[19m][20f] We are really close friends(for four years) with some history, and she is in her third serious relashionship right now and everytime she tells me stuff like this I go into shock and start acting all quiet, should I stop being friens with her? Or at even stop talking to her?

Me and her hooked up once a few years ago, which made me catch feelings for her, it was not mutual and honestly I was very annoying and suffered from a little bit of Main character syndrome. So we stopped talking for months until she asked me if we could talk to each other again, to which I reluctantly accepted. We were getting along pretty well because I finally was willing to listen to her and to because I grew in maturity in the time we ware apart, to the point of me not only liking her again but falling in love, she is the only person I ever fell in love with, but eventually I found out she was working on a relashionship with someone who isn’t me. It really broke me to find this out by accident and that I found out too that she was planning on telling me that when they were official, not only did it kill my hopes to be with her but it also made me question how the people around me(familly, close friends, myself) saw me. She didn’t want us to distance again so I even more reluctantly gave her what she wanted, it didn’t make me feel better. Flashforward, they broke up, I finally accepted that my family and friends do genuinely like me, and me and her went back to talking normaly again, she began another relashionship, we kept talking but much less, they broke up, and me and her returned to talking. We became really close, more than friends kind of close but not close to the point of her wanting to be with me, tbh I sometimes feel like just a means for her to get validation, I am not in love with her but she and I agree that the reason we can be so at ease with each other is because of the long history we have with each other. But still, she just told me a few days ago that she was dating someone and this time it didn’t broke me, just shocked me to the point of not wanting to eat for hours. Still, she doesn’t want us to fall apart and wants us to keep being as close as the most close we have ever been, I love her and the person she is and I love the chemistry we have but I don’t want to keep being close to someone just because of the thought or little stupid hope that she might choose me, but I also know that saying this to her would really hurt her, which is why that if I choose to step away it would be without telling her because I don’t want to be a burden to her. For the record, I tried to move on and it always led nowhere. So, 2023 is upon me, I want to be better and to open myself to the world around me, and therefore I ask you people this, should I maintain a beautiful a little bit more than friendship but less than romentic relashionship with her at the experience a low but constant level of pain everytime we interact? Or should I do the harder but maybe healthier and more selfish thing and step away quietly from her and try to move on?

tl;dr : I don´t know if I should keep talking to a person I’ve been in love with before who is now in a relationship