I'm destroying our friendship.

LegacyUser

I really need advice on my situation, it's tearing me apart. Basically I'm a female and I had a really good male friend, everything in common, same sense of humour, got on so well, texted each other almost constantly. Two years ago I noticed we were growing apart and he seemed to be pulling away, eventually he sent me an email saying that he was completely in love with me and it had got to the stage where he found it difficult to be around me and felt he had to let me know incase I thought I had done something wrong. I had a boyfriend at the time so there was never an option of acting on it, I told him I couldn't bear to lose him as a friend but that I would accept whatever he felt he needed to do. After a while he said he could handle it and didn't want to ruin our friendship.

Two years on (boyfriend long gone) and it's never been like it was, awkwardness up and down on his part, and meeting/texting much less, but when we do it's like old times. Hung out with him last night with mutual friends. After I left he texted me to see I'd got home safe. He was quite drunk and told me he still feels the same, which makes it incredibly hard for him to talk to me. He kept apologising and saying he was a fool for thinking he'd ever have a chance with someone like me or that he could make me happy. He said he's built me up as a benchmark for measuring all other people, if he ever meets someone he just thinks he doesn't like them as much as he likes me. He thinks hes built up an unrealistic ideal of love and just cant get over it. He said every time we hang out it just gets more and more awkward for him. At this stage I was pretty much devestated, he apologised for telling me everything and said he was being selfish for letting me know and stupid for thinking he could ever make someone like me happy.

I just can't believe how much pain I'm causing someone I care about so so much. I feel like I have the ability to fix everything for him but obviously I know I can't do it for that sake. I don't know if I'm making a massive mistake, we're basically 'soul mates' and we could be absolutely perfect together, but when I think about the fact that guys come and go, friends last forever, I don't want us to ruin our friendship by taking it a step further, and I would hate to go ahead with it, it would be so much pressure, then change my mind and devestate him. I feel like our friendship is lost either way, if we were to get together it would eventually end and the friendship would be wrecked, but as it stands our friendship is too hard for him anyway. I don't know if my friends turning into something else concept is too bitter, but I feel like it's too risky to try to be together anyway because I can't risk hurting him even more if it wasn't to work out.

I've had bad experiences on friends becoming boyfriends and then the initial friendship being ruined when we break up. Several of my male friends have told me they're in love with me,which is anything but nice to hear, it's just awful because I feel like I'm making so many people I care about miserable, I wish I was just one of the lads instead. I don't want to seem big headed, I don't know why people end up falling for me and I feel like I'm leading them on or something even though I'm doing nothing of the sort. There's so many friendships I have to tiptoe around now instead of being normal because they feel something extra for me.

Basically I have a real aversion to turning friends into something more because of all this, but I'm so aware that by not giving us a go that I'm jepradising both our happiness, we could be brilliant together but I can't hurt him by trying it out. Ordinarily our friendship would be more important to me, but it seems like it's ruined anyway. I'm in floods of tears writing this because I can't imagine not having him in my life, but I want him to be happy more than anything and if cutting all ties with me would help him with that I'd do it in a second, even though I'll be devastated. I don't know what to do, I hope it made sense, I really need some outside perspective please, feel free to be honest if you think that I'm being horrible.

jenga-jen

OP, this might sound harsh, but you have to realise that there are only 2 ways for this to proceed given your friend's feelings for you. Either:

• You give it a go as a couple (only advisable if you have feelings for him this way)
• You go your separate ways

Unfortunately, given the depth of his feelings the friendship part is over, at least for him. Who would want to be on the sidelines watching you go through life meeting new boyfriends while all the time loving you? It would cause him immense pain.

However, I do think that you should only pursue the relationship side of things if you think it could work, not just to 'keep' him in your life. There seems to be a lot of deep feelings involved here so tread carefully!

I know how hard this is from my own experience and from what I've seen/experienced once one side starts thinking 'more than friends' it's usually the end of the platonic friendship.