Falling in love with your best friend is like having all your prayers answered and handed to you on a silver platter.

When you fall in love with your best friend, you don’t understand people who complain about love or relationships, you don’t relate to heartbreak stories or modern dating struggles. You don’t understand how communication can be hard or how people fall out of love.

Because falling in love with your best friend is a blessing not many people talk about. It’s not a fairytale because it’s real. It grows on you. It’s slow but steady. 

When you fall in love with your best friend, you don’t need to explain yourself or your flaws or what aggravates you. They already know. They already love them. They already accept you. They don’t care about your flaws because they’ve been loving them and dealing with them for years. You don’t need to apologize for how you feel or for who you are because they’re not asking for clarifications and they hardly ever get mad at you. They know you better than you know yourself.

You don’t have to worry about texting too much, saying too much or thinking twice about what you have to say because you feel safe around them. They’ve seen you at your best and your worst. They’ve picked up your mess. They’ve been there when no one else was and they know how to make you happy, they know how to make you smile, they know how to heal your heart.

They know how big your heart is and how much you care. They’re not intimidated by you because they support you. They’ve always been your biggest fan and they’ve always seen the best in you even if you couldn’t see it yourself.

Falling in love with your best friend is the best way to avoid another heartbreak.

Because they know what breaks your heart, they know what makes you cry, they know what you hate, they know what hurts you and they will try to avoid doing anything that causes you pain. In the past, they healed your heart as a friend but now they will heal your heart as a lover.

You’ve always wanted your lover to be your best friend but when you start falling in love with your best friend, you realize that you already have both. You won the lottery. You’ve found your forever person and finally understood why it never worked with anyone else, why people had to leave and why your best friend was always here to stay.

Rania Naim is a poet and author of the new book All The Words I Should Have Said, available here.