So, it happened. You have a crush on a friend. Whether it’s your first time or you find yourself in a pattern here, you’re not alone. It’s a time-honored tradition in the queer community to fall for a friend. Don’t panic! Here at Autostraddle, we’ve been giving people advice on this topic for over a decade, and today I’ve helpfully compiled that advice into this overall guide that will hopefully enable you to totally crush this friend crush. Whether that looks like “making a move and taking things to the next level” or “moving on,” we’ve got the tools to help you figure it out.
Of course, there’s no one way to deal with a crush on a friend, as our often varying and even contradictory advice from different perspectives will show! But we’re going to try to cover as many sides as possible here, so you can pick and choose which suits you and your situation.
This advice is mainly geared toward situations in which the friend you have a crush on is queer. My sincere advice for anyone crushing on a straight friend is to take some space from that friend while you can and work on adjusting some of your expectations and processing the reality of your situation. My advice would be not to tell them — that might not be popular advice but I didn’t get into the lesbian advice business for popularity.
You’ve got a gay crush on a gay friend, and I imagine you have some questions. I’ll try to answer all the big ones!
Why Is it So Easy to Fall for a Friend?
If you’re someone who this keeps happening to, there’s nothing wrong with you. It makes sense to fall in love with our friends, because there are so many things baked into friendships that translate well to a romantic relationship: intimacy, understanding, trust, and common interests. You spend a lot of meaningful time with your friends, time that can often feel more affirming and comfortable than dates with people you don’t yet know. Sometimes it can be genuinely difficult to differentiate between friendly chemistry and flirting! I have often been told I’m a flirty person, when really I think I’m just friendly.
With queer people, we see this happen so much, and I think it can also be attributed to a few things. For starters, queer dating just being a totally different numbers game than straight dating; there are fewer of us, so when we find fellow queer people we deeply connect with, crushing on them sounds a hell of a lot easier than jumping into the hard-to-navigate dating pool. On top of that, queer friendship in general is such a complex and deep thing, especially for LGBTQ people who have been rejected by family members or other loved ones. Friendships are where we can find acceptance and be our fullest, most authentic selves. That comfort and affirmation are the perfect ingredients for a big ol’ lesbian crush.
More reading on the experience of falling for your friend:
- Yes, Virginia, You Can Date Your Best Friend You’re Secretly in Love With (At Least, In Theory)
- So, You’re In Love With Your Best Friend
- I’m a Hopeless Romantic Who Keeps Falling in Love With My Friends
Should I Tell My Friend I Have a Crush On Them?
This is perhaps the first question on your mind: Should you tell your friend about your crush? The answer? It depends! Again, if your friend identifies as straight, I would recommend not telling them, for reasons I’ll touch on later in this section.
The number one fear people have about telling a friend about a crush is that it could “ruin” the friendship. Guess what: In many ways, you have already “ruined” the friendship — not in a doomsday destruction way, but in a transformative way. The second you start crushing on a friend, it changes the dynamic. I’m not trying to scare you, but that’s a shift! So, now, what do you do about that shift that for now exists only in the space of your brain?
You could tell your friend. Will this automatically destroy the friendship? Not necessarily. But also, it could.
I recommend telling your friend only if you really, really want to try out the possibility of dating your friend. But it comes with a risk. They could not reciprocate the feelings. They could also feel weird in the aftermath of your declaration. Not everyone will! Some people will feel flattered or neutral, but it’s impossible to perfectly predict the feelings and reactions of other people. All you have is yourself and your feelings.
So ask yourself: Do you like this person enough that if they reject you and need space then you will be able to make peace with that?
On that note, it might be worth confessing your crush if you feel it’s so overwhelming that it’s already impacting the friendship. Suppressing feelings of any kind can sometimes lead to unintentionally bad behavior. If you’re suppressing feelings for a friend and it’s making you clingy, jealous, anxious, or possessive, that’s not good! It could mean you need to get it all out there (while also making a conscious effort to curb those patterns as they arise, because a relationship that starts on a rocky foundation will not take off!). In a piece about how to handle rejection, Grace points out that at least for her, when those strong crush feelings hit, “knowing someone doesn’t have feelings for you is infinitely better than the suffering of ambiguity.”
That said, you do not have to tell someone you have a crush on them. As Riese puts it in a recent advice article, “You’re not wrong for having feelings for her that you’re not sharing.” In that particular scenario in which the advice seeker describes a crush on a friend who is newly coming to terms with queerness, Riese also advises: “I think the only circumstance in which it would be preferable to disclose an initial crush is if a relationship is your sole goal in fostering this connection — or you’re ready to find out if she feels the same way and proceed accordingly.” In that particular case, the friendship was relatively new, and the advice seeker admits to just wanting to get closer to the friend regardless of it leading to a romantic relationship or not. In that case, it does make sense to focus on friendship and to perhaps “wait and see.” Just like with new relationship energy, new friendship energy is totally a thing! Something can start as a friendship, lead to a quick crush, and then simmer back down into the platonic realm.
Elly makes a very compelling case for not telling your friends about your crush in “Why It’s Actually Healthy Not to Tell Your Crush Your Feelings”. “From a psychological perspective, it’s actually much healthier than you might suspect to experience crushes and positive romantic or sexual feelings for someone that you don’t take action on,” Elly writes. While you can feel like a crush is KILLING you, it’s true that crushes can actually be quite healthy. Sex Therapist Dr. Shannon Chavez shares with Elly: “Having a crush can activate imagination and fantasy, both important components of sexual and mental health, while releasing feel good chemicals in the brain that boost your mood.”
Often when we crush on someone, we place them on a pedestal. We create an idealized version of them. You could be doing this with a friend, in which case, you might be better off holding onto the crush than trying to concretize it. This is also definitely why I think it’s best not to confess a crush on a straight friend. You’ve romanticized the crush to the point of overwriting your friend’s identity and desires. Even if you think they could be questioning, your focus should be more on guiding them through that journey as a friend rather than as a potential partner. If you can’t show up for them in that way, it could be a sign to take some space from the friendship.
More reading about how to communicate (or not) with your friend about your feelings:
- Why It’s Actually Healthy Not to Tell Your Crush Your Feelings
- Do I Have To Tell My Friend I Have a Crush On Her?
- Should I Tell My Crush How I Feel?
- Should I Ask My Friend on a Date Even if I Think She’ll Say No?
How Will My Friend Feel if I Confess the Crush?
As I’ve already touched on, you can’t know! But also, you might have some idea of how a friend feels about you. Are they flirty? Do they find reasons to be physically close to you? If you’ve been giving small signals as to your feelings, do they feel reciprocated?
I thought it would be good to include some advice letters we’ve received in the past from people on the other end of this equation. In one instance, an advice seeker writes that their friend’s crush confession has made things awkward. “I’m super happy for her and want to offer as much support as I can, but I also feel betrayed, in a weird way, like all the things I took as signs of the depth of our friendship were in fact not real but due to her crush,” the advice seeker writes. I don’t include this to scare you but rather to make you aware of this reality; while there can sometimes be blurred lines between platonic and romantic intimacy, a lot of people do prefer to keep those relationships entirely separate. It makes sense that some people might second-guess a friendship after a crush confession if they felt they were connecting deeply in a specifically platonic context and then begin to question that.
Some friends might react totally differently — they might feel flattered even if they don’t reciprocate your feelings. It might not change anything at all, and it doesn’t have to.
Again, you have to decide if it’s worth the risk of the above happening. But if you feel like you absolutely cannot move forward platonically with your friend in a normal and healthy way, then take the risk. Even though it could mean sacrificing the friendship in its current form, you’re already likely sacrificing something by holding it in.
More reading from the perspective of the crush-ee:
- My Friend Has a Crush on Me
- Is My Friend Flirting With Me? Do I Want Them to Be?
- You Need Help: Your Best Friend Has Feelings for You, Lives 1000s of Miles Away
What if We Try Dating and it Doesn’t Work?
That’s okay! I know a lot of people who tried dating a friend and then realized they were indeed better off as friends. In fact, just anecdotally, I’ve observed that these people usually have an easier job being friends with their exes, because the friendship had already been established from the outset. In the past, when I’ve had exes who wanted to attempt friendship, I was less interested, because the friendship never existed in the first place and trust had been broken to the point where I wasn’t interesting in building a whole new relationship with them even if it was just going to be platonic.
Of course it’s true — and likely — that the friendship will be different, just like it’s true that the friendship could feel different if you confess your crush and are rejected. But different doesn’t always mean bad. Settle into the idea that change is okay, because no matter what, falling for a friend usually entails a decent amount of change!
What Should I Do if My Friend Is Unavailable?
So, we’ve covered the straight thing, but what if there are roadblocks beyond that? What if, for example, your friend is married or in a monogamous relationship? Well, then, my advice is indeed not to tell your friend about your crush, because it’ll likely ruin more than just your friendship. Even if you’re extremely convinced your friend reciprocates the feelings, then the ball has to remain in their court. They should be the ones to choose to leave or blow up their relationship, not you.
In scenarios like this, it is best to take some space away from your friend, as Christina eloquently writes: “You have to take a break from this friendship. Not forever, necessarily, just long enough to let yourself heal. You are picking the wound open anew every time you see this friend, letting it scab enough so it is still satisfying to peel off.” Take time to yourself. Journal. It can sometimes make you feel better if you realize you were indeed placing this friend on a pedestal. The reality of dating someone is so much different than a crush. That said, if you need to mourn a relationship that never was, you can. That’s not unreasonable! Heartbreak can look like a lot of things.
In conclusion, having a crush on a friend is a very extremely typical queer experience, and like so many things in life, that crush can lead to so many different places. Maybe it’s just a hookup. Maybe you fall in love. Maybe you fall in love and then it all falls apart. However it goes for you, take care of yourself and the people that you love. Be kind and thoughtful, but also don’t be afraid to take risks worth taking.
