6 easy-to-follow steps to survive and keep your sanity
Sometimes you meet someone truly amazing, you fall in love. Only later do you realize that your feelings are not reciprocated or that the relationship is not possible. Can you keep the friendship despite your feelings? Well, it’s not easy. But it’s doable. If you love someone, it makes sense that you want to keep them in your life. You want to find a way how to be friends with someone you love. Let’s figure out the answer to your quest.
You do have to fall out of love
You might object and claim that you want to keep your romantic feelings and still be great friends. Sorry to break it to you, but this is not possible. The feelings have to go for the friendship to flourish.
1. Get a clear rejection
The first step to keeping the friendship is to be absolutely clear about how your friend feels about the situation. You don’t want any ambiguity in the relationship.
Start by telling them how you feel. (If you haven’t already.)
A real friendship is based on honesty.
You need clarity to keep the friendship
To try and keep the friendship without coming clear is not something I recommend. If you keep your feelings a secret, you will always wonder if there is some chance of romance between you and your friend. Every interaction will become a guessing game and you will be stuck analyzing your friend’s behavior.
That’s not a real friendship and it’s not sustainable in the long run.
Accept the rejection
To be able to be friends with someone you love, it’s also important that you respect their decision. Believe them when they say that they don’t feel the same way.
The more you can let go of your hope, the likelier it is to develop a deep friendship between the two of you.
2. Set boundaries for yourself
To be able to be friends with someone you love, you have to have clear boundaries for yourself.
Otherwise, you will treat them too much as a possible romantic partner.
Don’t go out of your way to spend time with them or help them. Think about how you would treat your other friends and take your cues from there.
Don’t behave in a flirty matter
Cut off sexual chemistry and flirting when the two of you spend time together. Be strict with not encouraging a romantic or intimate atmosphere.
This is hard because friends usually have great chemistry as well. But you have to be a little bit cold to balance out your very real romantic feelings.
Stop fantasizing about your friend
It’s also important to have a thought-boundaries. If you are in love with your friend, probably you daydream about the two of you being together.
This is something that has to stop. (At least if you want to keep the friendship.)
You don’t have to go cold turkey. I know how hard it is, but you have to scale down on daydreaming and lusting.
If you long for something more in your internal world and at the same time treat them only as a friend in the real world, you abandon part of yourself.
Your feelings and actions should line up
In this case, reality has to dictate how you treat this person in your inner world. Try thinking about them as just another friend. The fewer sexual thoughts you can have, the better.
That also means not being preoccupied with them. After all, you don’t spend hours analyzing your friends.
3. Don’t take the rejection personal
One key step in this process will be to understand where your friend is coming from.
Attraction is something that primarily happens in our subconscious mind. Who we are attracted to is not a decision the same way we decide what to have for lunch.
Your friend might not be attracted to you because you just don’t trigger that feeling in them. This can be connected to their childhood, parents, or to something as simple as chemistry.
If you are interested in sparking their desire, check out our article How to get out of the friend zone with a guy.
Don’t let the rejection affect your self-confidence
When you get rejected by a friend it can damage your self-confidence. After all, they like you as a person, so why is a romantic relationship such an impossibility? You might feel that if you were prettier or funnier you would have a chance.
But if you already explored that possibility without success, time to move on and accept that sometimes sexual desire simply is not there.
4. Try to move on
To keep a real friendship with this person you eventually have to start dating other people. It will be hard at first. But the better you are at moving on, the more likely you can keep being friends with someone you love.
Make new friends
If you have spent a lot of time with your special friend, it’s time to expand your friendship horizon and make new connections.
When you try to forget about someone, it helps to keep busy and keep feeding yourself with new impressions. Your new friends can be a source of fun and intellectual stimulation.
Start a new hobby
Another great way to move on is to throw yourself into an activity you have always wanted to try. When we learn something new, we develop as people, we also get new perspectives. This is a good way to fall out of love, which is what you ultimately have to do.
4. See yourself
The fact that you are in love with a friend tells me that you don’t always treat yourself as well as you could.
Part of you doesn’t think you deserve a real loving and respectful relationship.
Read my article Why am I attached to someone who doesn’t want me? for more insight.
You forget yourself
The thing is that when we are preoccupied with someone else, as you naturally are when you are in those first stages of falling in love, we are actually abandoning ourselves.
Instead of focusing on yourself and who you are and what you want and need, you focus on your friend and what this person could bring to your life. To a certain extent you want to be saved and you want to be saved from yourself.
Whatever value you think your friend will bring to your life as a romantic partner, you can already give yourself.
This truth will be an important part of how to be friends with someone you love, you have to start being there for yourself to a higher extent.
This goes for sexuality as well
You might object and say that you can’t give hot steaming sex to yourself. (Technically you can.)
But you can give all those nice feelings that you get from sex and intimacy such as increased self-esteem, and feeling attractive and special. Think about what it is you hope you would feel if you could have sex with your friend, and try to give those things to yourself.
Invest in other parts of your life
When you are unhappily in love, the best way out from this dark corner is to improve your life and the relationship you have with yourself.
If big improvements feel impossible, try starting small and working your way to bigger goals. Meditating for 10 minutes every day is a good first step. Or read a couple of books you always wanted to read.
Basically, give time to yourself and your deepest needs.
5. Take time away from your friend
If you have a hard time following all my advice above, this means that you are still too stuck in your romantic feelings.
The best way to lessen those feelings is to go no contact. Tell your friend that you need to pause the friendship for a while.
Also tell them how long, so that both of you know what to expect. A break is in many cases the only way to be friends with someone you love. After the break, you can rekindle the friendship.
True friendship will survive
In this situation, we are often afraid to take time away because we are afraid of losing our friendship. This fear is often unwarranted. If there is the potential for an amazing friendship between the two of you, that connection will easily survive a couple of months apart.
Real connection is rare. Most people only meet a handful of amazing friends during their lifetime. Don’t worry that you are replaceable, because if the connection is real, you are absolutely not.
You are unique and the connection between the two of you is also unique.
You need to become more independent
If you feel a lot of pain because of your situation, it’s because you over-rely on your friend to get your emotional need meet.
When we have strong romantic feelings for someone, we naturally want to get our emotional needs met by that person.
But when the love is unreciprocated, it becomes a vicious circle.
Your emotional dependency feeds your romantic feelings and your dependency makes your romantic feelings stronger.
This is why it’s generally recommended to go cold turkey in this situation. Your love is like a drug, to become free you have to stop taking the drug, in other words; stop seeing your friend. If you have a difficult time letting go I recommend my article How to stop being desperate.
6. View your friend in a realistic light
Another thing I know about the situation without ever having met you is that you have a romanticized view of your friend.
It’s completely natural, it’s the charm of being in love.
But it’s a big part of why you are stuck asking how to be friends with someone you love.
Just think back to other people you have been in love with. I bet how you viewed them at the peak of your feelings and how you view them now are very different.
Our perception is heavily tilted
When we are in love with someone, we only see their good sides. They almost become Gods and we put them on a huge pedestal. This kind of thinking feeds your romantic feelings.
Your feelings feel justified considering how special this person is.
Time to balance the scale and see your friend as they really are. All people have good and bad sides.
Write down their negative sides
To get a more realistic view of your friend, write down all the things you don’t like about them.
This can also include different ways they treat you that you don’t like.
Try to come up with a least 10 things that you don’t like about them (as people.) And an additional 10 things you don’t like about the way they interact with you.
Keep the list close to you, read it often. Reflect on the different points. Do this daily for a couple of months and you will free yourself from your sweet addiction.
Write down all the ways they are not your ideal partner
You most likely have an equally romantic view of how this person would be as a romantic partner. The truth is that you don’t know much about how it would be to be in a relationship with them.
Reflect on all the ways you think they would not be your ideal partner. Maybe they work too much? Maybe they don’t want children, but you do?
Also, write down the very simple point that they don’t want to be in a relationship with you.
By doing this, you see all the ways they are not right for you. This will help you in your quest on how to be friends with someone you love.
A Final note
There is someone out there who will be right for you. A person who will love you and cherish you and be totally smitten by you.
But the longer time you keep being in love with your friend, the longer time it will take for you to meet this mysterious person.
Moa Ailert is the founder and editor-in-chief of Her Brilliant Friend.
She has a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and plenty of insight into human psychology from traveling and living in different places around the world.
Moa is currently based in Portugal where she has a guesthouse; Villa dos Irmaos.
She has various websites, among others Ericeira Insider, but Her brilliant friend is her true passion project.
