I recently broke up with my boyfriend of three years… We had problems on which I wanted to work on and he was too busy for them. I didn’t want him to prioritise our relationship over his work so I decided it was better if we separated our paths. When I sat down with him to have the “serious talk”, it was visible he was heart broken but he said that he saw it coming and wished me good luck in finding someone who’ll be more attentive. We promised to stay friends like we were before. We actually are like a group of few friends from school days. It consists of me, my ex, his best friend(let’s call him X), who’s sort of like my guy best friend and my bestie(let’s call her Y) who’s like my ex’s best gal friend. Now, X had been intending to break up with Y for a long time and I was the only one to whom he opened up about it. Seeing me and my ex break up, he bluntly confessed to Y about his feelings and they broke off too. It’s been weeks since we all had broken up and the group’s bit awkward now and we rarely meet up nowadays. Last Sunday, X and I were having our regular night chats. X randomly confessed to me that he’s had crush on me for a long time, even before he had started dating Y but seeing I was engaged with my ex at that time, he had not made any move about it. To be honest, when I read this text, I turned all red and started to sweat because I too had a crush on him long long ago, back in school probably. But like many of my unrequited crushes, I thought this will be rejected too, I moved on. And before I could know, he’s like my best friend. I laughed that text off, though I often think about it. Today X and I were meeting up in a cafe. He was really well dressed up for someone who’s very careless and I wondered whom he was trying to impress. We were in awkward silence as we sipped our coffee when all of a sudden he broke the silence by saying, “You know what? I think we should date!” I went all red again and was feeling very sweaty. I was aware he could see me blushing. Previously both our exes have been very irritated about X and my closeness as friends because we relate so much and basically have the same interests and opinions. He went on saying, “Now that we both are not seeing anyone, don’t you think it’s high time we date? You understand me and I understand you like no one else does. Come on, I know that you had a crush on me once too!” I wanted to be the mature one though I am sillier than him most of the times and told him that it would hurt our exes, irrespective of my feelings for X and if we start dating once, we won’t be anymore that group of four friends who have stuck by each other’s side since high school. He was reluctant but understood the situation and asked me to give it a thought. Now that I consider it, I do think I would be so much happy with him. But then there are our exes who are our best friends. I can’t bear the look of hatred on the face of my bestie who cried so much and confided in me everything when X and Y broke up. My ex would be shaken up as well. I feel like I led him onto something. But then there I again start thinking of my happiness because X is literally my soulmate. I am so guilty of even having second thoughts about this and I am so confused about what decision I’ll take so that no one ends up getting hurt.
