I think my straight best friend may have feelings for me (long)

Hello! And a warning: This will be a long wall of text.

I came here to seek some advice regarding my best friend. About me: I don't like labels, I believe that people fall in love with a person, not their gender, race, ethnicity etc. I loved a woman before, but I do feel more attracted to men than women. I have not told my best friend of my attraction to men since he has always been very homophobic. I really believe he would accept me as I am, but I'm afraid that it would make things between us weird still. We've been best friends since we were little kids, and we're both in our mid-twenties now. We've always been very close, to the point that people thought we're gay but it's always been a purely platonic relationship. I was never attracted to him. I always saw him more like a brother.

Now, in the last few months, things have changed. We've grown closer than ever before. He started spending every weekend at my my place, and then even stayed many nights during the week. Then he was off work for three weeks while I was on break from uni/school. He stayed with me the whole time. Every day we spent together. Not only that, his behaviour towards me has changed. He had always been very apprehensive of physical contact with other guys because he thinks „that's gay and I don't want people to think I'm a homo“. He behaved like a typical super straight homophobic guy, that uses homophobic slurs all the time and who would constantly talk about women and boobs etc. He's been with women and came to me with "women problems" and I always 100% believed he was straight.

But lately, he's become very touchy-feely with me. He seeks body contact in ways he never did before. At night, we usually watched a movie, and he would often rest his head on my shoulder and stay that way for the whole movie. He would lean against me or touch my leg and when I would look at him he would quickly pull away, stare at the TV and avoid eye contact. He ruffled my hair and told me it was so nice and soft. One time he hugged me tightly from behind and held me for a minute before letting me go, and then acted like nothing happened. He tickeled me under my arms, squeezed my nipples and grabbed my waist, saying he's joking. And he did those things every single day. I'd always laugh, thinking it's just jokes. But he never really touched me in the past so I didn't know how to react. He made some new friends last year and I told myself that he probably lost his fear of physical contact with men through them.

But during the last few weeks he declined all invitations from his other friends, telling me he'd rather spend time with me. He acts very „macho“ around other people. But alone with me, he's much quieter and kinder. He called me honey many times and said it's a joke. But the two weirdest things he said were: „It's a shame you weren't born as a girl, then I could marry you.“ and one time after I told him I'd go take a shower: „Or we could shower together“. I looked at him surprised and then he gave me a weird look and said: „I love you“. Another moment passed and he laughed (but he was blushing!) and said „Dude, that was a joke!“. I turned around and took a shower, not knowing what to respond.

Now I haven't seen him in a week. He wants to stay at my place this weekend again and I can't stop thinking about his behaviour. What should I make of it? Has he just gotten more comfortable with body contact or is there more? I think he might have started to develop feelings of a more romantic nature towards me and it's messing with me. He was often worried about people thinking we're gay and, as homophobic as he is, I believe that if it's true, he wouldn't admit it. Even if it's all just jokes, I'm afraid that my feelings for him will change if he keeps being so affectionate, cuddling in front of the TV and telling me things like "I love you" (who says that as a joke??). I fear I've started to like him than a pure platonic friend already. I miss him, I look forward to the weekend, but I don't want to be romantically/sexually attracted to him because I fear this could change our great friendship.

If you've read this far: Thank you very, very much. I guess I would just like some reactions. What would you do in my situation?

 

Thank you all for your replies. :icon_wink

A part of me just really wants to come out to him. Get it out of the way, so I can be completely free around him. But I'm also really scared of the possible consequences. I know that he cares deeply for me but still he has so many issues with homosexuality that I'm not sure if it may impact our relationship in a negative way.

I know his parents well and they are indeed homophobes (as well as his uncle and aunt and cousin, whom I know a bit too), so his family and upbringing definitely played a big part in shaping his homophobia. I really pisses me off when I keep hearing words like homo and faggot come out of his mouth but I always try to keep his upbringing in mind and to educate him. I tell him he's not a teenager anymore, he should be more mature, tolerant and open-minded. I tell him love is love and we do not choose who we fall in love with. Sexual orientation is not a black and white subject, there are many shades and they are all normal. He asked why I always defend LGBT people so much, so maybe he does suspect something, I do not know. I want to prepare him and try to educate him more first, make him more ready to receive the truth about this part of me that he doesn't know about.

I don't know why his behaviour has started to bother me so much in the last few days. It went on for months and I didn't really think about it much. Only now, maybe because I haven't seen him a while. He's a big part of my life and I just want to know why he treats me with so much more affection all of a sudden. He acts like such a tough guy with other people but with me he's completely different. He's been super nice to me, and I think I just liked all the affection he gave me. He did things like washing my clothes or making me breakfast and bringing it to bed (I found that so adorable...) and then there's all the touching and body contact. It just confuses me, it honestly felt like we're a couple already and I want that confusion to end.

Oh god, even if I do come out to him, I'd be terrified to tell him that his behaviour could change my feelings for him. If it turns out that he does not like me romantically after all, it will freak him out, I'm sure. He'll be scared to give me any ambiguous signals and it would make things between us weird. As I've said before, he's always worried about people thinking we're a couple. He would tell me to not walk so closely next to him, or make sure to sit in front of me in the bus instead of on the seat next to me, etc. It's like paranoia, and it really pisses me off. I know he has issues, and I think he is insecure behind his tough guy facade but if he would start that kind of shit when we're alone, I couldn't deal with it. That kind of thing makes me mad very quickly.

I'm not going to come out to him yet. I need more time to think this through first. Your plan sounds good. I have actually just gone with it a few times, not the cuddling but the tickling and more "playful" stuff. In the end we were laying in bed with him on top of me, tickling each other. Is that a normal thing to do for a grown straight man when he's alone with his buddy? I don't know. None of my other male friends do stuff like that with me. I decided that it just confused me more and stopped.

I'm still thinking about that "I love you" he said to me. It's just weird that he would start making jokes like that after more than two decades of friendship. I think with his issues with homosexuality, he would likely deny it if he were indeed attracted to me. Maybe if I just came out to him, like mapleluv said, he would gain the confidence to admit it if it were really the case. But I'm not ready yet, although I'm getting impatient, I no longer want to be confused. I'll see how he acts on the weekend, until then I'll have a pretty busy week with uni, that'll distract my mind from this hopefully.

Thank you again. I hope I'll have more clarity soon.