To preface, my friend and I have been best friends for 17 years. We tend to keep to ourselves when it comes to relationships and don't discuss it too often unless we ask each other for advice. For the first time, we have encountered someone we are both interested in.
She is a mutual friend of ours though he has known her much longer, he introduced me to that friend group. I realized I had feelings for her a while back and backed out of the friend group in an effort to not make things awkward since she was at the time dating someone in the group. I did not communicate this to my friend.
Recently (about a month ago) she broke up with her boyfriend. After a bit over a week of talking to her again (last week) the feelings came back, its a curse I have. I noticed her and my friend hanging out a lot, so I talked to him about her a bit. I asked if he has feelings for her as I didn't want to step on his toes by asking her on a date in a few months after she has had time to recover. He informed he does have feelings for her and he has messages where she reciprocates those feelings (I haven't seen those messages and didn't ask to).
He wants me to make the decision as to how we proceed. He says he will do what I say I want to do. Obviously, part of me wants to be greedy and tell him to back off. I know that is not the right thing to do though. I'm just stuck, and I don't feel like the fate of all this should be in my hands alone. On one side, I hurt myself. On the other side, I hurt him. If it's true that she likes him, she could also get hurt.
I just don't know what to do in this scenario. I know it's my fault for not saying something to him when I initially discovered the feelings I had for her. Regardless of what happens, we agreed that we don't do anything that will hurt the other, but it seems kind of inevitable.
He and I are online friends that met in person for the first time last year. She happens to live in my state and he lives several states away. Though I suppose that doesn't really matter.
Any advice on how to approach this is appreciated. I know I'm pretty old to be dealing with stuff like this, but the situation is a first for me.