I'm falling in love with my best friend

[confusion352]

Okay so this is the first time I've ever gone to people I don't even know on a situation they probably don't care about. This is one matter I just can't take to my best friend. See, I'm falling so hard for him. I'm 18 and and I've had bad experiences in the past with boyfriends. I get used annd abused and so finally I hardened my heart and didn't let anyone else inside it.

 

I have three really close friends and all of them happen to be of the male persuasion so there is a lot of things I go through that they don't understand. I became really partial to one of them though and we hit it off really well, we'll call him John for the sake of this discussion. John and I are basically attached at the hip, we do everything together and we talk non stop. Betweet texting and msn, we're never out of reach of eachother. But lately it seems like conversations have been getting deeper and more caring. There is a point where a line is crossed between friend care, and lover care.

 

So a little while back I decided that I wasn't going to feel this way about him anymore, I loved and cherished him as a friend too much to jeopardize our relationship. I pushed the feelings away and into the soles of my feet and for a while it worked, I started flirting with this other guy fairly seriously and John got really jealous. I continued to flirt with other guys but it seemed to affect our (john and I) relationship negatively. So i stopped.

 

So here's the point when I really realized that I was in love with John. I started to crush really heavily on this guy that I work with, he is a whole lot older than me (by 16 years) but we started flirting back and forth at work and just having harmless fun and one day I told one of my girlfriends about this 34 year old guy and she was totally grossed out, but as I told her more, her look changed and it caused me to start listening to my description of his personality and his abilities and I stopped in the middle of the sentence and said "oh my god, I'm in love with john."

 

So I'm not exactly sure what I should do about john. I know that I love him with all my heart and want to keep him in my life forever. Do I take a chance with him and go deeper? Do I stay quiet and let him make a move? But all I know is that he feels something too. He implied it the other night in a text he sent me, but he didn't directly say it. I really need to know what to do... and I will answer anyquestions that people have about this. This is important to me.

 

thanks

 

confusion352

[scared and alone]

well, id say go for it. i was in love with my (guy) best friend too. we "dated" for a few months. and obviously, we broke up. but theres no hard feelings anymore. we're still close.

[Rider0375]

If I were in this situation I would go for it.

 

I couldnt live with the potential regret of not saying anything to him. Say something to him and see where it goes.

[ArchToronto]

I was in you situation just recently but I was the guy and my bestfriend was the girl that i fell for.

 

Anyways you could do things two ways:

1) First this is the more fun and easier way. Since you mention you feel he might feel the same way about you, then why don't you increase and escalate your flirting with him more and see how react? Does he return the flirting or he feels weird by it. If the former then thats good. You could also ask him on a date and see how that goes and go a few more and continue flirting. Hopefully eventually by that time you will have an satisfactory answer or at least know more than right now.

 

2) This method is more scary to do because its more direct. Since you are close you him and talk all the time, you could be more direct and tell him how you feel and see what his reply is.

 

Note: You are scare that if you act on it or tell him how you feel it might make the friendship akward later or or even destroy it. But I doubt it is going to be the latter. For sure if you thought wrong and he doesn't like you back after you confessed to him, then of course its gonna be akward the next time you see or talk to him and will continue to be akward for a while. But if he is a mature guy and a good friend, and same with you, then that akwardness will past and things will get back to normal.

 

good luck, and whatever you do (even though this might sound cliche) just go with your heart and do whatever you want so that in the future you won't regret it

[stevty2889]

Go ahead and go for it. I ended up dating my best friend for about a year after we had known eacother for about 8 years. It ended up not working out as bf/gf, but we are still best friends. Really, I think she was interested before I was, but I had similar reservations about not wanting to risk the friendship.