypothesis of what kept going wrong with my relationships in highschool
1. being an apparently attractive but quiet guy comes with expectations on how one will behave
2. being a girl, actually, seems to have completely misaligned my expectations from everyone else's expectations
3. being ace-aligned* made me approach the whole thing at right angles to everyone else anyway

the one relationship I had that didn't violently implode ... turns out she's bi! go figure.

but yeah my social life at school was sufficiently compartmentalised that I could just avoid my ex('s) for the year or so till stuff stopped being too weird

* not enough data to be more specific but everyone else talks about this stuff very differently to my comprehension