#also she just calls herself ace but she said she doesn't have crushes so... aro too ig

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for not telling my best friend I basically want to spend the rest of my life with her?

(This is long, I'm sorry, I'm incapable of shortly summarizing things)

Ok. So. I (26NB/FTM) am not in love with my best friend (25F), I'm ace and either aro or demiromantic (honestly not sure anymore). But I do love her as much as I can love anyone, probably. To the extent that I would want to be in a committed relationship (qpr I guess) with her and genuinely want to spend the rest of my life with her.

The thing is, she's neither aro nor ace and has only recently (last year) started overcoming fears and anxiety enough that she's gone on dates and wants to try having a relationship. It wasn't easy for her to get to this point and her anxiety is still a major thing she deals with, especially now trying to have a relationship. I know she doesn't love me romantically (not that I would particularly want her to) bc I'm firmly in the friend category and she's said that she can't fall in love with friends (though, again, I don't… want her to be in love me? Since I'm not in love with her either).

I want her to have these experiences. We're both still young and while I just don't need or want anything in that regard, I know it's different for her and in a way it's her finally being able to be herself, live for herself and do what she wants (she had a rough childhood and was basically the one raising her little brother). So, I really do want her to have these experiences and I'm not really jealous either bc I know I'm still more important to her ("bros before hoes" and all that, even if the hoes are guys lol). Though I have to admit it's recently been getting harder being genuinely happy for her when things go well with dates and I suppose I'm a little worried how things will be a few years down the line.

But we're very close. We've been friends for 8 years and best friends for almost as long. We tell each other everything. She's the most important person in my life and I'm the most important person in hers. We get mistaken for a couple constantly, at this point I'm pretty sure everyone in our families has at some point thought we're together. My mum basically treats her like a daughter; she's spent the last 3 Christmases with my family. Besides her brother, I'm the only person she truly cares about who she doesn't get anxious about. The reason I'm going to be moving back home after uni is because she still lives in the area; if she lived somewhere else I'd move there (that's not me being one-sidedly codependent btw, she would absolutely do the same). The jokes about how we need to die at the same time bc neither of us would want to live on alone are really only partly jokes.

Now, here's (finally) where I might be an asshole: When we were in school our friend group consisted of four guys, me and her. All the guys had a crush on her, though some she only found out about later. My best friend, at the time, identified as a lesbian (it's bi probably now). The guys knew that. Now this one guy she only found out about last year at a class reunion (I wasn't there) and he was being all weird about how he'd seen all the times they went to the movies together as dates etc. She thought they were jokingly calling those 'dates', we all did. Again, he knew she identified as gay and never actually said anything about being in love with her. He was also giving off incel-y vibes when she talked with him at the class reunion, so there's that.

We talked about that and well, I kinda admitted that there'd been a moment yeaaaaars ago (like 5?6?) where I felt myself fall in love with her and mentally went 'nope, nope, nope, not doing that (falling in love my best friend) again' and then… it didn't happen. Don't know how that worked. Either way, she made me promise if I ever did actually fall in love with her, that I would tell her. We were laughing about it but I know she was serious about that.

I don't plan on telling her though. I meaaaan I'm not in love with her, technically, which yes, I know, she would probably mean this too. But I know that, at least at this point in time, she doesn't want the same things I want and I want her to have these experiences of dating guys and being in a (allo) relationship etc. I don't want our relationship right now to change either and I know she would try to be considerate and I don't need or want that. I don't want her to overthink what she can or can't tell me, I don't mind hearing her talk about the guys she's dating and I want her to still come to me with everything. I know how she works, I've been basically managing her anxiety for years (genuinely do not mind that before anyone comes talking to me about boundaries) and I know I'm one of the few people in her life who try to let her come to her own conclusions/decisions instead of telling her what they think is right and/or what she should do (she's very easily influenced unfortunately and while I do tell her my opinions if she asks for them, I always try to let her come to her own conclusions first). I don't want her to lose all that. I don't want her to suddenly be anxious about me either, that is genuinely the last thing I would ever want.

TLDR: My best friend made me promise her that I would tell her if I fell in love with her, which I'm technically not, but I do want to spend the rest of my life with her & would want to be in a (queerplatonic) committed relationship with her. I don't want to tell her bc I know it's not what she wants, at least right now, and I want her to make her own experiences and I don't want our relationship to change with this.

AITA for not telling her I would want to be in a (queerplatonic) relationship with her?

What are these acronyms?

#aita #am i the asshole