I am actually going through this right now, with someone to whom I have been a REALLY good and supportive friend over the years. It’s very painful, but she refuses to recognize that she committed a terrible avlah of loshon hara against someone very close to me, and has turned it around on the other person, who truly is innocent of any wrongdoing. Though there are typically “other sides to the story,” in this case there truly is only one side. This person publicly embarrassed the other person and later on maliciously lied about that person on top of the original humiliation, to people who would take the liar at her word.
What is truly bizarre – this person cannot understand why I am so angry about her behavior, and wants to know why I don’t want to be friends with her anymore. I tried to give her an understanding of what hurt and damage she caused, but she refuses to see it and put the onus on me for being upset with her. If anyone here knows me at all by now, I HATE being in machlokess with anyone. I even told this friend that we should try to just move forward and put this chapter behind us, to which she agreed, conditional to my never mentioning the incident again, and then she went and dredged it up pubblicly AGAIN, after I already agreed and let the issue drop.
Any eitzos, beside dropping this friendship, which already seems to be a moot point? Is there any way to repair such a machlokess? The irony is that the person whom she maligned is a rodef sholom, and an extremely gentle and kind baal chessed.