96: Help! I’m in Love with My Best Friend

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Apr 3

What do we do when we develop romantic feelings for a friend and they don’t feel the same? In this episode, I answer a question from a listener who is in love with their best friend and they don’t know what to do. I discuss how to navigate this situation, steps to gain clarity around the relationship, how to be honest with yourself and your friend, and how to decide if you should remain friends or let the relationship go.

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Timestamps ⏱️

Introduction: 00:15
Listener Question: 01:32
Outro: 23:00

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This podcast was transcribed by an AI tool called Castmagic. Please forgive any typos or errors.
Amanda Durocher [00:00:01]:
Welcome to New View Advice. I'm your host, Amanda Durocher, and I invite you to join me here each week as I offer advice on how to move through whatever problem or trauma is holding you back from living life to the fullest. Let's get started. Hey, beautiful soul. This is Amanda Durocher, and welcome back to New View Advice. If you're new here, this is a healing centered advice podcast where I offer guidance for the healing journey. I don't believe I have all the answers you seek. I believe you have all the answers.
Amanda Durocher [00:00:26]:
You just may need a new view and a little help along the way. Thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode. Today, I am answering a question from a listener who is in love with their best friend and is looking for advice on what to do. What do we do when we develop romantic feelings for a friend and they don't feel the same? How do we continue to be friends with this person, and when do we know when to let this person go? In this episode, I discuss steps for how to navigate a friendship where you have developed romantic feelings. I discuss how to connect back to yourself so you can decide what's best for you moving forward and how to be honest with yourself and create clarity around the situation. My intention for this episode is to guide you back to your heart so you can decide what's best for you in this situation and to use those feelings as a compass that are guiding you towards what is in your best interest with this friendship. If you haven't checked out my website, I invite you to check it out after this episode for more free resources, including journal prompts, meditations, blog posts, and podcast episodes about the healing journey. You can check that out at newviewadvice.com, and today's episode show notes will be at newviewadvice.com/96.
Amanda Durocher [00:01:23]:
With that, let's jump on into answering today's listener question. Hello, Amanda. Firstly, I just wanted to say your podcast has helped me a lot in navigating very difficult topics in my life. I had a question regarding this friend that I have. Basically, I fell in love with my best friend. We used to hook up casually, but it developed into something more. He always made it clear that he couldn't date me as he wasn't out to anyone else but me and that he can't marry me in the future due to his religious family. So to save our friendship and avoid a very painful breakup in the future, we decided not to date.
Amanda Durocher [00:01:57]:
That didn't stop me from loving him, and I knew he felt the same towards me. 2 years ago, he met an older man who he decided to go exclusive with. This sent me into a spiral and we were very close to ending the friendship. He broke up with that man months later when I made him choose. I've tried to work on my feelings and letting him go. He came out to our other friend who we were close to and has been seeing a guy. This all makes me feel a bit lonely and sad and possibly jealous. I don't wanna lose him as a friend, but I don't see how I can heal and let those romantic feelings go without cutting contact.
Amanda Durocher [00:02:27]:
Once again, thank you very much for all the work you've been doing. I'm sure it helped a lot more people like me. Thank you so much for this question. This is a great question, and you're definitely not alone in navigating the experience of developing romantic feelings for a friend. I think that this is actually pretty common. So I just wanna thank you for asking this question. And I also wanna thank you for your kind words about the podcast. It always means so much to me when people share how the podcast has helped them on their own healing journeys.
Amanda Durocher [00:02:52]:
It just warms my heart. So I just wanna thank you so much for that. Okay. So now I wanna jump into your question. So reading back your question, I noticed you didn't ask a specific question, but what I'm gathering you're wondering is, is it possible to remain friends with this person? And if so, how do you let these romantic feelings go towards them so you can keep the friendship? So that's really what I'm gonna focus on throughout this question. So in this episode, I wanna outline ways to help you to become intentional and to bring clarity to this situation because it sounds like it's all consuming right now and a little overwhelming, and it sounds like you're really in your head about it. So I wanna help you to drop back into your heart, into your body, and navigate what your heart is telling you regarding this situation rather than your head. So my first piece of advice would be that it's okay to take time and space away from this relationship.
Amanda Durocher [00:03:42]:
So I think that so many times when we're navigating difficult situations within relationships, we think we have to be in that relationship. We think we have to show up every day for it when it's actually okay to take some time away from this person. It doesn't mean you're ending the relationship. You're just taking some intentional stop and another person starts. And when we're feeling confusion or tension in a relationship, it can be really helpful to take a step back to disengage from the person to see how we feel because how you feel is so important. I think that this is a big step for self love is to understand that how we feel is really important and learning to discern how we feel versus how somebody else feels or our fears of how we feel impacting somebody else. Self love is really understanding that everything you feel is okay, allowing yourself to feel it, and connecting back to the wisdom within your feelings. I was reflecting on self love this morning as I do so often.
Amanda Durocher [00:04:47]:
And it's so true that we need to love ourselves first in relationships, and it doesn't mean that we can't learn to love ourselves in relationships. You know, my partner has been one of my greatest teachers. We've been together 13 years, and he's also one of the most loving people in my life. But I feel more loved by him the more I love myself. It's never been the opposite way around. It's never been that he loves me more and then I love me more. It's always that I love me more and then I feel more loved by him. I mentioned self love right up front here because it sounds to me like you may be a bit obsessed with this situation and really entangled with this person, and so you can't quite figure out what you want.
Amanda Durocher [00:05:24]:
And it sounds overwhelming. It really sounds overwhelming right now. So this is so common, and I think that you have self awareness around this. And I think self awareness is really amazing and helpful and an important skill to develop. But I'm also wondering here if you've become so self aware that your mind is obsessed with trying to figure this situation out. And when we're obsessed, we're often in our minds and not in our hearts. And I think that some space from this person could really benefit you and help you to create a boundary around yourself so that you can figure out what you need moving forward. When I talk about boundaries, I always like to remind people that boundaries aren't to keep other people out.
Amanda Durocher [00:06:02]:
They're to keep the good stuff in or they're to help us to figure out where we end and someone else starts. As I mentioned, I think a lot of people get enmeshed in relationships. They get entangled. They get really caught up in how somebody else may feel, and they can get caught up patterns of people pleasing or wanting the other person to be happy that they lose themselves a bit. Right? I think most people can relate to the concept of losing themselves in a relationship. I wonder if you've lost yourself a bit in this relationship. So I think it's important for you to disengage for a bit. This could be for 24 hours.
Amanda Durocher [00:06:31]:
This could be for 7 days. This could be for a month. This could be for a few months. You know? It doesn't mean you're ending the relationship. It just means that you need some distance from it. I think every relationship in my life, I've taken distance from and taken space from just so I can recalibrate to myself. I have very often throughout my life gotten enmeshed and entangled in other people and their feelings and their traumas, and it's been a practice for me to disengage when I need to and to understand what my body's communicating that I've had enough of a conversation or that I've had enough of a person, and it doesn't mean I don't love that person. But I need to take some space away from them so I can figure out how I really feel.
Amanda Durocher [00:07:10]:
In a world that goes so fast, it can be hard to carve out space for ourselves. But that's where that self love comes back in. Right? Like, you really deserve to understand this situation. From your question, it sounds like this situation's been going on for years, and it sounds like your heart is at a point where it wants you to make a change. But you're not sure what that change is. And I'm not sure what that change is. And I think creating space for yourself to be alone, to journal, to meditate, to do some self care, spend some time in nature, and just begin to allow a different thought pattern to come in. And what I mean by that is that the voice of our hearts doesn't usually speak to us when we're stressed and we're overwhelmed and we're in our heads.
Amanda Durocher [00:07:51]:
The voice of our heart comes in when we slow down. It's a slower voice. It's a slower way of being, and it's waiting for us, and it's not rushing us. And it's just there waiting. And so I think that voice of your heart wants to come forward, and I think that creating some time and space for yourself outside of this relationship is gonna be really helpful for you in figuring out what you need for you moving forward. And I also wanna note here that I think too when we are in our heads, we're often disconnected from the feelings that are arising. So self awareness helps us to see a situation more clearly, but so do our feelings. And our feelings are communicators and sometimes have the messages we're seeking.
Amanda Durocher [00:08:33]:
They contain truth. And oftentimes, our feelings contain a truth that our mind is avoiding. And I think that by creating space around this or space for your self, you will begin to see how you are truly feeling in this situation, and you'll be able to have more clarity on if you need to let this friend go or if you can move forward as friends. But this leads me into my second piece of advice, which is that I think you need to be honest with yourself because I find myself wondering how honest you've been with you and how honest you've been with this person. It sounds like he's been really honest with you throughout the process, and I'm wondering if you've been as honest with him or with yourself about what's happening within this relationship. Because self honesty comes in those slower moments. You know, as I mentioned, our feelings communicate truth, and oftentimes we're running from the truth that our feelings are communicating. Like, oh, that hurt more than I was willing to admit to myself, or dang.
Amanda Durocher [00:09:26]:
That boundary being crossed really made me angry. I've been avoiding this anger because I didn't wanna see how I self abandoned or how I put that person before myself or how much it hurt when that person said that. Or maybe you've been ignoring some of the truths he's been communicating to you and creating your own narratives around them. Self honesty is so important, and it's a practice. I think so many of us create stories about our lives. I know I have. I talk about many times on this podcast that I disassociated from a lot of my trauma. What that means is that for a lot of my life, I didn't remember it happened.
Amanda Durocher [00:10:01]:
What a crazy process. What a process of lying to myself and being in denial for a very long time. So I'm very familiar with not being honest with myself as a coping strategy. That's how I view it. It was a protective mechanism. And I share this because I think that part of your healing and part of the clarity that will come will be with being honest with yourself. You know, where are you seeing what you wanna see rather than the truth of the situation? Where are you ignoring red flags and current actions to fit a narrative or a story you want to be told? Or where are you in fear and in past traumas rather than seeing love in the present moment? You know, I think you can do this through journaling and through contemplation, meditation, but it's through taking that time to be with yourself and to be with your feelings. You mentioned feeling sad, so I'm wondering what the sadness is telling you.
Amanda Durocher [00:10:52]:
You know, why are you really sad? Are you sad that your friend chose someone else, or are you telling yourself that you're not enough and that's why you're alone? What is making you feel sad? What story are you telling yourself? What are you really jealous of? Are you jealous your friend found someone else, Someone in general? Or is there something specific about the relationship that's really triggering for you and sparks that jealousy? What triggers the loneliness? Sounds like you're still friends with this person. So is it that he is having a romantic relationship without you and that triggers loneliness? What is the loneliness communicating to you? I think a way to begin being honest with ourselves is to track our triggers, to write down the moments that we feel triggered by someone else. I think that triggers can help us to dive deeper into the truth of a situation rather than our expectation or the story we're telling ourselves. Our triggers really help us to see things clearly if we take the time to take responsibility for our triggers. Here on this podcast, we talk about personal responsibility, and I believe we're responsible for our lives and our feelings, including the hard ones. So whenever I'm triggered, I take time out of my day to reflect on that trigger. What was triggering me? Is there something I need to say to that person or did they trigger an old wound? Did they trigger an old way of being? Did I not show up as myself in that moment? Is that what's triggering? What was really triggering me there? I found recently I've been in some conversations with people, and I find myself being triggered and thinking this person thinks I'm stupid. Even though these people have never said I'm stupid.
Amanda Durocher [00:12:18]:
And I realized after the 3rd person I thought was calling me stupid without calling me stupid that the people weren't saying anything wrong. The people weren't calling me stupid. It was something coming up for me. And so I just mentioned that as an example of seeing our triggers. You know, it can take time for us to see the patterns or the awareness that wants to come through. And so you mentioned these feelings of sadness and jealousy and loneliness, And my guess is these feelings have deep messages for you that you may have been avoiding, and they're trying to communicate with you. So, again, we so often avoid our feelings because they're hard to feel, but also because they communicate truths that we so often want to avoid because many times our feelings are calling for change. And as humans, we so often want to avoid all change.
Amanda Durocher [00:13:03]:
I think about my process of healing from memories, repressed memories. And so often before a repressed memory would come up, there was a big trigger, and I couldn't figure out why I was so triggered or why I was showing up in the world in a way that I couldn't change, like a pattern I couldn't change, like a real fear based pattern. And then this repressed memory would come up, and it would rock my world, and it would break open every lie I was telling myself or some lies because I've gone through this process so many times that again and again, my world is broken open. It's like I'm living in a box, and all of a sudden, truth drops in. And when honesty and truth drops in, the walls break down. The room becomes bigger than we originally thought it was. And it can be hard because you're like, shoot. I have to rebuild my house now.
Amanda Durocher [00:13:50]:
Wait. I was living in a little house and now there's a bigger house, but it doesn't have any walls. I have to build the walls or I have to put pictures up. It's like this act of having to rebuild every time we admit a truth to ourselves we've been denying. But by admitting that truth to ourselves, by connecting to our hearts and the truth of who we are, we connect deeper to ourselves. We love ourselves more and we let more love in. So as those walls break down in this metaphorical house we're talking about, more love can come in. And that's why we do it.
Amanda Durocher [00:14:20]:
Yes. It can be hard to have hard feelings and to admit things to ourselves we may have been denying, but it's also lets more love in for ourselves and for others and for the world, and that feels really good. And the more we do this, the more we practice this, the more we do it throughout our days. You know, it becomes part of our life rather than something we need to create this time and space for that we're talking about. So after you're honest with yourself, the next thing I'm wondering is if you need to be honest with this friend of yours. I'm wondering how honest you've been with them about how challenging this friendship is for you right now and how you truly feel about this person. I don't know how much you have communicated this to them. Does he know this? Does he know how you feel? Does he know what you're navigating? Does he know how you feel about him still? Does he acknowledge your feelings? This is all important as well.
Amanda Durocher [00:15:10]:
You want friends who care about how you feel and who you feel you can truly communicate with. And you may wanna bluntly ask him how he feels about you because it may be important for your healing to hear him say, yes, I have feelings for you, or no, I don't. And you have may have been avoiding this conversation because you're afraid of hearing that he says, no, I don't have feelings for you, like that. But I think it's an important step for you to be honest with yourself as we were talking about honesty with ourselves and others. And I think it also may be important for you to voice how you truly feel to this person because it can be an important step in your friendship for you to tell them how you feel. You know, sometimes we don't tell people how we feel out of fear of how they'll respond. We fear the worst, so we never speak our truth. And speaking your truth may sound a bit cliche or cheesy, but it's really about speaking from your heart and allowing your heart to have a voice.
Amanda Durocher [00:15:59]:
Your heart has something it wants to say, and it may be time for you to voice it. And I think through creating some space and some time for yourself, you're going to figure out what needs to be said to you and what needs to be said to this person. What is your heart trying to communicate to all people involved? But sometimes it's really important for you to allow yourself to speak your truth because that's gonna help set a new pattern if you haven't done it before. If you've never told anybody how you feel and you've always been in this other way of being, they don't know how you feel. Say you always are people pleasing or you're always showing up as the fun friend and they've never seen how much you struggle. It's important to communicate those things with somebody so they can get to know you deeper, so you can create that vulnerability. Because how we really connect and create intimacy is through vulnerability. So you telling this person how you truly feel may be an important step for you.
Amanda Durocher [00:16:44]:
And if not for you, maybe for somebody else listening to take that leap of faith. And they may say they feel the same or they may not. But either way, it could be important for you because if they say they feel the same and they didn't know you feel that way, wow. Look at that. Look at the situation that created. And then your relationship can evolve from there. Or if they say, hey. Thanks so much for telling me that, but, unfortunately, I don't have romantic feelings for you.
Amanda Durocher [00:17:08]:
That's still important information for you to know. It will help you to begin to let go of those feelings or to let go of this relationship if you can't be in friendship with somebody who doesn't feel the same as you. But either way, that information can be really helpful in your healing and moving forward. But I find that speaking our truth can be really empowering for us. So many times, we don't feel powerful or we feel powerless in relationships, especially ones where, you know, like, you feel like you have romantic feelings for this person and he may not have them for you, that could leave you feeling powerless. And I think that by speaking your truth, speaking how you feel, and speaking what you need moving forward could help you to feel empowered within this relationship. So my next piece of advice would be to practice self compassion throughout this process. I always put this out close to the end, but I wanna stress the importance of self compassion here.
Amanda Durocher [00:17:58]:
You know, please be kind to yourself as you navigate this challenging relationship. You deserve it. I have a feeling that there's probably something deeper being triggered here. Could be triggering your first relationship. It can be triggering maybe a childhood wound, a connection with a past lover or a family member or something that has left you maybe feeling not enough, not worthy, or feeling unlovable. That feeling of loneliness can really go a lot farther back than we realize. I think so many of us developed this feeling of feeling alone in childhood, and it kinda plagues us through adulthood until we sit with it and sit with that lonely child. And so I invite you to be kind to yourself.
Amanda Durocher [00:18:41]:
It sounds so easy, but I've found it to be a practice, a reminder to self, to be kind to myself. I'm a work in progress. It's been so important for me to remind myself that and to be patient with myself. I think we can be our own biggest critics, and we can be really hard on ourselves, and we can be hard on others. And through self compassion, we become softer, gentler, and kinder to ourselves and others. My guess is throughout this friendship, you've had a lot of judgments about yourself. You've had a lot of negative thoughts about yourself. And that's probably part of what makes this situation so difficult to navigate is that it probably triggers you and triggers some not so nice thoughts about yourself.
Amanda Durocher [00:19:22]:
And so if you take anything from this episode, it's that I hope you can be kind to yourself about this. You did nothing wrong. If this person chooses not to be with you, it does not mean you are not enough. You are already enough. You're enough just as you are. You don't need to change. You don't need to fix yourself. You don't need to improve yourself.
Amanda Durocher [00:19:41]:
You just may need to remember that. That you are enough. Be with yourself. Love yourself. That's the work. And so often self awareness comes into that. That's why I talk about it a lot. Self forgiveness, letting go of judgments.
Amanda Durocher [00:19:54]:
That's all part of self love, but self compassion is the thing I come back to time and time again. It's so important to learn to be kind to you. There's only one you. You're with yourself from the day you're born to the day you die. You deserve to love yourself. You deserve to be kind to yourself, and I apologize for the rant I'm about to go on. But I am so sorry that the world taught you anything else. I am so sorry if you had critical parents.
Amanda Durocher [00:20:19]:
I am so sorry if the media or movies or TV or Hollywood taught you anything other than how to love yourself. I am constantly heartbroken by how much self hate I see in the world. We all deserve to love ourselves, and I'm so sorry if this friend doesn't love you the way you love him or doesn't feel for you the way you feel for him. Again, it means nothing about you. You are still lovable. If it's not this person, it doesn't mean you don't have a person. It just means it's not this person. Watch the stories you tell yourself or the beliefs you take on from how this process ends up playing out because self compassion is truly remembering you are human.
Amanda Durocher [00:20:59]:
It's okay to make mistakes, and it's also okay not to be perfect, and that you're always enough. You know, be kind to yourself. You deserve it. And the last thing I wanna say before I wrap this question up is that every situation will be different. So everybody listening to this episode navigating a similar situation. It'll be different how this situation plays out. But it's important to know that not all relationships are meant to last forever. This can be so hard for us to learn and to accept.
Amanda Durocher [00:21:27]:
This was a big thing I learned in my twenties is that not every relationship is meant to last forever. Some relationships are just for a chapter of our lives. Sometimes we grow apart and sometimes people enter our lives just to teach us lessons. It's okay if this relationship has run its course. I'm not sure it has, but I think that by taking space, by being honest with yourself, and by being compassionate with yourself, you will begin to see what you need and what your heart is asking of this relationship, and if this relationship is still serving you in your highest interest. Does this relationship help you to love yourself more, or are you constantly in agony instead of a loving place? So I just wanna say here at the end that it's okay to let this relationship go if that's what will help you to heal. You know, I'm not sure if that's the answer because I know you were saying how do you heal without letting it go, and I'm not sure. The truth is that you may have to let it go or you may not have to let it go.
Amanda Durocher [00:22:27]:
It's going to be individual but neither is right or wrong. And if you decide to keep this person and then later on decide it's not working for you, that could happen or you could let this person go and then they could come back into your life. However it's meant to play out, it will play out. So also take the pressure off. Part of that self compassion is not putting so much pressure on this and just understanding that the healing journey takes time, patience, and perseverance. So I hope something in this answer was helpful. I'm sending you so much love. Thank you so much for this question.
Amanda Durocher [00:22:59]:
Thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of New View Advice. As always, I am so grateful for everyone who tunes in and listens to these episodes. If you haven't already, I invite you to leave the podcast a 5 star rating where we listen to podcasts and follow the podcast. If you follow the podcast, you'll get notified every time I upload a new episode which is every Wednesday, so you'll never miss an episode. And thank you again for tuning in to another episode of New View Advice. As always, I hope I was able to offer you a new view on whatever you may be going through. Send you all my love. See you next time.