A
female
 ,
anonymous
writes:Can you give me your view or better still your experience on keeping friends with someone you have developed very strong feelings for?I have know this man for 9 months and we have become very close friends. We are both in the middle of irreconcilable marriage break-ups that are unconnected and it is through this that we met and have provided great mutual support to each other. At the beginning of our friendship he made it clear that he has feelings for someone else in another country and that they plan to get together once a year or two has passed and both sets of children, particularly her younger ones, have got used to the first relationship breaking up and to avoid complications since their relationship developed on the rebound as they worked together during the intial stages of his wife leaving him for someone else. I have to grown to care for this man a great deal and think of him all the time, we meet at week-ends and our relationship is strictly platonic with the intention of us both just being friends to pass the time as we both move through this period in our lives and we both need company, and we do get on so well, in the meantime. But now it tears me up because the inevitable has happened and I have to make the choice between continuing to enjoy his company of what to both of us is a precious and honest friendship, or break away from it because the hope and denial on my part is beginning to take up my life.I am trying to be objective and make new friends and I do see a couple of other guys as friends but there is just not the chemistry there that even he acknowledges has developed between us, but his loyalty is to stay with this woman he first fell into the arms of before he even knew me.They both see each other just two or three week-ends a year but not for sex, because they want to try having an old-fashioned court to get to know each other more to make sure they are doing the right thing. Yes I know it may not work out, but I have also have to hope he will be happy and assume it will work out, so my decision to stick around as a friend or remove myself from the source of this painful longing for something that is unlikely to ever happen. Logically, I should stay his friend. He truly is a really nice intelligent and sensitive guy who loathes to hurt me, and there has been no deception on his part, I shave simply unexpectedly fallen deeply in love with him but someone has beaten me to him and he reciprocates feelings with her and I cannot blame him for that. But in the process, my heart is breaking and it feels selfish to cutting my nose off to spite my face, to bail out just because I am in pain because he is also the best friend I have ever had.What do you think?Have you any experience of what is best in this type of situation?
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male
reader, anonymous, writes (5 February 2008): Hi, in answer to your question.........NO!! You'll regret it forever if you do. I found myself in a similar situation with a work colleague. When the feelings hit me I ended the friendship (in the normal male cowardly way...by ignoring her and hoping everything would go away) and 18 months later I still regret it. It's now the biggest single regret of my life. I wish to god I'd of sat down with her and explained what was going on. You never know what you've got until you've lost it.
The thing I found hardest to deal with was how my behaviour changed around her. For example if she was telling me one of her stories about her layabout boyfriend I went from just agreeing with her and making her feel better, to responding with something like 'Why doesn't he get off his arse and sort out the problems, you deserve better.... '. If you can remain the same person around them as you were before then you've won half the battle.
Good luck!
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