Been ‘friends’ with this girl for two years, I don’t know what to do

As the title says, I’ve been ‘friends’ with this girl (we’re young adults) for two years, and across that period we’ve grown very close, sharing a lot of of really nice moments, both platonic and non-platonic. To be clear, I think it’s safe to say that we’ve both definitely felt this way about each other at one point or another, but that doesn’t seem to be the case currently.

For the vast majority of my time knowing her, though, I’ve been at odds with myself about the status of our relationship. She’s dated a few people over this period despite my interests (she knows that I feel this way), and I’ve seen some other people myself but I’ve always had my heart set on her. As such, my time with her has made me a drastically anxious person, and yet for all of my worrying, the thing I fear the most is that in leaving her I’ll be leaving behind one of the best things I’ve ever known in my life.

I recognise this doesn’t sound good, and I’m inclined to agree – but I’ve known her for *two years* (maybe that’s not a long time to some, but it damn sure feels like it to me). What’s more, we’ve been doing well recently: we speak regularly, she seems enthusiastic, and I’ve begun to settle into the idea that my life shouldn’t revolve around whether or not she gives me romantic attention. In fact, things have been improving for a while.

But just tonight, on an anxious whim (which I had hoped I no longer felt), I looked through the people liking photos on her social media account, and saw decently (but not totally) conclusive evidence that she’s dating another guy. I don’t resent her for this if it is happening – and nor should I – but I’d be lying if I said that finding these things out didn’t hurt. What’s worse, it would mean that she probably had been hiding this from me, because I had heard nor seen any mention of it outside of his social media.

Tonight, I wanted to delete all of our photos, and calmly tell her that I’m not strong enough to keep being friends with her, but I didn’t, because as I often wonder; won’t I be a stronger person by enduring this? And shouldn’t I be able to handle being friends with someone who doesn’t currently share my feelings? In my opinion, if there’s anything worse than this feeling, it’s the idea that I’ll never be able to rise above it.

On the other hand, I hate who I am when I discover this stuff. It only gets easier every time, but I don’t want to be enslaved to these feelings. If that’s impossible, I just hope they keep getting easier to handle.

So I suppose the reason I’ve written all of this is to get an unbiased opinion about what I should do. Leaving her now feels like cutting off my nose to spite my face, and a little selfish, seeing how nicely everything with her has been going of late. But on the other hand, what if this sort of relationship is an invaluable life experience, regardless of whether or not it pans out?

I just want to make the right decision here, whatever that is. I think it’s been long enough that I can stomach either option.