Estimated reading time: 12 minutes
Dear Dr. NerdLove,
I’m in a classic “platonic friendship with unrequited crush/oneitis” situation. Turns out my friend that I’m crushing on recently got a partner, a close friend of theirs and also a friend of mine.
In my mind they were The One for a while now, even though I knew it was basically impossible due to a combination of personal feelings on their end and external circumstances, we talked about it and settled on Just Being Friends – I’m genuinely happy being friends with them and I cherish them a lot, still I foolishly held on to that fantasy that it might work out someday.
So recently they told me that they’re currently seeing someone, a mutual friend, although someone I’m not nearly as close with. I know I should be happy for them (I am) and wish them the best (I do), but there is this nasty part of me that’s upset and jealous.
Like I’m having all of those pathetic “it should have been me”, “they’re doing all the things that we should be doing”, “why was I not good enough” thoughts. I hate having these thoughts, I know that indulging in them is poison, yet I keep drinking that garbage – maybe partly because I enjoy wallowing in misery and maybe partly because I believe that the only way out is through.
I know that one classic piece of advice is The Nuclear option, breaking off all contact and effectively removing both of them from my life, but this is genuinely the last thing I want to do. Both really mean a lot to me and the one I’m crushing on is one of my closest and best friends and I don’t wanna lose those friendships because of my feelings.
I know that I’ve messed up so far, indulging in an unrealistic fantasy and holding on too long, but I strongly feel that this is my problem and I don’t wanna make it theirs.
So long story short, how do I deal with and get over those nasty feelings of jealousy, hurt and maybe a bit of mourning for something that never was, so that I can be happy for my friends? It feels like I got all the pieces but I can’t assemble them.
Sincerely,
Getting Over It
I will be honest, GOI: I appreciate getting letters like yours in no small part because it’s not very often I get a “my crush likes someone else” letter that focuses on “and I want to be happy for them,” as much as on the frustration and sadness and jealousy or anger of their crush liking someone else. That speaks well of you and where your head is at with all of this.
But I want to emphasize that what you’re feeling – that sadness, that sense of loss and those feelings of “why couldn’t it be me” are entirely understandable. It’s not bad to feel that way and it’s not toxic to have them; there’s nothing contradictory about holding both feelings at once. People are complex! We can feel many different ways about the same situation, including ways that seem like they conflict with one another. In fact, this is something that comes up fairly often in polyamorous circles: the weird mindfuck that is feeling compersion (that is: feeling happy for another person’s happiness) for one’s partner’s joy in a new relationship while also feeling a little jealous about how their time and attention is being given to someone else instead of for you.
So the first thing I want you to understand is that you shouldn’t be getting down on yourself for feeling this way. Feeling a certain way isn’t bad, and it doesn’t make you a bad person for having those feelings. Feelings are just that: feelings. Feelings happen. Sometimes they’re good and positive, sometimes they’re bad, sometimes they’re even ugly and you wish you didn’t have them. But the fact that you’re having a feeling doesn’t define you as a person. It’s how you act on those feelings that matter… and “acting” in this case is as much in how you behave towards yourself over them as it is about how you behave towards your crush and their new relationship.
This is why being kind to yourself about having those feelings is important. If you can recognize that the feelings themselves are inherently normal and neutral, it’s a lot easier to take a step back and pay attention to what you’re doing about them and because of them. And right now, it seems like you’re mostly beating yourself up over them because you have them. That’s neither particularly kind, nor is it helpful.
Take the part where you blame yourself for “indulging in unrealistic fantasies”. What’s wrong with that? The thing about unrealistic fantasies is that they’re inherently indulgent, whether it’s about being a dashing tiefling rogue going on incredible adventures or thinking about Christina Hendricks coming to you with a bottle of Pappy Van Winkle and inviting you up to her suite at Aria after completing her DJ set and…
Wait, that was my unrealistic fantasy. Sorry, that got away from me for a second.
My point is that indulging in the fantasy isn’t a bad thing; it’s like a treat for the brain, a little game of ‘what if’ that lets you occupy an imaginary world for a bit. It only becomes a problem when you start treating it like reality or letting the idea of it interfere with your real world in negative ways. If, for example, indulging in the fantasy gave you the inspiration and motivation to become the kind of person that you see yourself as in them – not necessarily the person in the relationship but the person who could take the steps to find a relationship like the one you fantasize about – that’s great! Similarly, if it lets you blow off steam, take a break from your troubles or otherwise give you a moment to take a breath and recoup from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, that’s all to the good… even if it involves sweaty thoughts about someone you know doesn’t necessarily feel the same way about you.
But if it curdles and becomes a sense of ownership or interferes with your actual relationship (or theirs, for that matter…) that is when it becomes a problem. That’s the point where it’s no longer a fantasy but something closer to obsession. And it doesn’t sound to me like that’s where things went with your crush. It sounds to me like the worst thing that this crush has done was inspire you to do nothing – neither making a move, nor moving on. Which, y’know, isn’t necessarily helpful, but hardly something to beat yourself up over.
Would it have been better if you could just enjoy the crush and plow the energy it gave you into something productive? Sure. But holding onto the fantasy isn’t bad in and of itself. At worst, it just delayed things a little and made this eventual outcome sting a little bit more. Which sucks, to be sure, but it’s honestly not that bad.
It’s the fact that you’re beating yourself up that’s the problem, not the fantasy. The thoughts you’re wallowing in – those feelings of “it should have been me” and “why wasn’t I good enough” – are understandable and normal. They’re regret talking, pointing out things that you could only see in hindsight. The point of regret is to learn; you want to recognize the inflection points, the moments where you made choices that lead you to where you are now. The goal is to understand how you got to where you are now, so that you can avoid it next time.
But what you’re doing with those feelings of regret isn’t learning, it’s punishment. You’re hurting yourself for making “bad” choices, for being a “bad” person for being in the position of getting hurt by this. But why? Why do you deserve to hurt yourself like this? For having feelings for someone who didn’t have those same feelings for you? How does that merit smacking yourself around? Is that doing anything to make things better, or are you inflicting pain for the sake of feeling even more pain than you do already?
The logic of it makes no sense. Take a step outside yourself and you’ll see it clearly. Imagine if your best friend – someone other than your crush – were to come to you with the same regrets you are currently feeling; they had feelings for someone and now they’re sad that the person they were crushing on is dating someone else. Would you be beating them about the head and shoulders with a riding crop over their supposed stupidity? Would you be berating them for their poor choices? Or would you be giving them a reassuring hug and saying that it’s ok, it’ll feel better and there will be other crushes in the future? That it’s not the end of the world, even though it may feel like it right now?
I strongly suspect it’s the latter. So why does your friend merit better, more compassionate treatment than you for being in the exact same situation? Why is it more sensible – for suitably illogical definitions of “sensible” – to punish yourself like this when you wouldn’t do that to someone else?
The thing you should understand is that you were making the best decisions you could with the information you had at the time, and it led to this situation. It only feels obvious and inevitable now, because you can look back and see the exact path you took to get here; at the time, you were navigating a winding road in an impenetrable forest, with branching paths leading to unknown destinations. It’s sad, yes… but it also means that now you have new information, which means that next time, you’ll make different, better decisions.
The same applies to the word choices. You’re using a lot of words that are heavy with implication and judgement. “Should have”, “should be”, “Good enough”. All of those imply that you did something wrong, and you didn’t. It implies that this was a failure on your part and it wasn’t. Even if you had acted on your crush instead of “indulging in the fantasy” of it, that doesn’t mean that things would have been different. It’s easy to assume that you messed up because of where you are now, but there are no guarantees or even hints that this would have led to a different outcome. As the wise man once said: it’s possible to make no mistakes and still lose. That’s not weakness; that’s life.
Someone caring for you in the way you wish they did isn’t about being “good enough” for them. They didn’t look at you like they were reading your stats or tallying up points on a spreadsheet and deciding that you didn’t meet the right benchmarks or milestones. They didn’t weigh your heart vs. their friend’s heart and yours came up wanting. If you’re a regular reader, I’m sure you’ve seen the times I’ve said that women aren’t Mjolnir and sex isn’t about being “worthy”. The same applies to love; someone not loving you the way that you wish they did doesn’t mean you weren’t worthy of love, just as someone loving someone else means that they are.
Love isn’t about metrics. Love is a wild and complex dance, a blend of emotions and chemicals in the brain, and sometimes the thing that tilts love from philia or storge to eros just isn’t there or doesn’t click the way it needs to. That doesn’t mean there’s a flaw in anyone involved, any more than the people you love as friends but not as lovers are flawed. It just means that the crucial x-factor isn’t there. It’s nobody’s fault. Nobody did anything wrong. The fact that you don’t love them romantically doesn’t mean that they’re bad people. It just is.
And a quick note on The Nuclear Option. The reason why I tell people to take The Nuclear Option after a break up is so that they have a chance to heal in the aftermath and to minimize the odds of both clawing the wound open or making poor choices while those wounds are still raw – like drunken 3 AM texts begging their ex to take them back. It doesn’t mean that you’re cutting contact forever, nor does every heartbreak needs to be followed by immediately cutting them out of your life like Stalin erasing people who fell out of political favor. It’s just a way of making sure you don’t make things worse while you’re hurting. You don’t need to cut off contact with your friend – especially not under the current circumstances.
So here’s my advice for healing your broken heart. First: let yourself mourn. A dream you had has died. That’s something that should be mourned. Give yourself permission to have a day or two to hole up with some comfort food and media, and cry your feelings out without shame or judgement. Let your tears wash out the emotional wound so that it can close without trapping debris or becoming infected. Go ahead and have a large, loud, snotty bawl about it and just let it all out like you’re ripping off a bandage. Keeping it in only makes the pain last longer and hurt worse.
The odds are, if you finally let yourself give in to the feeling and have that big cathartic cry, you’ll find yourself cried out and surprisingly ok in the span of 90 minutes or so. But there may be a few tears left, so give yourself the rest of that day – or even that weekend – to get the rest out.
Then, once you’ve reached that level of catharsis… forgive yourself. Forgive yourself for caring for someone who may not have cared for you the same way, but who still cares for you none the less. Forgive yourself for wanting something that ultimately you couldn’t have, for feeling foolish and for feeling jealous. Let yourself accept that the jealousy is understandable, that the feeling of being sad for yourself is entirely ok and reasonable, not signs that you’re a bad person. And forgive yourself for beating yourself up over those feelings.
Then, once you do: focus on the other side of your feelings. Let the compersion take over, and enjoy the way your friend is enjoying their NRE. Be happy for them, even as you acknowledge and accept that you are a little sad that it isn’t with you. And as you do, let their happiness inspire you. Instead of focusing on a past dream of a future that never was, look forward – building your future self in such a way that you too will be experiencing that happiness. The future is still out there, unwritten; put yourself in position so that you can shape it and be ready for it when it arrives.
Love is out there. There will be other loves, more happiness, more smiles, more hope. There will always be time for dancing and joy. You just have to reach towards it, instead of looking back.
You will be ok. I promise.
All will be well.
