I have been friends with him for many long years. He has been in love with me for almost all of them.
He’s never said it. “I love you,” yes. A million times over. I’ve said it to him too. Never anything more. There never will be anything more.
But a year ago, after a long call about our pasts and our futures and the meaning of the universe, he said there was something he’d wanted to tell me for a while, something he’d never shared with anyone. I encouraged him to just tell me. After a lot of back and forth, he said, “I get why [other friend] is in love with you. You’re kind of perfect. You know that, right? There isn’t another you.”
I told him he was special to me too; we’re close friends after all. But he went on to say that he hadn’t meant it like that, that there’s a part of him that will always think I’m the most amazing person he’s ever met, and that I’m permanent family. “You’re as important to me as my wife,” he said. “And I love you.”
In any other relationship, I feel like that would be the end of it. I’d be awkward and uncomfortable, he would feel guilty, and he’d break up with his wife after she found out he’d been “emotionally cheating” on her.
But our story is different. I’m not in love with him, he isn’t attracted to me sexually (I know because close friends really do talk about everything), and I’m not his type. He’d never want to date me even if I were single because we have different lifestyles, habits, goals, desire to have children, everything.
His wife is kinda perfect for him. She knows about me and she doesn’t care. She knows they have a lot in common from favorite foods and games to careers and he’d never leave her for anyone, least of all me.
Why would he? He gets what he wants from me anyway — a close but still platonic friendship. I’m still one call away. We have lunches and dinners one-on-one (pre-pandemic, anyway). We talk all the time about nothing and everything.
But as an asexual person, if I know nothing else, I know this: you can fall in love with people you’re not attracted to. In fact, you can fall in love with places, new hobbies, and platonic…
