She’s happy, but not *happy*. We all see how she is around her alleged best friend. She never seems more like herself, more confident, more loved, more beautiful than when she’s around him. If only he could get his shit together. If only they had similar aspirations in life in terms of career, family, you know, the essentials. They could be the ultimate #goals. The couple we all aspire to be.
Of course, me being the person I am, thought “there’s a blogpost there!” so I went and asked her about it. I’ll try to keep this as anonymous as possible.
“We’ve been friends for about half my life. We went to university around the same time and starting hanging out more and got really close. Just as friends though. There were sort of windows where I always felt something more could have happened, but it just never did. Maybe we never managed to catch each other between relationships. Maybe we purposefully didn’t. I don’t know.”
I’ve stood on the sideline for some of these years of their friendship. Whenever something really good would happen to her, her first phone call wasn’t to her boyfriend or her mom, but to him. On the one hand I thought it was cute. On the other hand I thought “well this seems odd”.
“It’s not like I haven’t thought about it. I have. I’m sure he has too. But the truth is: I don’t think we want the same things in life. If we were to get together now (or a couple of years ago, when I was single) we probably would have been very happy for a little while. Then things would’ve gone bad because of our different goals in life. And then maybe 30-40 years from now, when we’re old and gray and retired, we’d again be very happy. But that big chunk in the middle is kind of important, you know?”
I’m listening to her story and thinking to myself “Holy crap on a cracker, I wanna ask him about his version of the story”. Sadly I don’t know him well enough to ambush him about secret feelings for his best friend. Maybe sometime in the future.
“I’ll tell you this much. He’s always the one who’s there for me when I need him to be, more than anyone else. And I genuinely feel loved when I’m around him. Not the sappy romantic comedy kind, but genuine caring love. The unconditional kind. I’d hope he feels the same from me. Cuz that’s what it is. But it’s not romantic love.”
If she says so.
