Ask Anahit: The Friendzone
In this month's advice column, one reader has fallen in love with a friend – and they're not happy about it
I am in love with one of my friends and I know they don't like me back. I want nothing more than to put it aside and stop overthinking our friendship but it's killing me and it just won't go away! I'm worried that they can tell and it's affecting our relationship... what do I do!?
Falling in love with your friends is, I would say, one of the top three most inconvenient things that can happen to a person, falling only behind cancelled flights and not being able to find your keys. It is an enormous bummer, because it isn’t something you intended and it jeopardises a relationship you already have and that you actually like, and there is also very little you can do to make it go away. The friends-to-lovers industrial complex has a lot to answer for in peddling this scenario as the romantic pinnacle of relationships. Yeah, you’re known, yeah, you’re seen, but at what cost?
The simultaneously good and bad news is that the relationship is already fucked. I know this maybe doesn't sound what you might call 'good' or 'desirable' or 'positive in any way' but hear me out. In such scenarios, what we are scared of is change and specifically our own agency within change, in having the power to make a choice and the choice being the wrong one. Here though, there's no choice to be made really. The relationship has already changed. Say something, don't say something. The dynamic between you already exists within this new context.
Because of this, I think you should say something. For full transparency, I personally would not say anything and would let the relationship fester in this weird liminal space until it became intolerable and exploded, but I have hopes and dreams that you can be different from me. Once something is out in the open it can be dealt with. There can be boundaries that respond to reality put in place, kindnesses offered, new dynamics and possibilities negotiated. Don't say anything and it will become impossible to separate that friendship out from the shame and frustration you feel, and no relationship – friendship or otherwise – can really exist in that space of shame. Be brave, suck it up, and spill your heart.
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