Being in Love with Straight People Can Have a Happy Ending (although not necessarily the one you're looking for..)

Okay, so we've all had those crushes on close (straight) friends, right? Ouch, ouch, ouch. I've had a lot of straight crushes in my life but last semester was badd, deep in, head over heels.. and to make it worse I spent a lot of my time with her. The problem with loving straight friends is that they care about you too, and will reciprocate the "love" when it definitely does not mean the same thing. I spent a good amount of time last semester oscillating between trying to fall out of love with her - using Google to find tips on creating boundaries, etc - and not caring at all that I was in love with her - just soaking up every minute of our time together. I felt SO guilty for getting more out of our relationship than she knew! Or so I thought.

So housing time is coming around in all the colleges.. woot woot. By now, I'm thankfully pretty much over my friend - the feelings wouldn't be hard to unearth if she suddenly came out (ha ha ha not happening) but when we're together I don't think of her as more than a friend. BUT I know I do not want to room with her .. because close quarters would make it way too easy for me to fall for her. And I am not going through that again if I can avoid it! So when it came time to tell my friend the other day I couldn't room with her, I had to be honest. There was a legitimate reason - although I made it general and apply to all of my close friends. "I don't want to room with anyone who I like a lot as a person because it could make it hard for me," I told her. I didn't explicitly state that I would fall for them, but the understanding look in her eyes told me she knew exactly why I couldn't room with her. And when I asked her if it was okay with her, she looked directly at me with the softest, most caring look and told me that it definitely did not matter that I was easily attracted to my friends - almost as if she knew something she wasn't telling me. I was surprised at the knowing compassion of that moment, and two hours later, I looked up from my midterm cramming and realized what it had meant. She had known all along how I'd felt about her, and she was okay with it.

I love that we both get where the other is coming from.. it's like an unspoken secret that we both accept and don't have to talk about. We can move forward in our friendship to a healthier place for me, and although I'm glad I felt that way for her because it made us closer, I am very happy to be past it as well. We can be friends, I can find someone who can love me back. Yay for moving on!