They’re back together with their long-term partner, but I’m still not over our fling.

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Kia ora Hera,

This is a desperately cliche “should I tell my friend I have feelings for them” inquiry. I’ve recently been thinking a lot about death (in an abstract and non-worrying way) and how I’d feel if this person died and I left how I felt unsaid.

For context, I’ve been close friends with someone for a long time. We’ve known each other through different stages of our lives and have always had an easy connection. Over the years our friendship has occasionally crossed into the intimate realm, once for months at a time, but has always fallen back into friendship with no real discussion around it.

During our months-long “fling” I developed feelings for my friend, but before I could let them know how I felt they got back together with their long-term partner. However, I don’t think my feelings ever fully reset. I genuinely love them as a friend, but there’s also something deeper there that I’ve never quite been able to put away.

What I’m struggling with is whether there’s any merit in getting this off my chest and telling them my honest feelings. We spend quite a lot of time together and talk almost every day and I am worried that telling them how I feel will mean they’ll reconsider our entire friendship and potentially not want to be friends anymore.

I am still on the apps and dating but I fear that my feelings for my friend are holding me back from being fully open to other connections that may be waiting for me out there. It’s also just taking up a lot of mental energy thinking about what I should do in this situation which more generally feels like a bad use of my one short life.

Is it selfish of me to throw my love confession spanner in the works of my friend’s (albeit, fairly dull and uninspiring) relationship? Is there a world where voicing this to them is the best thing, knowing I have to accept whatever fallout comes from that? Or is the more generous choice to stay quiet and keep trudging on?

Yours sincerely,

(Slightly) Morbidly Musing

Dear Morbidly Musing,

I’m not going to tell you what to do, because the idea of accidentally ruining someone’s life by glibly telling them to follow their heart from the safety of my sofa, while watching back-to-back Law and Order reruns, is profoundly irresponsible.

However, I don’t think the selfish/generous axis is necessarily the best way to think about this problem. 

Yes, it’s selfish to risk breaking up someone else’s long-term relationship, but is it any better, ethically speaking, to skulk around the wings, secretly hoping for their relationship to catastrophically implode, leaving you free to swoop in and pick the skeleton clean? 

There will likely be a lot of irritated readers who empathise with your friend’s partner in this scenario. I feel for them too, no matter how dull and uninspiring their relationship allegedly is. But protecting the feelings of other people’s significant others is not your job.

There are some moments in our lives when it’s fine, perhaps even good, to be a little selfish. Exiting a sinking cruise liner, for example. Romantic love is another such scenario. It’s not your responsibility to protect the sanctity of your friend’s relationship. If your friend hears your confession and decides they want to be with you, that’s tough on their partner, who will almost certainly hold a permanent grudge. On the other hand, it doesn’t really seem like you like them that much, so who cares?

Let me be clear. I am not telling you this is a good idea. I’m simply saying that trying to analyse this from a pseudo-ethical perspective is a waste of time. Love, as they say, is a battlefield, and you’re not under the Hippocratic oath. 

The more relevant and difficult question to answer is whether confessing your feelings will ruin a friendship with someone you obviously care deeply about. 

To be fair, it doesn’t exactly sound like you have a traditional friendship, considering you have a long history of short flings. It sounds like one of those amphibious sort of friendships which is able to grow lungs and haul itself up on dry land when the situation demands it. I don’t mean to pass judgment. Sometimes the line between platonic and romantic is a little wobbly, and it can take a little trial and error to figure out what you mean to each other. 

In a way, you’re starting with a leg up on other letter writers, who write in wanting to know how to transition a strictly platonic friendship into a romantic relationship. But perhaps there’s some good reason why the two of you haven’t taken that final step? Not every great love wallops you over the head at first sight. But do you have any intuitive sense about whether your friend actually reciprocates these feelings? 

I do think you’re right to be concerned that telling your friend how you feel will A) make them reconsider your entire friendship and B) potentially not want to be friends anymore. With regards to A, surely having them reconsider your entire friendship is the primary objective? If you’re not secretly hoping they’ll jettison their current LTR for you, I really don’t see the point. 

The reality is, if you confess your feelings and they’re not reciprocated, the likelihood that it will permanently alter your friendship is high. Many relationships survive this kind of confession, given time, but it’s a lot riskier when the other person is already in a long-term relationship. Your friend’s partner would be well within their rights to demand the erasure of your name from the mutual address book, and you have to be prepared for this eventuality. 

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it. But in order to make a decision, I would advise you to be very clear about how you feel and what you’re prepared to risk. 

How sure are you about your feelings? Are they strong enough that continuing on without expressing them would feel unbearable and disingenuous, or are they something you’re able to put in cold storage and wait for a more convenient time? Would you confess tomorrow if your friend were single? What’s more important: protecting your friendship above all else, or being honest with your friend in the hope it might lead to something more? 

I think your decision should ultimately come down to doing a little emotional arithmetic, balancing the intensity of your feelings with the importance you place on this friendship, and finding a solution you’re able to live with. 

My advice is to take your time. You’ve been friends for years, and judging from your letter, it seems like your feelings have only recently intensified, so you don’t have to be in a hurry to figure out what it means. Yes, one of you might drop dead tomorrow, and if the only thing holding you back is a vague sense of moral responsibility, by all means, throw caution to the wind. But it’s obvious this person means a lot to you, so it’s worth really knowing what you want to say before you say it, when the stakes are this high.