I'm [22M] in love with my same-sex male best friend [22M], who doesn't know that I'm bisexual. I don't know what to do.

To be honest, I'll start by saying that I'm not entirely sure if I'm actually bisexual, I'm just assuming that I am. This is the first guy that I think I've fallen in love with. We've been best friends for 10 years now; we're both 22. We were always close, and I don't know If I always loved him romantically, or if it was just platonic. Point being, I was always with him, doing things we love, and it just made me super happy. Meanwhile, I had been seeing and dating girls, and him as well. I slowly faded out of the dating game after a few nasty heartbreaks, and that made me just spend even more time with him and become even more emotionally dependant on him. I almost became too clingy, to the point where it caused some serious problems between us at one point because I wasn't able to accept that he had to share his life with his girlfriend, and other friends as well. Things are better now, I've learned to cope with this and accept it. It does still hurt sometimes but I keep it to my self and don't let it affect our relationship.

Anyways, he now has his first serious girlfriend and I'm so freaking jealous of her. We went from being extremely close to just "regular" friends I guess, for lack of a better term. Because he doesn't know that I may actually be in love with him, he tells me things that very close friends would normally tell each other, like the things he does with his girlfriend, sometimes when they sleep together, or if he tried a new thing in bed. I act normally as a friend, but deep down these things kill my heart. I know that I can't continue living like this, where every one of his highlights makes me feel terrible just because I'm not somehow included in them. My life will become miserable, which it already has kind of become. It doesn't help that I've recently moved away for school and am not close to him (or other close friends, for that matter) for 8 months per year.

Also, we have a mutual friend, who became friends with us more recently. This friend has always had a preference for my best friend from day 1, initially because of his lifestyle and whatever (he is very well-off, his entire family drives nice cars, etc.) Because of this he instantly became very close to him by always sucking up to him and basically putting on this fake image to always impress my best friend. He therefore became close to him. Now he always tries to organise things without including me, where it's just them 2, and obviously that makes me feel terrible as well. I don't even need to love someone to know that rejection feels bad, but loving that someone makes it even worse.

Now this is where I believe that I'm in love with him. I have fantasized about things that a straight person would not fantasize about. These feelings are fairly recent when considering the length of our friendship, but they began last year. Our entire group of friends took a trip on a cruise together, and my best friend and I were sharing a bed for the week. We often cuddled and found ourselves physically very close to each other. I'd wake up with him lying his head on my chest, and I really enjoyed it. I like to think he was also maybe exploring his feelings as well, because I refuse to believe that he was asleep the entire time. I'd catch him with his eyes open or even one time moving my arm as I was sleeping to that it cradled him as he slept. Then again, I think that he was maybe more curious than anything, and like me, he hadn't had someone love him in 4+ years, so we were probably both also short on our doses of romantic affection. Being that we were often drunk and spending 24 hours a day together, these things continued for a week, and I fell in love. It wasn't because of this that I love him, but it's like as if that was what sparked it. But for him, those feelings seemed like a write-off. Not long after the trip was over, he began seeing a girl, who is now his present girlfriend. Everything that had happened was if it had never happened. It made me feel stupid, because up until today I don't know if I misinterpreted certain things and mistook them for things that they weren't. And up until today, we never spoke about that week. Even today, I find myself thinking of those moments, and I find myself imagining what it would be like to kiss him, or maybe even more... That's why I know that these feelings aren't platonic anymore.

But whatever that week meant for him doesn't matter. What matters is that it made me fall in love with him. I do have another very close friend that I do talk to my issues about, but it never goes farther than me admitting that I'm jealous that my best friend is giving attention to other people. I'm seeing this friend tomorrow and I am seriously considering letting him know that I may be bisexual, because all of this is eating away at me. I know that my best friend is not gay (or bisexual), and I know that I will never be able to be in a romantic relationship with him. I still love the guy as a friend, but it hurts me so much to see him give attention to his girlfriend, and especially other guy friends. I know that I need to distance myself to move on and eventually be happy, but I've tried, and am unable to. This is because if I do create a separation for a bit of time, my best friend misses me and tries to reconnect, never giving me a chance to move on. If I admit to him my true feelings, our friendship will probably be over forever, and I don't want to lose a decade old friend either.

I used to be in denial that I may be bisexual. I used to reject these feelings and try to normalize what I was feeling. I was raised in a household where homosexuality was shunned, which explains why I was refusing to accept it. But I've come to terms with how I feel. I know that I love him. I find myself thinking about him in the same way I used to think about the girls that I previously loved. I find myself as upset as I used to be when I imagined the person I love in bed with someone else. I find myself feeling the same level of jealousy when other people spent time with him. I've lived through a few heartbreaks already and I found comfort in my best friend. But I started to love him too, and that is starting to twist my heart as well. I can't afford to lose him though, I'm closer to him than family. Losing someone you love is hard, but when they're your best friend too... I don't know what to do.

TL;DR: I've been best friends with a guy for 10 years. I began to grow more emotionally dependant on him once I stopped dating girls, because of heartbreaks. He was also living something similar, making us grow extremely close for a short period of time. This period of time did it for me, it was what made me fall in love with him. I know it's not platonic because I think about him sexually a lot. He now has a girlfriend, and other people that he shares his life with. This makes me extremely jealous and upset. I don't know what to do because keeping things the way they are eats at me little by little, making me gradually feel more miserable, and admitting to him how I feel will make me lose him, which is like losing the person you love and your best friend, at the same time, which I don't think I'll be able to handle. Any advice helps.

Submitted August 01, 2019 at 05:13AM by LukerTheDuker https://ift.tt/335lG3B