In a Relationship but in Love With Your Best Friend?
Entry No. 111 ·
By The IF Team
If you are in love with your best friend but you have a boyfriend, a girlfriend, a husband or a wife, the feeling is not a betrayal, and it is nothing to be ashamed of. A feeling is not an act. What matters is what you do next, and you have more honest options than it seems: work out what the feeling is really about, keep the friendship on the right side of the line, decide whether to tell your friend or your partner, or say it now in a sealed message that waits until you are both single. The only real lines are cheating and lying.
Loving them does not make you a bad partner, or a disloyal friend. Often it is the friend from university who knew you before your partner did, who answered at 3am the night of the worst phone call of your life, who can make you laugh in a room where nobody else can. Love grows where trust already lives. The difficulty is that this person is woven into your life, and stepping away would cost you something whatever you decide.
This is the hardest form of a crush while you are in a relationship, because the usual advice — put some distance between you — costs you a friendship as well. It is also the kind of feeling IF, the dating app we built, was made for: no conversation can open on IF while either of you is in a relationship, but you can still say what you feel. If you are single, how to tell your best friend you love them is a different question.
Why it is so often the best friend
A best friend has already seen the unedited version of you. There is no first-date performance, no guessing what they think of you. And the comparison is uneven. Your relationship carries the rent, the bins and the in-laws. The friendship carries only the good parts: conversation, loyalty, the long walk on a Sunday. That does not make the feeling an illusion. It just means it is worth looking at clearly before you decide anything.
The feeling is real, and it is also delicate. In a study of friendships between men and women, psychologists found that attraction between friends was common, and was more often experienced as a burden than a benefit. That is a reason to handle it with care, not a reason for shame.
Work out what you are actually feeling
Long friendships blur love, attachment and escape into one warm fog. Before you do anything, ask yourself:
- When did it start? A feeling that predates your relationship is different from one that arrived during a hard winter with your partner.
- Is it them, or who you are with them? If the pull is towards feeling understood, or feeling funny again, the need is real whether or not your friend is the answer.
- Picture the unglamorous version. Their mood at 7am, their family at Christmas, the argument about money. If that still sounds like home, take the feeling seriously.
- How do you feel when they date someone? A sharp, private jealousy usually means more than affection.
- Would you still want them if your relationship were happy? Sometimes the friend is the person you were meant to be with, and sometimes only the nearest exit. Both are worth knowing.
If it has been there all along
Some people realise they have loved their best friend for years, and chose someone else because the friend was unavailable or saying it felt too risky. That does not automatically mean your relationship is a mistake. Plenty of people love their partners and still carry an old “what if”. What matters is whether it has stayed quiet or grown into something that shapes your days. And a feeling that has waited this long deserves to be said once, and an IF lets you say it now, sealed until you are both single.
If it arrived when your relationship got hard
One study followed 172 people with a crush for a year and found that a mild crush was unlikely to harm a happy relationship. The crushes linked to falling satisfaction were strong ones that lasted, and ones held while the relationship was already unhappy. A best friend makes the first kind more likely, because they are not going anywhere, so ask yourself honestly about the second: did the feeling grow as things went quiet at home? If it did, it may be telling you something about your relationship as well as about your friend.
Is loving your best friend cheating?
No. A feeling you have not acted on betrays no one. Cheating is wrong, and so is lying, but a feeling is neither. It is also why IF is built the way it is: no conversation can open on IF while either of you is in a relationship, so saying it in a sealed IF is not cheating either. With a best friend, emotional closeness is the whole point of the friendship, so the question is not whether you talk. It is what the talking has become.
When researchers asked people which behaviours count as infidelity, sex was the clearest case. Emotional, affectionate and online behaviours counted to a lesser extent, and how people judged them depended on the details. With a best friend, the details are the whole friendship. Your relationship has its own line, whether or not either of you has ever said it out loud. The friendship is crossing it if you notice yourself:
- Telling your friend things about your relationship that you would not want your partner to know you had shared.
- Making your friend your first call whenever you and your partner argue.
- Deleting messages, or describing an evening together as shorter or more casual than it was.
- Arranging time alone, and hoping your partner will not want to come.
Closeness is allowed. Editing is the tell. If your partner read every message tonight, would they see a friendship, or would you want to explain some of it first? If you are not sure, the signs of an emotional affair will help you work out where you stand.
Should you tell your best friend how you feel?
You can. Emotional honesty is brave, and some friendships are strong enough to hold it. But saying it face to face while you are with someone has real risks. It lands as a question — would you, if I were single? — that your friend has to answer inside a friendship they cannot easily step away from. If they do not feel the same, the friendship has to carry it. If they do, the distance to cheating becomes very short. And it cannot be unsaid.
You are potentially better off sending an IF: a private, sealed message that opens only once you are both single, and no conversation can open between you before then. It says exactly what you feel and asks nothing of your friend today. They may be told an IF is waiting, but never who sent it or what it says. If the timing ever lines up, you are already there, with proof of how long you have felt this way.
What if you think they feel the same?
Then the timing matters more, not less. Mutual feelings rarely arrive as a decision. They arrive as a hug that lasts a beat too long, or a late conversation that drifts towards “what if”, each step too small to refuse. Keep those moments where your partner could see them: no conversations you would need to edit later. If what you share is real, it has already survived years. It can survive the wait, and an IF means it need not go unsaid while it does.
What if they say something first?
Then you do not have to pretend. You can be honest that you feel it too, and just as honest about where you are: with someone, and not willing to cheat or lie. Give the friendship a little room. If you would rather put your side into words once and let it wait, an IF can hold it until you are both single.
Should you tell your boyfriend, girlfriend or spouse?
A feeling for someone else is not something you are obliged to hide, and with a best friend it is rarely private anyway. Your partner probably knows this person and may already have wondered about the late messages. If you step back from the friendship, they will notice, and an unexplained change can hurt more than the truth. A few things tip the balance towards telling:
- The feeling is changing how you behave, at home or with your friend.
- Your partner has asked you directly. Whatever you decide about the rest, do not lie in answer to that question.
- You are seriously thinking about ending the relationship.
Keeping a quiet feeling to yourself is not lying; hiding what you do is. And IF is no secret either: having it on your phone while you are in a relationship is not cheating, and nothing about it needs hiding. If you tell your partner, lead with what you are going to do rather than with a description of your friend, and if it feels too big to say alone, talk to someone first.
Your honest options
Once you are clear about what you feel, there are three honest paths. None of them asks you to pretend the feeling is not there, and an IF can sit alongside any of them.
Stay, and let the feeling settle
If you want your relationship, give the feeling less to live on:
- Name it to yourself. A feeling you admit to loses some of its charge. One you hide, even from yourself, tends to grow.
- Step back from one-to-one intimacy, not from the friend. See them in groups for a while and let the late-night messages go.
- Find another confidant: another friend, a sibling, someone you trust. Your best friend cannot be the person who helps you get over your best friend.
- Turn towards your partner. Notice what the friendship gives you — laughter, being listened to, the sense of being known — and ask for more of it at home, out loud.
- Give it months, not weeks. A feeling this rooted fades slowly, and can flare at weddings and birthdays long after you think it has gone.
If groups are not enough, a real pause may be kinder, and you do not owe your friend a confession to take one: “I need to put my energy into my relationship for a while” is enough. Staying does not have to mean leaving it unsaid: you can send an IF, set the feeling down and get on with your life.
Work on the relationship together
If the feeling has shown you something missing — closeness, sex, attention, a shared future — say so to your partner and find out together whether it can be rebuilt. Distance from your friend helps: it is hard to see a relationship clearly while measuring it against someone every day.
End the relationship cleanly
Sometimes the honest answer is that the relationship is over. If so, end it because it is not right, not as a transfer to your friend. Ask yourself: would you still leave if your best friend moved to the other side of the world tomorrow? If yes, leave kindly and openly, and do not make your friend the reason. Should you break up because you like someone else? walks through that decision. If you sent an IF while you were together and your friend is single, it reveals when you change your own status to single — and if the feeling was mutual all along, that is the moment it can finally be said out loud.
If you are married, newly dating, or your friend is taken too
If you are married
Marriage raises the stakes of every step. There may be a home, children and two families, and your best friend may be threaded through all of it: best man or chief bridesmaid, godparent, the other half of every holiday. A pause from the friendship will be noticed, so decide what you will say to your husband or wife before you change anything. Take the big question slowly, talk to someone you trust, and keep everything with your friend in the open. An IF can put what you feel into words without asking anything of anyone today; it stays sealed until you are both single. Married but in love with someone else is written for that reckoning.
If you have only just started dating someone
Falling for your best friend a few weeks into something new is not a betrayal, but it is worth hearing early. Sometimes the new relationship is what makes you notice the old friendship: the person you are getting to know keeps asking questions your friend already knows the answers to. Be honest with yourself about which of them you want, and then with the person you are seeing, before they build more plans around you. Nobody deserves to be the safety net.
If your best friend is in a relationship too
Then there are four people in this, not three, and a confession face to face unsettles two relationships rather than one. Look after your own, and leave them to look after theirs. An IF suits this better than a conversation: it stays sealed until you are both single. If you suspect the feeling runs both ways, read what to do when you both have partners but feel something for each other.
When the feeling takes over
For some people the feeling becomes consuming: reading their messages for hidden meaning, arranging the week around seeing them, feeling flat on the days you do not. None of that makes you a bad person, but it is a lot to carry, and your best friend is the one person who cannot help you carry it. Talk to someone; you do not have to manage it alone.
Where IF fits
IF is a dating app for everyone, single or in a relationship, built on one idea: you should be able to say how you feel, whatever the timing. Two single people can Like each other and chat. When either of you is marked as in a relationship, no Like, match or chat is possible and no conversation ever opens, so it cannot be used to cheat. What you can send is an IF: a private, sealed message of up to 250 characters that opens only once you are both single.
For a best friend, that is exactly the point. You can say what you have carried for years without putting the friendship on the spot or asking anything of them today. It waits until you are both single, unless they delete it. If your friend is single, your IF reveals when you change your own status to single. If they are with someone too and you are the last to go single, it reveals when you change your status; if you are single first, you get 24 hours to reveal it when they become single, or you can let it stay hidden. Once revealed, they see who you are and what you wrote, and choose whether to accept. How an IF works covers the rest.
It is worth knowing how it lands. If they are on IF, they will usually be told that an IF is waiting — never who sent it or what it says. If they are not on IF yet, one sent to their email address triggers one short invitation email; one sent to a phone number or Instagram handle sends nothing. IF never discloses the sender before a reveal, but a best friend may guess from context. Knowing that, the choice is yours.
Your first IF is free. It is sealed, not secret, and writing one takes a little courage, which is rather the point: you say it once, mean every word, and let it do the waiting while you get on with your life. If the timing ever lines up, it may lead you to where you were meant to be all along.
Questions people ask
Is it normal to fall in love with your best friend while in a relationship?
Yes. Closeness, trust and time are the conditions love grows in, and a best friend supplies all three. Being committed to someone does not switch that off. Having the feeling is human; what you do with it is what counts.
Does loving my best friend mean I do not love my boyfriend?
Not necessarily, and the same goes for a girlfriend, husband or wife. Many people love their partner and still feel pulled towards a friend who has known them for years. The feeling is a reason to look honestly at your relationship, not proof that it is over.
Should I tell my best friend I love them if I am in a relationship?
You can, and emotional honesty is brave. Saying it face to face while you are with someone carries real risks, though: it puts your friend on the spot and cannot be unsaid. You may be better off sending a sealed IF. It says everything, asks nothing until you are both single, and if the timing ever lines up, you are already there.
Can you love your partner and your best friend at the same time?
Yes, and in one sense most people do: a partner and a best friend are both loves. It gets harder when the friendship takes on the romance as well. A monogamous relationship has room for one romance at a time, so the useful question is which one you are living now. An IF lets you put the other into words, sealed until you are both single.
How do I stop being in love with my best friend?
You probably cannot switch it off, and you have nothing to be ashamed of. What helps is giving it less to feed on: less time alone together, another confidant, more attention to your own life. Writing it in an IF can be what finally lets it rest. It usually softens over months; if it does not, talking to someone can help.
Should I end my relationship if I love my best friend?
Only if the relationship is not right on its own terms. Leaving for someone who may not feel the same, and who never asked to be the reason, puts a great deal on them and on the friendship. Decide about your relationship as if your friend were not in the picture, and let an IF hold the rest.
You have loved them as a friend for years. Say the rest once, in an IF, and let it wait for the day your timing lines up.