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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!