Falling in love with my best friend?

Yeah, so this is a really delicate subject for me, but here it goes...

I'm pretty sure I'm in love with my best friend. We met about two years ago, at the beginning of my freshman year in college - she's a year ahead of me. We started hanging out a lot and became really good friends. She was the first person I came out as trans and asexual to earlier this year. She's panromantic, but she has made it clear that she's not interested in me and I told her the same thing, but as time has gone on, I've felt closer and closer to her and I think I'm in love with her... I get butterflies in my stomach whenever she's around and I always get excited when she and I talk. I had a dream the other night where she transferred to another college and I couldn't handle being apart from her...

To make this even more complicated, we're both already in relationships. She's completely in love with her boyfriend and... my relationship with my boyfriend is complicated... he loves me a lot, but I don't know if I'm able to reciprocate his feelings, but I don't want to break up with him and hurt him...

I've fallen in love with a different friend in the past (I would have called him my "best friend" at the time) and the realization of how I felt about him ended up driving us apart. I really don't want that to happen a second time. My friend is an amazing girl and I'm just afraid that it would be too painful to not tell her, but telling her would drive us apart...


So, yeah, my life is just one big mess and I don't know how to fix it... Help?

 

Thanks. *hugs* I do have several other friends - I just spend more time with her than others. I'm going to try and spend more time with my other friends - I can see what you mean by "emotional distance", though.

I probably should have made that clearer - this friend is the only one I've fallen for since I met my boyfriend. I really do feel a connection to my boyfriend, but when I think about my friend, I get unsure about how I feel. It's all very confusing... the other friend I've fallen for was quite a while ago (almost 7 years now). I do love my boyfriend, but when my friend gets into my mind, it messes with my emotions a lot and that's when I start to doubt... I wrote the OP when I felt really strongly emotional towards my friend, and these feelings kinda ebb and flow.

I understand completely. I'm not going to try a relationship with her - I know it's only going to end in disaster for both of us, just like it did with my other friend 7 years ago. I think that instead, I'm going to write a story to get my feelings out about how I feel about her.