Tldr: my best friend of ten years told me he’s in love with me, advice on going from a friendship to a relationship?
We have been best friends since the moment we met. I knew he was a very special person and the moment I saw him I knew I wanted to be his best friend. We have always had a very special friendship, we say I love you to eachother and include eachother in important life things. He is polyamorous, I’m not. We are both almost 20. I always felt like I cared more about him than he did about me and that was very painful but I decided to just deal with it because I was too ashamed to talk about it and I didn’t want to end the friendship. When I was 15 16 17 I was in love with him, I dealt with it on my own and I told him about it afterwards.
Later he said that when I said that to him he started thinking about it and he fell in love with me, I don’t remember the specifics but he asked if I would want to be in a relationship with him in a group chat and I had just dealt with my feelings and all the accompanying pain and been somewhat successful in shutting it down that I really couldn’t deal with going back to those feelings again and it was really difficult for me that he had/has relationships with other people so I said something about how it wouldn’t make sense or I didn’t see him that way and that was the end of it.
A couple of days ago we were just walking around town and talking to eachother and we talked about the period I was in love with him, and he said that he is in love with me. I love him a lot, still, and I don’t think much would change about our relationship if it would “officially become a romantic relationship”, it’s still difficult for me that he’s polyamorous but in our friendship right now it’s already difficult so it’s not like there will be more or new problems that aren’t already there. I told him I’d get back to him on what all of this means for our relationship.
So basically I’m asking for advice on how to go from a friendship to a romantic relationship.
3 comments
There will be more problems if he’s poly and you’re not. He won’t be exclusive because that’s not who he is.
Stay clear of involvement u less you are prepared to share him.
I don’t think you should skip over the poly thing because you want to get to all the love stuff. That won’t be less important in a year, it’ll be much more important. Either way, you have a talk with him. Prepare (or buy) nice food, invite him over, have a nice time and tell him how you feel going forward. I would ask him if he’s dead set on staying poly, as you would feel more comfortable being monogamous, if he’s determined to stay poly, you really will have an FWB style thing going forward, I guess?
I suppose it all depends on how well you could cope with him having multiple sexual partners, and what that means to your sexual relationship with him