Ask Anahit: Friend Crush

In this month's advice column, one person asks what to do about a pesky crush on a friend

Article by Anahit Behrooz | 07 Nov 2024
  • Ask Anahit

I have a crush on a friend. I don’t think it's reciprocal but I still feel uncomfortable keeping it a secret from them, especially because I have told other people. Telling them could bring closure to it, but could also threaten a friendship that I value and make them uncomfortable. What should I do?

One day, when they turn this series of columns into a book – à la Cheryl Strayed, or Carrie Bradshaw when she is, once again, rewarded by the universe for being annoying – my publisher will ask me about the throughline, the running theme that will cohere what I can only imagine will be 20 years' worth of letters at that point. And I will say, smugly, because I have been sitting on this gem of wisdom for two decades, that it is that people feel so sad, and small, and ashamed, of the kinds of love that don’t happen in socially sanctioned and productive forms of relation. And maybe, just maybe, that is why we are all a little bit fucked up.

Firstly, you don’t know if it’s reciprocated or not. But even if it isn’t, does that change how you feel? Does that make it any less of an earnest and tenderly meant thing? Why does desire have to be so inherently threatening to a friendship? Why do we have to treat feelings that don’t exist within a recognisable structure with such mistrust?

I guess what I'm saying is you seem very fixated on possible results (reciprocation! closure!), but what if the feelings themselves were the point? You can make it clear that you have no expectations, that you will work hard to maintain the friendship whatever they say, that you are prepared to respect what boundaries they might need from this. But, just for a tiny bit of perspective here, you aren’t disclosing something ethically dubious, like voting Tory, or a secret career performing at poetry nights. The feelings already exist; the relationship between you two has already changed. It is what it is. The question is whether you keep them abreast of it, whether you trust them enough to let them in on its reality.