I’m In Love With My Best Friend Who Is In A Relationship

If you are interested in your best friend who already has a partner, start by understanding your own feelings. They may be genuine affection, or loneliness, jealousy or limerence, an obsessive, idealising infatuation.

Then weigh the friendship and their relationship, decide carefully whether to speak up, and treat everyone involved, including their partner, with respect.

1. Consider Your Motivations

Why These Feelings Are Common

Feeling drawn to a friend who is taken is common.

Bleske-Rechek et al. (2012) surveyed adults about a current cross-sex friendship. Attraction to the friend was common in younger and middle-aged groups alike. People were more likely to call it a cost of the friendship than a benefit.

Friendship is also a common route into romance. Across seven samples of nearly 1,900 people, Stinson et al. (2022) found that about two-thirds had experienced a friends-first relationship.

Being drawn to someone already committed is common too. Schmitt and Buss (2001) found that roughly half of respondents had tried to attract someone already partnered. A relationship already in trouble proved more vulnerable than a stable one.

Unrequited feelings are common as well. Bringle et al. (2013) found that adults reported unrequited love about four times as often as mutual love. It rated lower on passion and commitment but higher on emotional turmoil. On average, the attachment is thinner than it feels.

Most of this research uses Western college students and assumes heterosexual pairings, so treat the figures as a guide, not a rule.

Why Understand Your Feelings First

Take time to understand your emotions before doing anything.

Ask yourself why you’re drawn to your friend. Is this genuine, lasting love, or could it be loneliness or jealousy?

Ensure you’re not just caught up in the idea of them.

Acknowledge that these feelings exist. It’s okay to have them, but acknowledging them doesn’t mean you must act on them.

Examine your feelings to understand if they are fleeting or hold deeper significance.

By sorting out your emotions first, you’ll make a clearer decision and be less likely to act impulsively.

What Is Driving the Attraction

• Genuine Affection: Is your attraction based on a deep connection, shared values, and mutual respect? Or is it driven by something else?
• External Factors: Are you feeling lonely, bored, or seeking excitement? Are you idealising your friend’s life or relationship? What void are you trying to fill?
• Reality vs. Fantasy: It’s easy to idealise a potential relationship, but remember that the reality might not live up to your expectations.

As psychotherapist Esther Perel explains, an idealised friend can become an escape from the real difficulties of your own relationship.

Perel made this point to a caller on her podcast Where Should We Begin?. He had spent years suppressing feelings for a close friend while both were partnered.

Perel calls it a paradox. A relationship that needs ongoing effort and honest conflict can start to feel “complicated”, while a friendship without that burden feels effortless. But a friendship is still a relationship, she stresses, and it can develop its own frictions once feelings and secrecy enter it.

In another episode, about unrequited love for a best friend, Perel makes a sharper point. Friendship needs mutuality.

You can love someone who does not love you back, she says. But you cannot really be friends unless you both experience the friendship the same way.

What do you want?

• Commitment vs. Validation: Are you seeking a committed, long-term relationship, or are you primarily seeking validation or attention?
• Desire for Pleasure: Be cautious of getting swept up in the moment. Left unchecked, a desire for pleasure risks disrespecting what your friend and their partner are building together.
• Realism: Are your expectations realistic? Do you have a clear picture of what a relationship with this person would actually be like?
• Consequences: Have you considered the consequences of your actions on your own well-being, and the well-being of other people?
• Character: Is your focus on the person’s character? If it was about character, you probably wouldn’t be asking if you should tell them, and instead be telling them.

How to Examine Your Feelings

• Journaling: Set aside dedicated time to write about your feelings without censoring yourself. Explore the intensity, triggers, and nuances of your emotions.

• Mindfulness: Practice mindfulness to notice your emotions as they arise, paying attention to thoughts and feelings without judgment. This awareness helps you understand your emotional landscape.
• Friend’s Advice: It might help to confide in a trusted confidant about your feelings to gain perspective.

Here is how this can look in practice.

Imagine someone whose attraction grew stronger just after their own relationship ended. They feel the rush mainly when the friend is unavailable. Perhaps they are busy, travelling or arguing with their partner. Beyond “they make me feel wanted”, they struggle to name a quality they admire.

That pattern suggests the pull is mostly about unmet needs, not a considered preference for this particular person. It can resemble limerence, an obsessive, idealising infatuation, more than steady love.

2. Assess the Situation

The nature of their relationship:

• Casual vs. Committed: Is your friend casually dating their partner, or are they in a committed, long-term relationship? If they are married, cohabitating, or deeply intertwined, expressing your feelings could have significant consequences.
• Relationship Quality: Observe their interactions. Do they seem happy and fulfilled, or are there signs of conflict or dissatisfaction? However, be cautious about making assumptions based on limited observations.
• Openness to Polyamory: Is it possible that your friend and their partner have an agreement to be open or polyamorous? If so, your approach should be entirely different than if monogamy was an explicit expectation of the relationship.

Do Crushes Harm Relationships?

Research on people in exclusive relationships who have a crush on someone else adds some perspective. O’Sullivan et al. (2025) recruited 567 adults who were attracted to someone outside their relationship. They followed 172 of them for a year.

Those participants completed four assessments. For most people the crush stayed fairly stable and was not linked to any measurable harm to relationship satisfaction. But the picture was mixed.

People who started low in relationship quality showed further declines in sexual satisfaction. Some who started highly satisfied showed sharp drops in romantic satisfaction.

The authors concluded that outside attraction is common and not inherently corrosive. Its effects depend on the main relationship’s health.

Two limits matter here. Only about 30% of participants completed all four assessments, so the most damaging cases may be missing. And the study followed partnered people with a crush, not people in your position.

Signs of strain are not an invitation. Limited outside observation is an unreliable guide to how a couple is really doing.

What the Friendship Means to You

• Potential Impact: Carefully consider how expressing your feelings (or not expressing them) might alter the dynamics of your friendship. Could it create awkwardness, tension, or distance?
• Your Intentions: What are your true intentions for the friendship? If it is primarily based on the potential for a romantic relationship, it might not be a genuine friendship.
• Worth the Risk? Is the potential reward of a romantic relationship worth the risk of losing the friendship, especially if their existing relationship is strong?
• Current feelings: Has your ability to enjoy the friend’s company diminished since realising that you have feelings for them? Has it changed the nature of your friendship?

Attachment styles:

• Attachment Theory: Understanding attachment styles can help to make sense of both your response and the response of your friend, should you choose to share your feelings.
• Attachment Styles: Attachment styles have been categorised as secure, anxious, avoidant and disorganised. Each could affect your response to this situation differently.

Hazan and Shaver (1987) were the first to test whether infant attachment styles carry into adult romantic bonds. In their survey, roughly 56% of adults described a secure style, 25% avoidant and 19% anxious.

Secure adults described relationships high in trust and friendship. Anxious adults described obsessive preoccupation and swings between euphoria and jealousy. Avoidant adults reported discomfort with closeness.

These patterns suggest how a friend might react to a confession. An anxiously attached friend may read ordinary warmth as stronger interest than it is. An avoidantly attached friend may pull away rather than sit with an unreciprocated confession.

3. Communicate or Don’t Communicate

When not to communicate:

• Happy Commitment: If your friend is happily and securely committed to their partner, expressing your feelings could be disruptive, selfish, and disrespectful.
• Negative Intentions: If your primary motivation is to break them up or cause drama, it is unethical to express your feelings.
• Short Term Gratification: If you are really seeking short term gratification, expressing your feelings will likely lead to negative outcomes for everyone involved.
• No Signals: Look for any signals (carefully and objectively) about how they feel toward you. If there’s absolutely no hint of romantic interest from them, confessing could just create awkwardness or pain.

Is Staying Silent Always Safer?

Silence is a legitimate choice, but it is not automatically the low-regret one.

Joel et al. (2019) ran five studies. People were over three times as likely to recall a missed opportunity, not a rejection, as their most regrettable romantic decision.

In hypothetical scenarios, a missed opportunity was rated more regrettable than a rejection, even though both were rated equally painful. People judged the missed opportunity more consequential for their lives.

The pattern held even for people high in attachment anxiety and low in self-esteem.

There is an important limit. Every study involved someone whose relationship status was uncertain or absent, not someone already committed. Acting here also risks a second person’s existing relationship, not just your own ego.

Read it as a caution against treating silence as free. It is not a reason to disclose regardless of your friend’s situation.

How to communicate (if you choose to):

• Intention: You should be clear about your intentions from the start, for example, by stating it’s a date (not hanging out) when you ask them to meet. This could extend to the expression of your feelings in general: that your intentions are to make your feelings known.
• Honesty and Directness: Express your feelings clearly and honestly, but without placing demands or expectations on them.
• Emphasise Friendship: Reiterate that you value their friendship and wouldn’t want to jeopardise it. Make it clear that their friendship is more important than any romantic hope.
• Timing: Avoid days that matter to their relationship, like an anniversary. Don’t blurt it out during conflict or high emotion. A planned, private conversation goes much smoother.
• Location: Pick a calm, private setting where you won’t be interrupted. Avoid overly intense setups like their home late at night. A quiet public space, such as a coffee shop, often works.
• “I” Statements: Frame your expressions in terms of your own feelings, rather than making accusations or demands.
• Example: “I’ve developed feelings for you, and I wanted to be honest. I value our friendship deeply, and I understand that you’re in a relationship. I don’t expect you to feel the same way, but I needed to be true to myself.”
• Be Prepared for Any Response: They might be flattered but committed to staying with their partner, they might need time to think, or they might even share that they don’t feel the same way.

Both Sides of a Rejection

You may remember the same conversation very differently.

Baumeister et al. (1993) asked adults to describe an episode of unrequited love from both the would-be lover’s side and the rejector’s side. The two accounts differed sharply:

• Would-be lovers: They saw their feelings as understandable and partly encouraged.
• Rejectors: They felt they had given no encouragement and reported real guilt at having to hurt someone.

That is why “I” statements matter. They stop you claiming what your friend supposedly signalled.

Your friend’s guilt or awkwardness is also common. It is not proof they handled it badly.

Psychotherapist Esther Perel suggests that what hurts most after a failed confession is often the exposure. She said this about a caller whose declaration to a friend had been shared with others.

In her view, the sting is having opened your heart and been met without reciprocity, with others now knowing.

When the Answer Is Silence

An unclear response is not a gentler outcome.

Szczesniak et al. (2025) compared explicit rejection, ghosting and acceptance in two simulated dating studies, with 243 and 141 single adults. Being ghosted hurt about as much as being rejected.

The difference was closure. Rejected participants felt far clearer about where they stood. Ghosted participants stayed as attached to the other person, and as likely to keep monitoring and eventually re-contact them, as participants who had been accepted.

The scenario was an early relationship with someone met online, not an established friendship. Treat the numbers cautiously.

The shape of the finding still transfers. A friend who never really answers will probably leave you in limbo for longer. A clear answer stings, but it lets you move on.

4. Ethical Advice

Respect Their Existing Relationship:

Think beyond your own desires.

Pursuing someone who is taken can hurt several people: your friend, their partner, and potentially you if things go badly.

A good ethical guideline is the “Golden Rule”: put yourself in the partner’s shoes. How would you feel if someone were trying to steal your significant other?

Remember that “what goes around comes around.” That reminder can reinforce the need to avoid causing harm.

In the long run, you want everyone to be okay. That includes maintaining your friend’s trust and happiness.

Sometimes real love means wanting the best for someone, even if you aren’t part of their romantic life.

Respect Boundaries:

• Accept Their Decision: If they don’t reciprocate your feelings, accept their decision gracefully. Do not pressure them, argue, or try to change their mind.
• Create Distance: Scale back contact for a while to recalibrate, without cutting your friend out completely. Muting or unfollowing them online avoids constant reminders and gives you room to heal.
• Avoid Triangulation: Do not involve yourself in their relationship issues, offer unsolicited advice, or try to come between them.

Maintain Integrity and Honesty:

Handle the situation in a way you can be proud of later.

This means being honest with yourself about your intentions and avoiding any sneaky or manipulative behavior.

Don’t flirt excessively behind the partner’s back. Don’t try to create rifts either. Such actions can lead to guilt and regret.

Keeping your integrity also means thinking about what happens if your friend ever did reciprocate. You’d want it to happen the right way. They would end their current relationship before starting anything with you, so that everyone is treated fairly.

References

Baumeister, R. F., Wotman, S. R., & Stillwell, A. M. (1993). Unrequited love: On heartbreak, anger, guilt, scriptlessness, and humiliation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64(3), 377–394. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.64.3.377

Bleske-Rechek, A., Somers, E., Micke, C., Erickson, L., Matteson, L., Stocco, C., Schumacher, B., & Ritchie, L. (2012). Benefit or burden? Attraction in cross-sex friendship. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 29(5), 569–596. https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407512443611

Bringle, R. G., Winnick, T., & Rydell, R. J. (2013). The prevalence and nature of unrequited love. SAGE Open, 3(2), Article 2158244013492160. https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244013492160

Hazan, C., & Shaver, P. (1987). Romantic love conceptualized as an attachment process. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52(3), 511–524. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.52.3.511

Joel, S., Plaks, J. E., & MacDonald, G. (2019). Nothing ventured, nothing gained: People anticipate more regret from missed romantic opportunities than from rejection. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 36(1), 305–336. https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407517729567

O’Sullivan, L. F., Belu, C. F., & Tramonte, L. (2025). Do crushes pose a problem for exclusive relationships? Trajectories of attraction intensity to extradyadic others and links to primary relationship commitment and satisfaction. Personal Relationships, 32(4), Article e70033. https://doi.org/10.1111/pere.70033

Perel, E. (n.d.-a). I fell for my best friend, but he didn’t feel the same [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qoAzmIP12E

Perel, E. (n.d.-b). I told my friend I was in love with her. She told everyone. [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOyaJwRslV4

Schmitt, D. P., & Buss, D. M. (2001). Human mate poaching: Tactics and temptations for infiltrating existing mateships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80(6), 894–917. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.80.6.894

Stinson, D. A., Cameron, J. J., & Hoplock, L. B. (2022). The friends-to-lovers pathway to romance: Prevalent, preferred, and overlooked by science. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 13(2), 562–571. https://doi.org/10.1177/19485506211026992

Szczesniak, A. L., Pierce, M. E., & Spielmann, S. S. (2025). Give up the ghost: Emotional and behavioral responses to ambiguous rejection. Personal Relationships, 32(3), Article e70018. https://doi.org/10.1111/pere.70018