Dear Dr. Wes and Gabe: I find that I’m attracted to my best friend. I hadn’t considered myself gay, but the closer we get the more I find myself thinking that we could be more than friends. I’m not sure how to approach this problem, either in myself or with my friend. I know my best friend’s family wouldn’t be very open to a same-sex relationship, but my friend is more liberal and we have gay friends. I don’t want to mess up our friendship, but I kind of think my friend has right to know. What do you recommend?

photo by: Nick Krug

Double Take columnists Gabe Magee and Dr. Wes Crenshaw

Gabe: For the emotional health of you and your friendship, it would be best for you to come forward with your feelings. Just as in a male-female friendship, keeping feelings bottled up often leads to tension. This tension appears unprovoked and may scar the friendship far worse than any awkwardness. Honesty is the best policy, especially when it comes to friendships.

If you decide to tell your friend the feelings you have for them, you would be best served to approach them privately, without jumping straight into the topic. Make clear your feelings about them beforehand. What exactly are they — romantic, sexual or something else? Then, when you ease into your feelings, they appear more genuine and thought-out. Tell him you have something you want to talk about with them, and ask that they keep an open mind. Proceed to express the thoughts you articulated earlier. If you would be fine staying just friends, let them know. Make sure you listen to their response.

It is possible that your friend will react negatively, but I doubt they will. If one of my friends had feelings for me, I would want them to approach me in this way rather than another. But if they do, don’t be dismayed. Just as a male-female friendship won’t necessarily be ruined by one showing romantic interest, yours won’t necessarily be ruined either. You were honest. Honesty is what relationships, romantic or not, are built upon.

If they have feelings that reflect yours, that’s great. Sometime, maybe not immediately after this, you could pursue a relationship. Keep in mind that the decision to advance is theirs alone. Their parents may not approve and they should advance at a pace they feel comfortable with. It is their family after all. If you do end up as a couple, congrats. Best friends who become significant others often have good relationships since they had been building before they added a romantic angle.

The thing to remember is that it’s best to be honest in friendship. It is difficult to imagine the worst happening from making your feelings heard.

Wes: This was the second of two essays prompts Gabe wrote on during the 2015 Double Take contest, so the question was developed for that purpose. However, it didn’t just come up off the top of my head. As young people have increasingly blurred the lines between friendship and sexual expression, this dilemma has become common, leaving parents bewildered as to who is friend and who is dating partner. They aren’t alone. As interesting as it may sound to cross romantic lines with same or opposite sex friends, it often leaves teens in asynchronous relationships in which one party is very emotionally connected and the other is just exploring. So, I agree with Gabe that clarity of purpose is critical before, during and after any line-blurring occurs. Fortunately, these days most friends aren’t offended if you ask about taking the relationship further. That’s another benefit to the more open sexual culture we see among teens these days. People actually do the thing Gabe recommends — communicate.

Even if the answer is “yes,” there is a question of risk. It’s usually harder for teens to find genuine long-term friends than it is to find dating partners, though neither is in overabundance these days. If you feel really close to someone, express that romantically, and things fizzle, there’s no telling whether you can go back to being “just friends.” I’ve seen a great many people try, and teens and young adults absolutely insist that we must deem it possible, but when you really get into the details, it rarely turns out well. Any future partner is always eyeing your best friend/former girlfriend as a potential competitor and it’s too easy to reconnect at inopportune moments just for the sake of comfort and companionship.

That said, I have seen couples, same-sex and opposite-sex, who started out as friends and ended up in really awesome dating relationships. Just weigh the risks and benefits before deciding whether to give it a shot.

— Wes Crenshaw, Ph.D., ABPP, is author of “I Always Want to Be Where I’m Not: Successful Living with ADD & ADHD.” Learn about his writing and practice at dr-wes.com. Gabe Magee is a Bishop Seabury Academy senior. Send your confidential 200-word question to ask@dr-wes.com. Double Take opinions and advice are not a substitute for psychological services.