What do you do when you are in love with your girlfriend's best friend?

Answer 1

You have a few options:

1) Ask yourself whether you are really in love or just infatuated. If you are just infatuated, then you should keep your distance from the best friend. Don't engage in conversation, don't flirt, don't allow yourself to get in situations where you might act on your infatuation (such as by spending time alone with her or by doing drugs or alcohol that might lower your inhibitions and cause you to say and/or do things that you will regret because they will hurt your girlfriend).

2) If you are really in love with her, then you have an obligation to break things off with your girlfriend. She has a right to be in a relationship with someone who wants to be in a relationship with her. She deserves someone who sees her as the most desirable woman in the room. Note: when you break up with your girlfriend, do not tell her it's because you're in love with her girlfriend. Say that your feelings for her have changed and that she deserves someone who can love her properly and have a future with her.

3) Now comes the tough part. You have to decide whether you want to pursue the best friend. There are a lot of reasons not to do so. For one, it will make it even harder for your ex-girlfriend to get over you. It throws salt in her wounds. Second, if the best friend is any kind of friend at all, she'll turn you down out of loyalty to your ex-girlfriend. Third, if the best friend is interested in you, it's even worse because now your ex-girlfriend can't even talk to her best friend about getting over you.

4) So, if you do decide to pursue the best friend, you should--at the very least--wait several months after the break up. And then you should talk to your ex-girlfriend first about whether it would be OK with her if you asked out her friend. She may ask you whether you broke up with her because of your feelings for the best friend. There's not much to be gained by answering "yes" to that question. Reiterate that you broke up with her because you couldn't love her the way she deserved and that you respected her enough to free her to have that sort of relationship.

5) If the ex-girlfriend doesn't give the OK for you to ask out the best friend, you have to decide what to do next. Since you waited several months, it's OK to pursue the best friend on your own, though--again--she may say "no" out of loyalty to her friend or because she's just not interested.

No matter what you decide, you'll be able to respect yourself better if you keep others' feelings in mind first--and you're more likely to win over the best friend too.