Closeted lesbian in long term streight relationship with best friend! Help!

I am a lesbian. There's no more denying it or fighting it or hoping to be anything else. That's who I am and I've tried to change it but I can't.

I met my boyfriend in middle school. This is around the time I started questing my sexuality but I come from an extremely conservative family and simply ignored it. We started hanging out in high school and I only wanted to be friends but he kept pushing for more so I gave him what he wanted thinking that it was the only way we could still hang out.

We weren't sexual until college and I didn't enjoy any of it. I tried. I wanted to but I couldn't. I found that if I thought about women that I could find the act bearable, but that only broke the illusion that I made for myself. I no longer could pretend I was straight.

I explored this on my own and came out as bi to a select handful of friends. I had to be bi, didn't I? I mean I did love my boyfriend and romantic love and sexual love are the same feeling, right? At the time I thought so. Even though I admitted that I preferred women to men, I still thought that loving my best friend made me bi. After all, he was the best friend I ever had.

We did everything together. What we have has always felt more like a very close friendship than a romantic relationship. I always had issues with the whole boyfriend thing and preferred to call him my partner or sometimes even simply my best friend. It was as confusing for us as for other people so I eventually gave up and just went with the status quo. He was both. I had to accept that. After graduating college I met a girl who I was crazy about. A streight girl. She is to this date the biggest crush I've ever had.

We're good friends. She has a boyfriend. This is around the time I started identifying as pans. It made sense to me as it felt like gender was less defined. Love was about love and not about gender, right?

My boyfriend and I hadn't had sex since college. I told him I wasn't comfortable but we could still fool around and stuff so long as I didn't have to touch it or heaven forbid put it in my mouth (which I still haven't done to this day). It was around the time I started my new job that I started to realize that I wanted nothing to do with men physically. The thought of having sex with men seemed gross to me, whereas I fantasized about women daily. I never even had sexual thought about fictional men or celebrates, but I had these thought about women all the time.

I had to tell my boyfriend I was gay. Simply gay. I told him that I loved him but not the way he wanted me to and that he was my best friend. He told me that we could try to compromise. He said that I was his best friend too and that he didn't want to lose me. That losing 10 years of friendship would kill him. That he's already lost too many friends before. That if we broke up we wouldn't be able to be friends anymore. That people wouldn't understand. What about our stuff? What about bills? What about the cats?

I decided that in order to preserve our friendship that I would compromise. We don't have sex, just foreplay. But it's getting harder to put up with. I don't like having to pretend to be ok with the relationship part of our relationship. Nobody knows besides him. Everyone else thinks I'm bi. I don't know what to do. Staying with him requires compromise on both of our ends but it's all we know and it's a comfortable (although a bit lavender) lifestyle. Breaking up with him would force him out of my life forever. I can't do that. I can't lose the one constant who has always been here in my life just because his sexual organs don't match my natural desires...

I have no idea what to do. This is a daily struggle for me and neither option is good. I feel like the longer I drag this out the more I risk hurting him but I'll hurt him either way. I'm in too deep and all of this hurts. We never got married to avoid complications but our lives are so intertwined it feels like it would be a divorce. I just don't know anymore. Has anyone else experienced this?

Too long didn't read? I'm a closeted gay woman who has been in a ten year long relationship with my male best friend and I don't know how to balance my feelings and our friendship.