Not sure what to do about my crush on another guy...

Hey this is my first post so sorry if it's badly written!

Over the past few months I've developed a crush on a guy I know and now I can't stop thinking about him all the time, it's now controlling my life!
For a couple of years I've known i'm bisexual but thought I was heteroromantic. But then I met a guy who I now have a huge crush on. I would say it's more than just a sexual crush but it's not easy to know. If he was straight I'd probably have just tried to get over it, but he identifies as bi with a preference for women and used to identify as gay (not sure if that often happens or if he's gone back in the closet partially?). Either way it makes me feel like their could be a chance.

He seems to have very little luck with girls, (lots of sex but no even short term relationships). I used to think he did that just because he enjoyed sex and wasn't bothered about relationships, but over time i've found that really he does it because he's very insecure about how he looks and it makes him feel better about himself. Overall i've seen this make him pretty depressed alot of the time, and have started to feel almost protective towards him, I check up on him alot and I hope he isn't weirded out by it, although generally he just tells me that i'm a really nice guy so I think he probably just sees it as me being nice.

I'd mostly accepted that nothing would ever happen between us, until one night we ended up making out. Although it kind of started as a bit of a joke, I really enjoyed it and it was obvious he did as well. I suppose that's when I started spending alot of my time thinking about him.

Now I'm actully seriously considering asking him if he'd be interested in a relationship, if he was I would definitely give it a try, and if I knew he wasn't then i'd be able to start getting over it and accepting we'll only ever be friends. But i'm scared he might be quite weirded out by it and I might lose him as a friend. I also don't know how i'd approach doing it, as i've never had a relationship with another guy before. Really, I'd like to find out somehow if he'd consider a relationship with a guy these days - he's done it in the past but that was back when he identified as gay. But i'm not sure how i'd even ask that without the possibility of him being weirded out.

It's one of those situations where it's just hard to know what to do, risk losing a friendship or just take the safe option?

I'd guess this is probably not that uncommon a situation, has anyone been in a similar situation before and can offer any advice?

 

ok thanks for the advice everyone It's really helpful to know what some other people think, and thanks for the ideas. In terms of asking him out, that's more what I was thinking really, probably badly worded in my last post. Does anybody have any ideas how I could do that? It probably sounds a bit bad to say this but in the past i've always relied on alcohol when asking people out, I now can't drink much so not completely sure how I would actually do it!