Don’t Fall In Love With Your Best Friend

I know that your favourite romantic comedies appear to be pulling for your relationship with every dollar in their ridiculous budgets, and I know that there are a trillion catchy songs to sing along to, at the top of your lungs, that make you think that maybe, just maybe, this song could be written about you (Thank you, T-Swift). All you need is for them to realize it.

You can watch the movies. Just promise me that you’ll remember: that was not a documentary. Listen to the songs, but commit the tune to memory, not the lyrics. Don’t let them adhere to your brain, or worse, your heart.

Don’t succumb to the pretty words that your friends will invariably bait you with, no matter how often they say I Bet You Two Will End Up Married or Why Don’t You Tell Him How You Feel.

Don’t let your heart leap every time his face lights up your phone.

Don’t let him tell you his Mom thinks you’re pretty or that you remind him of his One Who Got Away.

True love too often goes unrequited. At the risk of assuming the role of dream-crushing pessimist, I will tell you this: your life, my life, the lives of average human beings—they are not like the movies. He doesn’t always wake up and realize that you are the perfect girl for him.

Hell, maybe you aren’t.

If you fall in love with your best friend, you risk being dealt the tragic task of giving him girl advice.

You will wingman the great love of your life (and do a fantastic job of it, because girls are the greatest wingmen you will ever encounter) and smile supportively and agree that Yes, She Is Perfect when he meets the girl that he’s sure, this time, is The One. You will fake-empathize when she breaks his heart because she made a mistake you never would have been careless enough to make.

You will remember to save him the chicken-fried rice that you’re always too full for at the end of the take-out meal, because you know that he both loves it, and is perpetually hungry.

You will not think twice about texting him your deep thought of the day or the pun you thought of in history class or the instrumental cover of the song you both love.

You will remember to buy the beer he likes, because life is easier when you two share.

Your other friends will secretly hate you because you understand each other on a level that they don’t.

You will listen to him tell you he loves you or misses you or that you’re his favourite, and you will know that he doesn’t mean it in the way that you so desperately want him to.

You will constantly be asked if you are dating. Constantly. Because, to paraphrase the boy that this article has embarrassingly, and most likely mistakenly, been written about, we live in a society consumed by the ignorance of patriarchy and underlying societal norms.

You will watch every day as he executes an infinite number of rare and small and beautiful and heart-wrenching tasks that you have to resort to writing about because no one can ever know how carefully you watch.

You will constantly have to look like you care less than you do.

But, sometimes, it’s inevitable. You fall in like (because saying love might jinx it) and even though it hurts to look at them and listen to them and touch them, you trek on. Because it hurts a hell of a lot more to consider losing them.