I’m [24] in love with someone else [24f] than my partner [24m]

Long story short, I’ve always quite possibly been polyamorous. I’ve also always had a tendency to fall in love with best friends, see the two people mentioned above. When I’m happy in a relationship that’s usually not an issue bc it allows me to focus on one person, but my feelings regarding my current relationship (3,5 years, good to best friends ~4/5 years prior) have been quite rough for quite a while now and now my feelings for my forever crush (best friend and crush since we were literally 12) have resurfaced. Whenever I’m alone I can’t stop thinking about her even though I only see her once every few months nowadays.

Basically, most passion and intimacy seems to have disappeared from current relationship. We could literally kiss for 4 hours and would wonder at each other like “wow it’s youuu” in the beginning – which I know is an unrealistic long-term standard, but still a hard to bear contrast with the full time phone zombie who does not feel like doing anything ever I live with now. I’ve been trying to take more initiative to revive something but it hurts to feel rejected most of the time. I had already told him I didn’t want to live together anymore because I thought some space would help. Then he found the most beautiful apartment we could possibly afford and then that made me think that may also count as space, I guess I was really wishful thinking here, and now I switch between “hey we are doing a little better” and “oh no we’re actually very different”. Like said, he prefers to spend most of his time on a phone/computer/gaming console and I like to spend myself constantly building and crafting things and philosophising about how sick it is to be alive – which doesn’t seem to be on his mind much.

The girl I talked about is a lot more like me, very creative, very sensitive, very attentive, we’ve always been very physically intimate (cuddling, laying in each other’s laps talking while one strokes the other’s hair, holding hands, etc.). I feel like for a while now she’s been throwing hints (she has essentially almost kissed me on multiple occasions and still I wasn’t sure if these were more like character traits or like she actually likes me like that, recently I moved out of the way of one because it didn’t feel like I could just go and let that happen considering my predicament and she sighed something like “life is unfair”, she’s also been making a suspicious amount of references to bi culture despite never having terribly clearly stated being bi herself). But then for real I swear social norms do work differently with her – she’s generally very touchy with friends, has always been kind of an oddball who doesn’t always really notice social cues herself, and I also know that she needs a lot more space/doesn’t like being around someone as much as many people would even when she loves them a lot. I can’t describe it well but it’s.. these things just work differently with her. But then she’s also very intelligent and knows that at least at some point in time (although more around like middle school times) I was madly in love with her so I also feel like she should have some inkling of how this might make me feel.

But it’s just. F*. I feel like I just… Maybe I just didn’t think this could have ever become anything because like, I couldn’t fathom the idea that she would ever like me that much, or could truly grasp the idea that I might be just a tiny little bit gayer than I allowed myself to believe, or was distracting myself with long term relationships with boys the whole time, and have a huge problem with breaking up with people in time not only out of fear of hurting them but also because I get determined about these things and feel like out of principle I should try harder to make them work. But the truth is, I’m realising that a pretty significant part of me is wishing I was living (and loving) with her instead. And I haven’t told a single soul about this and keep trying to ignore it because it feels way too f*ing complicated to grasp. But I can’t get the “what could have been” and the secret yearning and the guilt and the feeling I’m not being true to myself and the people around me, and the “but what if I’m just idolising her because I’m trying to fill a gap of stuff I miss” and the “but holy f I just got myself into this whole new apartment wtf do I do” and all these things out of my head. So… Wtf do I do?!??!?!!!

Tl;dr: sorry that wasn’t a long story short at all. Basically Im in a relationship with a guy, keep realising I’m in love with my grill best friend, she appears to be throwing hints at me too but lord knows what I should take them to mean, I myself have been ignoring the whole situation bc it’s too hard but it’s also becoming too hard to ignore.