this post was submitted on 14 Feb 2024
81 points (98.8% liked)
[Outdated, please look at pinned post] Casual Conversation
6603 readers
1 users here now
Share a story, ask a question, or start a conversation about (almost) anything you desire. Maybe you'll make some friends in the process.
RULES
- Be respectful: no harassment, hate speech, bigotry, and/or trolling
- Encourage conversation in your post
- Avoid controversial topics such as politics or societal debates
- Keep it clean and SFW: No illegal content or anything gross and inappropriate
- No solicitation such as ads, promotional content, spam, surveys etc.
- Respect privacy: Don’t ask for or share any personal information
Related discussion-focused communities
- !actual_discussion@lemmy.ca
- !askmenover30@lemm.ee
- !dads@feddit.uk
- !letstalkaboutgames@feddit.uk
- !movies@lemm.ee
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
That's a complicated place to be in and I wish you the best. Until I found my current partner, I'd fallen into a similar friendship / romance pattern with a few friends and it does suck to have both unrequited love and a friendship built off it.
You said you just want her to be happy and I believe you. You can still be a good friend to her despite those feelings do don't ever feel like that friendship is built on your love, even if that's how it started.
It's totally up to you how you progress, you could choose that distance between the two of you helps let that desire simmer until you meet someone else and wonder how you felt so strongly now, or you can make your love known and see where it takes you, which is whaf I'd recommend. If you do this, then both of you are able to take action about it and nothing is left disingenuous. Perhaps it's mutual and that's fantastic, but if it isn't it puts her in the same position as you, which is deciding how to navigate your friendship going forward knowing about this aspect of it.
The other option, which I absolutely would not recommend is continuing to hide these feelings and try to be a good friend regardless. A good friend is trustworthy and can give sincere advice on things like love and dating which is really difficult if you are romantically interested in the person who you give advice to. Even if you mean well and don't try to keep the person you want to be with from being with other, any time a potential person comes up, you will inevitably compare their worst traits to your best. Not just is this insincere, even if you can't tell in the moment, watching them have feelings for someone else will really hurt.
I think I've had strong romantic feelings for a close friend or best friend 4 times in my life. Once was in school and she never knew so whatever. One time it became obvious and basically ruined the friendship and caused both of us a lot of hurt and without a best friend. The most recent two times were a little different, I was between two friendgroups and sort of ended up in this situation in both. One is now my partner of 4 years and the other is my best friend who I no longer feel that way for. I do think that the final case here would have ended badly if not for the fact that I found the other person in that period.
I've done a lot of rambling here but you really should let them know, it's probably the most difficult of the choices to do but also no happiness can come from the other options.