What To Do If You Fall In Love With Your Best Friend*

The jury is still deliberating on whether or not you should or shouldn't fall in love with your best friend. Personally, I know from experience that it can be extremely problematic. You never see it coming and after it happens drama always ensues. It doesn't matter if you're a girl or a guy. Drama. Always. Ensues.

Take this all-too-common scenario: You and your best friend decide to take a road trip (the destination doesn't matter) and somewhere between point a) and point b) something happens that causes a eureka moment in which one friend suddenly realizes "Oh Shit! I think I'm in love with my best friend." That moment could have been caused by the fact that your friend was able to avoid hitting that land whale in the minivan or the fact that he remembered to wake you up when stopping for gas so you could pee and get another bag of Twizzlers. It's something that makes you go, "wait a minute, I think they care about me!" And then you start to like "care" about them.

Now after this happens there's an over whelming need to tell someone. Sometimes you get drunk in Mexico and you accidentally let slip that you've fallen in love. Then there's this annoying back-and-forth where they ask you "who" and you say some variant of "oh nobody" until finally you cave and your true feelings spill out like a semi truck that's carrying Jacks jackknifes and spills its cargo all over I-75. That shit's hard to clean up.

So. What do you DO?

You really should avoid dating at all costs. But let's face it...if they like you too you'll probably date. I can't tell you if it'll last. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. With me and The Nomad it didn't. But that's a whole other blog post. Trust me.

The trickier one is what do you do if they don't like you back romantically?

DAMAGE CONTROL!

See like, suddenly "everything changes," you'll feel like you're walking on broken glass, your anger will start to rise when you think he isn't replying to that txt you sent at 4:30am as speedily as they once did. The nerve! I mean, like, he always liked listening to what you ate for lunch before.

Naturally, you start to think he's ignoring you. Hell, he might even hate you! I mean, duh, since clearly when a bunch of you went to the bar last Friday and he bought all his boys a round but didn't bother to pay for your glass of Merlot he hates you.

When you start to feel this way, you should NOT emo-mail. That's emailing when you're lonely and pissed off. Many a best friends have been lost this way. That's a hard one to come back from. Most email is auto-archived and that one line you wish you hadn't said, "I swear to god I will upload all my most embarrassing photos I have of you to facebook, including that one of you making out with a kangaroo during the senior year field trip to the zoo!" is now quite literally in black and white. Unless you're one of those people who writes their e-mails in purple... and if you are knock it off, it's annoying.

Truthfully, there are ways to reconcile emo-mailing... but sending 20 "I'm sorry" e-cards with Jack Sparrow on them isn't one of them. Guyliner can fix a lot of things, except this. Instead, send one, ONE, email apologizing for your previous e-mail. Simply explain that you meant to send it to yourself. You were jotting down ideas to use in your creative writing class and you hadn't come up with clever names for your characters yet, and you were just using his name as a place holder. End it with..."sorry man, hope we're cool."

I know friendship should be built on honestly, but sometimes you've gotta lie.

Also, you should probably not subscribe to his Twitter. It's a bad idea if you read that he's checking out the barista at your fave Starbucks. Or if he forgot to invite you to the midnight movie of Star Trek. Or if he forgot to call you on your birthday because he was out skateboarding with his bros. That shit stings and will likely make you emo-txt or emo-tweet. They're just as bad as emo-mailing except their spite is expressed in only 140 - 160 characters.

If you can keep yourself from the normal feelings of jealousy, angst, rage, along with feelings of rejection and neglect you and your friend should be able to go back to being the friends you always were. Just as soon as you find someone hotter than he is to date. ;)



*This blog post was inspired by a friend.