Unrequited love with a twist?

My best friend of 10 years is straight, to the point that he claims to not understand how women even find men attractive. He is also in a long-term, deeply committed relationship of 6 years.

As the title states, I'm in a situation of unrequited love, but what makes it even more complicated is that he is in love with me too, but it is a deep, platonic love. He has never given me a reason to believe, using my logical mind, that he is sexually interested in me or in men (although the illogical, ever hopeful mind will read into anything, and does).

I fell in love with him 3 years into our friendship. He was the first person I ever had strong romantic feelings for (I'm a bit of a late bloomer, being 21yo at the time). So there was definitely the issue of coming out for me to deal with as well, but everything was made more confusing because previously I identified as asexual (not a happy conclusion, but I had never had romantic or sexual feelings for another person before). In fact, for the first several months of my infatuation with him, I experienced it as an emotional obsession – it took almost 3 more years for my sexual interest to fully develop. As in, I loved him and wanted to be with him all the time and in all things, and constantly thought about him, but I didn't want to have sex with him until years later, and previously didn't even fantasize about it.

Part of the problem is that he is the sort of person who, unlike me, keeps a very small social circle and holds onto it very tightly – he devotes almost all of his time to his family, his girlfriend, and me. I am his best friend, and he goes to great lengths to demonstrate how much he cares for me. After I had been in love with him for about 8 months, I finally told him everything, and I wasn't sure I could stay friends. But he has gone through thick and thin to stay close, even when he has lived in different parts of the country: we text each other every day, he devotes 1/3rd of his very limited holiday time with me, and he has made beautiful nostalgic gifts of our old photos. He has gone as far as to tell me that if he broke up with his girlfriend it would be devastating, but he would eventually get over it – but that he couldn't imagine life without me. At the same time, he has always emphasized that he doesn't want to lead me on, and that he doesn't hold closeted romantic feelings – in his view we are brothers.

An additional factor is the fact that he is very physically affectionate, but it is always in a platonic way (I sometimes share the same kind of affection with my closest lady friend, with whom I share a mutually platonic relationship). When he and I spend time together, we often drink and look at old photos, and we hug for ages, and sometimes hold hands. We've always shared a bed after a night of drinking (since before I had an ounce of attraction towards him), but now we often lean on one another in the morning, and sometimes even spoon. But I really can attest that it is not sexual for him: I would notice any sort of erection on his part (he tends towards loose clothing that is probably more revealing than he realises).

So now I am in the position of feeling like my thoughts are almost incestual, but I cannot seem to move on. I can't imagine life without this man, even though our relationship causes me a great deal of stress and heartache, and I struggle with an unhealthy, powerful jealousy towards his girlfriend, and I think the rejection reinforces my own internalised homophobia (although he has always been completely accepting of my orientation, ever since I told him). When he first had to move jobs and left with his girlfriend to a different part of the country, it sent me into situational depression which, 3 months later, I only clawed my way out of with the help of meditation. So logically, I can see all the ways in which it is unhealthy. But our bond of mutual love (even with the one-sided sexual aspect) seems too strong to break, and has weathered so many difficulties.

I am left feeling helpless. It does not help that I hate online dating but never seem to meet anyone in real life who is simultaneously attractive and available. I have a hope that if I could fulfil the romantic need in my life with someone else, in the same way he does with his girlfriend, then my feelings towards him will simmer down into a healthy platonic mode – but I have been so far unable to find my significant other towards whom I could direct these feelings of romantic love. I love him dearly and want him to be happy, and I want to be the best friend I can be, so it's especially frustrating that I can't even do that – when I try and reciprocate one of his nostalgic gifts, I find I become too sensitised and start to relapse into feelings of being in love, which leads to further heartache, which leads to me needing to strengthen my walls and avoid being too sentimental, as much as I would love to be (and as much as he would appreciate it).

I know the simplest answer is to let him go and stop being friends, but that seems to be the one thing I can't do. Does anyone have any other advice for some sort of happy ending to this drama?

Cheers

 

Thank you for the thoughtful responses and suggestions, everyone. And Henry, I’m sorry to hear that you’re in a similar situation. It’s brutal.

To clarify a couple of points: I’m now 28 – I met him when I was 18 but didn’t have any romantic stirrings for him until I was 21. For those first 3 years I had only platonic feelings, and it was upon those that our friendship was built. When I came out to him as asexual at 21, he comforted me and held my hand: that simple gesture seemed to unlock the part of me that had been deeply repressed, and everything spiraled out of control from there.

A couple of you suspect he has some feelings for me. I have gone down that road too, but always come up empty. There have been perhaps three times in our friendship in which he seemed to maybe have a sexual interest, but they were fleeting, and in retrospect, probably not motivated by real attraction. The problem I run into with this line of thinking is that even if he is not as straight as he seems, the fact is that any sexual feelings he may have are so weak/repressed that they could never form the foundation for a relationship – the best I could hope for would be short lived tryst – but what I want is a life-partner.

Regarding space: 2 years after I fell for him, I went to live on the other side of the world for a full year (partly to get distance to recover). During the first half of that time, I all but cut off communication (one email a month or so). In the second half, we reconnected over written media and it felt platonic. I thought the part of me that had loved him had finally died and disappeared, but it reared its ugly head shortly after I returned to my home country, but this time with lust added into the mix (I have admitted to him that I now find him sexually attractive, which he seems unbothered by. Although, I also treat the situation of being in love in past tense, as the most intense period has long since abated).

I should add that although we still do have physical intimacy sometimes (usually associated with drinking), I am the one that initiates the majority (but not all by any means) of the leaning and spooning, while he initiates most of the hugs and hand holding. I’ve queried him about it, expressing my concern that he’s only going along with the leaning/spooning because he wants to appease me, but he has always replied that depending on his mood it’s either "good times" or neutral, but not bad.

Actually, to be honest, I think a large part of this intimacy problem is my own doing, at least lately. I haven’t recently told him how I feel about the physical affection, though I came very close once. This is selfish on my part: at the moment he is my only source of intimacy, and I’m afraid to lose it. I can see the futility of my actions here, but my damn loneliness seems to overrule logic. I suppose I’m clinging to the notion that I’ll meet a romantic interest sometime soon, and then when I have intimacy with someone, I can lose it with him.

I appreciate the suggestions to get out and meet more people, which I know I must do. My current difficulty with that is that I recently started a very vigorous training program that’s slated to last several years and affords me almost no down time – and the little free time I have is spent either playing with a music group, trying to maintain friendships, or most often, studying. It leaves me in a bit of a conundrum as to how to meet people, since it seems everyone I know in my program or my music group is either straight, unavailable, or not sexually attractive to me (I wish I were less picky!).

I also agree that if I don’t figure this out then I’m going to end up partner-less in my 40s and 50s, remaining a "side-relationship" to my friend.

Thank you again for the suggestions and advice, and for reading my enormous posts, and I’m sorry to seem like a nay-sayer. I’d love to hear any more thoughts/advice you may have!

 

Thank you for your response, bluesky.

In the second half of that year, our friendship started off a bit muted, but it eventually regained steam and by the time I got home it had pretty much picked up where it had left off. He put a lot of effort into it, with the aforementioned nostalgic photo album, for instance.

It’s true that he must like the physical intimacy in some way, but I think it’s still somehow platonic for him. I am fairly repressed in my ability to make moves on someone, but I would say that I have attempted to push cuddling into a less platonic zone a handful of times, but then he just rolls to the other side of the bed.

Half the time we don’t lean or spoon at all, but it’s frustrating for me because I notice that I start to expect it, to the point that I’ll wake up in a bad mood without it. For that reason, I was considering telling him a few months ago that we should stop sleeping in the same bed and cuddling and so on, because we clearly had mismatched expectations and it really affected my mood. But around the time I was going to do that, I had some other problems in my personal life and got really lonely and chickened out.

Haha, yes he confuses me too. I can reason out part of it at least, though: after I got back from abroad I really thought that I was over things, and I communicated my desire for a normal platonic friendship. I think he is still going off of that, even though my behaviour pretty clearly shows several periods of relapse. As for his statement about his gf… it was really special to hear, but over the years I’m starting to see some incongruence with what he says about her versus how he acts. I think he downplays his relationship with her when we speak of it, perhaps because of my jealousy (which I am fairly honest about).

Unfortunately his girlfriend and I don’t have a great relationship. They started dating right around the time I first fell in love, so there was mad jealousy to deal with (I liked and got along with his previous gfs). She was also the primary reason he ended up having to leave for two years (they wanted to stay here but were co-assigned to a different part of the country and were contractually obliged to go. But, if he had applied individually he almost certainly would have been able to stay). So I have struggled with a great deal of resentment for that, especially since just before he left it seemed like our friendship was perhaps progressing to something else (the barest hints, at least). I tend to avoid talking to people when I think I might speak in anger and say something I regret, and so we haven’t really talked for the last three years. Also, when I've hung out with them together, he insisted on always being in contact with her, with a foot or leg or something (I believe that is how they always interact). At any rate, it makes me feel physically ill, which makes pretending to be happy and fun and social a lot more difficult.

You make a good point, and something I’ve been thinking a lot about. Lately, he’s been busier and texting me a lot less… normally I would express that I want more contact and he would oblige me (and reassure me that I’m not being needy, which I always express concern for), but lately, I’m just letting it go. On the one hand I feel like he’s not addressing my ‘needs’ of being responded to daily, because I will always reply within a day no matter how busy my life is, as he’s a big priority for me. But on the other hand, my needs are hardly fair in the context of a friendship, and I’m thinking that maybe instead of trying to make him act more like a romantic partner, I need to try and act more like a normal friend. The thing is, I’ve gone through this cycle before, so I’m not sure what will happen. I’m just starting to feel like I can’t be his best friend, always prioritizing him above my other friendships, without being in love with him to some extent. Which is especially frustrating when I've gone to hell and back to maintain the best-friendship in spite of this terrible angst.

Thanks Henry, I did tell him at one point that I needed space from him, but I think I softened it by saying I needed space from “couples” like him and his gf in general. Actually, I have probably clarified in drunk conversations since. He feels horrible about it, and has also expressed that he would be a lot MORE cuddly and physically affectionate if he weren’t afraid of making me fall in love with him again.