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Q: I’m Meant to Be Straight, But I’m In Love With My Gay Best Friend
Dear KitschMix,
Firstly, I’ve always considered myself straight. But now I find myself in love with my best friend who is a woman. We’ve been close friends forever and she’s just adorable. We’re always laugh and joke around. We wear the same things (twinning). I go to all of her football games and even stay at her house. We are forever video chatting and if not, we’re texting. I spend my weekends with her, and I tell her everything and she tells me everything. I trust her with my life. She knows more about me than anyone and I know more about her than anyone. When I’m with her all I can do is smile. I really don’t know where I would be without her.
A few months ago, we went out, and started dancing close, and ended up kissing. She told me she liked me and I told her I liked her. But then we both laughed it off as a drunken thing, and said nothing more.
But now she told me she’s met this other woman. I hated her before we’d even met, even though I had no reason to. I just hated her cause she was dating my best friend. And when we did meet there was tension, she didn’t like the way my friend and me were around each other.
Now my friend is annoyed with me. She can tell I don’t like this other woman, but I can see she really likes her. What do I do? The feelings are getting a lot stronger. What do I do? I know I’m in love with her, but I get the feeling my best friend doesn’t trust me because all she has ever know me to be is ‘straight’. Help!
First of all, I can’t help but laugh at your initial question. I’m sure you’re coming to realize this already, but your sexuality pays very little attention to who you want to be. You are who you are, and if you’re lucky, you learn to embrace it. New research suggests that women are never really straight anyway – and I’m a firm believer that very few people are exclusively gay or straight. Sexuality is a broad spectrum, and I believe in the “exception” theory. (That is, there has to be at least one person of your not-preferred-gender that would get you to “change teams”. Mine’s Johnny Depp.)
Second, there is also a (blurred) line between Best Friend Love and Romantic Love. Sometimes this line gets muddied, and we can get confused. This isn’t necessarily what you’re going through, but unless you are 100% sure that you’re not just curious, it’s best if you let your friend enjoy the presence of her girlfriend. Even if you don’t like her, you need to remember that it’s probably coming from a place of jealousy. And if it turns out she’s really not such a good person, hey – your friend will (maybe) heed your advice and dump her. But you’ve got to wait until there is a legitimate reason to not like this girl, or you’re going to look crazy.
Let’s address the possibility that you are definitely in love with your friend. If she wasn’t in a relationship, I would tell you to confess your feelings – the overwhelming fear of the unknown often helps keep us from finding out what might have been. But nobody likes a homewrecker, so you’ll need to do your best to be fair for now. If this woman turns out to be the love of her life, wouldn’t you rather she be happy with someone that’s not you?
That’s not to say that you can’t still express your feelings for her, but you need to be a little graceful with how you do. I’d suggest you try to come out to her first. Let her know that the drunken kiss wasn’t fueled as much by the alcohol as she thought. Tell her you are questioning your sexuality and that she prompted this questioning. Don’t do anything to try and break up her relationship, or you could risk losing her as a friend, too.
One of the hardest thing about this whole situation is that it’s going to be a lesson in “life doesn’t care about your plans”. As much as we’d like to pretend we can influence the situation, really we can’t. If she’s into you and things don’t work out with her girlfriend, she may give you a chance – but if she doesn’t want you, or her girlfriend turns serious, she probably won’t. All you can do is hope for the best and be honest about how you feel.
I wish you the best, reader, and I hope that my advice has helped – please feel free to contact us again if you need anything else!
2 thoughts on “I’m Meant to Be Straight, But I’m In Love With My Gay Best Friend”
I fell for you, i fell for a straight girl, she knows my feelings… We spent time together, kissed, had fun, even the words ‘ i love you’ was said to one another, because it was real, but every time i asked to make it exclusive with her, something stopped her, and she always ended up saying, she is straight, but she is inlove with me, loves me. It still rips me apart just thinking about it. At the end she said to me, i must move on, find a girl thats lesbian…. And it tore me apart even more, because we love each other so much. After that, now we dont even speak, but she is constantly on my mind, and its messing me up.
I once was in your situation, more than two years ago but kind of the opposite way. See, I had a friend who was in love with a men. In fact, they’ve been together for 2 years and I was with someone too since a year. I started to develop some feelings for my «straight» friend but i tried to push them away since I was in a relationship and she was too. Time passed and the feeling grew a little more everyday since we were really good friends and went at the same college. Anyway, after a few months I decided to leave my girlfriend and tell my true feelings to my friend even tho she was still with her boyfriend. I wanted to be true to myself. It ended up she kind of liked me but she was afraid of this all new situation and decided to stayed with her boyfriend. I was sad for sure but I wasn’t upset. I’m pretty sure if the things would have gone the other way I would be the one who was a little but scared of the situation. I think you should be true to yourself and tell your friend. At least you’ll feel better with the truth being said. In my case, I was lucky because a year later, she came back to me. Telling me her feeling never go and that she wasn’t scared anymore. We are now in a relationship for more than a year and I couldn’t be happier. All of this started because I decided to be true to myself. I you can, I think you should find a way to talk this trough with your friend. She might be kind of scared, she might need some time to think, she might need some space but you’ll never know if you don’t tell her.
Hope my story will help a bit.
And sorry for the bad english, it’s not my first language.