I Have Feelings for My Best Friend's Boyfriend (or Girlfriend)
Entry No. 110 ·
By The IF Team
If you have feelings for your best friend’s boyfriend, you have not betrayed anyone. A feeling is not an act, and this one happens to loyal, decent people far more often than anyone admits. It is honest, and nothing to be ashamed of. What counts is what you do next, and the plan that protects both your friendship and your integrity is simple to say and hard to do: do not test whether he feels it too, put quiet distance between you and him rather than between you and your friend, keep living your life, and if the feeling needs somewhere to go, say it in a sealed message that waits for the right time. The same holds for your best friend’s girlfriend, husband or wife, or your flatmate’s partner.
The only line is going behind your friend’s back: cheating hurts people, and so does lying. IF, the dating app we built for feelings like yours, stays on the honest side of it. No conversation can open on IF while either person is marked as in a relationship, but you can still say what you feel in an IF, a private message sealed until you are both single.
It rarely arrives as a thunderbolt. He remembers the name of your impossible manager. She laughs at the joke nobody else got. You end up on the same side of an argument at the pub quiz, and on the walk home you catch yourself replaying it. A best friend’s partner is someone you see often, are encouraged to like and already trust by proxy, which is exactly the kind of closeness feelings grow in. You are not broken, and you are not alone.
This is the version of a crush on someone who is taken where a friendship is on the line as well as a relationship. If it is the other way round, and you are the one in a relationship, feelings for your partner’s best friend are a different situation, with their own guide.
Why this crush weighs more than most
Most crushes on someone taken cost you only the crush. This one touches two relationships, and one of them is yours. You are not standing outside their relationship; you are inside its orbit. You are at the birthday dinners, in the group chat, on the list for the wedding. There is no quietly drifting away from someone your best friend loves.
It also brings a particular kind of guilt. You may catch yourself hoping, for half a second, that they argue, and then feel sick for thinking it. That flicker is not a plan, and it does not make you a bad friend. It is a measure of what this is costing you, and a reason to look after the feeling rather than feed it.
And friendship is not a lesser kind of love. A review pooling 148 studies found that people with stronger social relationships, friendships among them, were about 50 per cent more likely to survive over the periods studied. You do not have to choose between the friendship and the feeling, as long as you handle the feeling honestly.
Protect the friendship without denying the feeling
The usual advice is to say nothing and keep your distance. It is half right: it rarely says how to keep your distance without hurting your friend, or what to do with a feeling that has nowhere to go. Here is the fuller version.
Think twice before you tell them face to face
You can tell them, and emotional honesty is brave. But be clear-eyed about what a face-to-face confession does here. If they do not feel the same, you have handed them a secret: they either keep it from your friend, or tell your friend and put you at the centre of a row. If they do, you are both left holding a feeling that has nowhere honest to go while they are with your friend. Either way, your friend did nothing to deserve it.
You are potentially better off sending an IF. It says exactly how you feel, once, in a sealed message that stays sealed until you are both single, so if the timing ever lines up, you are already there to show them how much you have always liked them.
Stop testing the water
Crossing the line rarely looks like a declaration. It looks like small things that feel innocent in the moment:
- Private messages that would read differently if your friend scrolled through them.
- Staying on after everyone else has gone home, or offering the lift that leaves the two of you alone.
- Becoming their sounding board when they argue with your friend.
- Flirting “just to see” whether they flirt back.
- Agreeing, even silently, when they complain about your friend.
If you notice yourself doing one, that is not a reason for shame. It is information, and a signal to step back.
Put distance between you and them, not you and your friend
The instinct is to pull away from both. Resist it, or your friend will feel the distance and not know why. Instead, see your friend on their own more often: the long walk, the brunch, the film their partner would never sit through. When their partner is there, keep it to groups and sit at the other end of the table. Mute their partner’s stories for a season. You are not cutting anyone out; you are turning the volume down on one person.
Tell someone
Feelings kept entirely secret tend to grow in the dark. Say it out loud to someone: a friend, a sibling, a therapist. Write it down.
Let your life get bigger
See your other friends, start the thing you keep putting off, and date if you feel like it, not as a distraction or to make anyone jealous, but because a full life is good for you whatever happens next. Notice what drew you to your friend’s partner: being listened to, a shared sense of humour, feeling easy in someone’s company. Knowing what you value is useful, wherever it leads.
Should you tell your best friend?
You do not have to, and not because honesty does not matter. A feeling you are not acting on is yours to carry. Telling your friend hands them the job of wondering: whether to watch you at parties, whether to trust their partner, whether to keep inviting you. It asks them to manage something you are already managing.
Equally, if you would rather be open with them, that is honest too: nothing about the feeling needs hiding, as long as nothing is happening behind their back.
There are also times when saying something helps. If the distance you are keeping is hurting the friendship and your friend asks what is wrong, you do not need to invent a story: “I’ve had some things going on, and I’m trying to sort my head out” is true. If the feeling has grown so large that you cannot be around them both, your friend may be better off knowing why you have gone quiet than guessing. Keep it short, take responsibility, and be clear that nothing has happened. And if their partner is the one who makes a move, it is a different conversation, and a harder one.
If it is your best friend’s boyfriend
This is the most common version of the question, and it usually comes with an unwritten rule attached: you do not go near your friend’s boyfriend. The rule is not old-fashioned. It exists because the damage lasts so long, and because everyone in your circle will have an opinion. An IF keeps to the rule: it says nothing to him while he is with her, and waits, sealed, in case the timing ever changes.
The hardest moment is when your friend complains about him to you. It is tempting to agree a little too readily, or to say “you deserve better” without being sure whose benefit that is for. Ask first whether you would say the same if you felt nothing for him. If you truly believe he does not treat her well, tell her, and keep it to what he does and how she seems, never a word that hints at what you might offer instead.
If it is your best mate’s girlfriend
If you fancy your best mate’s girlfriend, or suspect you are falling in love with her, the feeling usually comes with a phrase attached: the bro code. Most of it is a joke, but the one rule everybody takes seriously is that you do not go after your mate’s girlfriend. Beneath the banter, it is a loyalty rule, and a good one.
What the joke version leaves out is what to do with the feeling. Say it out loud to someone you trust, then do the practical things: fewer nights round at theirs, no one-on-one drinks with her, more time with your mate on his own. None of this depends on gender: the loyalty runs the same way whoever your best friend is dating. And if the feeling still needs saying, a sealed IF can hold it, unopened until you are both single.
If it is your friend’s husband or wife
When the partner is a spouse, the stakes rise. There may be children, a shared home, two families and a long future of birthdays and anniversary dinners you will all attend. The friend may not even be your closest. Attraction to a friend’s husband or wife often grows quietly out of years of hosting, holidays and helping out.
Marriage does not change the principle, but it raises the cost of a mistake. Let someone else host for a while, say no to the weekend away as a four, and keep conversations with their spouse in rooms where your friend is present. If you are married too, the feeling touches your own marriage as well, and that is not shameful. The honest options are some distance, a clear look at what is happening at home, or an IF that stays sealed until you are both single. None of them involves cheating or lying. No conversation can open on IF while either of you is marked as in a relationship, so an IF asks nothing of anyone’s marriage.
If it is your roommate’s or flatmate’s partner
Living together removes the tool that works best: distance. They are in the kitchen at eight in the morning in a borrowed T-shirt. They are on the sofa when you get home. A crush on your roommate’s boyfriend or your flatmate’s girlfriend can feel impossible to escape because, physically, it is.
So build the distance into your routines. Make plans out on the nights they stay over. Keep late-night kitchen conversations short, and stop being the one who waits up. If it still does not ease, it is reasonable to ask whether the arrangement should outlast the current tenancy. Moving out at the end of a lease, without a speech, is sometimes the kindest thing for everyone, including you.
What if your best friend’s partner likes you back?
This is the version that feels like fate: the eye contact that lasts a beat too long, the messages that arrive after your friend has gone to bed, the “I’ve never been able to talk to anyone like this.” It is real, and a connection that runs both ways does not mean either of you has done anything wrong.
Their side of it happens more than you might think: research on adults in exclusive relationships finds that crushes on people outside the relationship are common, so even a mutual spark does not on its own tell you where their relationship is heading. If you are still reading the signals, it helps to know what the signs that a taken person likes you do and do not mean.
What keeps it honest is the order of things. While they are with your friend, nothing happens: no reply to the midnight message, no private meeting to “talk about it”. If you need to say something, say it kindly — “You’re with my best friend, so nothing can happen while you are” — and mean it. Whether they stay together is their decision to make, without a push from you.
None of that means the feeling has to die. If it is real on both sides, it can wait for a clean start. An IF holds it, sealed until you are both single, and no conversation can open on IF while either of you is marked as in a relationship. If they are ever single while you are too, your IF lets you show them the feeling was there all along.
If they keep pushing after you have said no, that is their behaviour, not your feelings, and you do not owe anyone your silence; talk to someone you trust. And if something has already happened between you, do not lie about it if your friend asks. Lying is what turns a hard situation into a betrayal.
If they break up one day
Relationships end, and sometimes this one will. When it does, the first weeks belong to your friend. If months pass and the feeling is still there, the questions become the ones about whether it is ever okay to date a friend’s ex: how long to wait, and whether to talk to your friend first.
Waiting in the meantime is not foolish; it is hope. Right person, wrong time? Wait for them on IF. The healthy way to do it is to say it once, in an IF, and keep living your life while it waits.
When the feeling grows heavier, not lighter
For most people, a crush like this softens with time, distance and a fuller life. For some, it does not. If you are checking their social media several times a day, planning your week around seeing them, or struggling to be around your friend at all, the feeling may have become something heavier. That is not a character flaw. However, if it has reached the point of turning up where they will be, or messaging after they have asked for space, stop there and talk to someone; you do not have to manage it alone.
If you would rather move on, that does not have to mean leaving it unsaid: send an IF, set the feeling down and get on with things. Our guide to getting over someone you cannot be with walks through it.
Where IF fits
IF is a dating app for everyone, single or in a relationship, built so you can say how you feel whatever the timing. Two single people use it like any dating app: an accepted Like opens a chat. When either of you is in a relationship, no chat can open, but you can still say what you feel in an IF.
An IF is a private, sealed message of up to 250 characters that opens only once you are both single. That makes it a release valve for exactly this situation: you say all of it, once, with no confession over drinks and no secret inside your friend’s relationship. If they become single while you are single too, you get 24 hours to reveal it, or you can let it lapse and stay hidden for good; if you are in a relationship yourself, it waits until you are both single. Once revealed, they see who you are and what you wrote and choose whether to accept; accepting opens a chat. How an IF works covers every situation.
It is worth knowing how it lands. If they are on IF, they will usually be told that an IF is waiting for them — never who sent it or what it says. If they are not on IF yet, one sent to an email address triggers one short invitation email, without your name or words, while one sent to a phone number or Instagram handle waits in case they join. Sent through Search, its card then offers Confide in Mutuals: a ready-made message asking mutual friends to drop a hint that a message is waiting, to share or not, and with whom, as you choose. IF never discloses the sender before a reveal, though in a close circle people can guess from context. The decision is yours.
Your first IF is free. Writing one takes a little courage, and that is rather the point: you say it once, mean every word, and let it wait while you go on being the friend you have always been. If the timing ever lines up, it may lead you to where you were meant to be all along.
Questions people ask
Is it wrong to have feelings for my best friend’s boyfriend?
No. Feelings are not choices, and this one grows easily out of time spent together. Having it is honest. What would be wrong is cheating or lying: anything behind your friend’s back.
Should I tell my best friend’s boyfriend how I feel?
You can, and it takes courage. But saying it to his face creates a secret inside your friend’s relationship, whatever he answers. You may be better off sending a sealed IF that cannot open while either of you is marked as in a relationship, so that if the timing ever lines up, you are already there.
How do I stop liking my best friend’s boyfriend?
You cannot switch it off, and you have nothing to be ashamed of. Give it less to feed on: less time alone with him, more time with your friend on her own, a fuller life of your own. Writing it in an IF can be what finally lets it rest, because it has been said.
Is it normal to be attracted to a friend’s husband or wife?
Yes. Years of shared dinners, holidays and favours build real closeness, and attraction sometimes follows. It is normal to feel, and wise to manage with a little more distance than usual. And if it needs saying, an IF can hold it, sealed until you are both single, without asking anything of their marriage.
What if my best friend’s girlfriend likes me back?
Then how you handle it matters more than ever. Nothing should happen while she is with your mate: no secret messages, no drinks to “talk about it”. If it is real on both sides, it can wait for a clean start, and an IF lets you say it now, sealed: she cannot read it, and no conversation can open on IF, while either of you is marked as in a relationship.
The friendship was here before the feeling, and with care it can outlast it. Say what you feel once, in an IF, and let it wait, sealed, for the day your timing lines up.