I am in love with my best friend
Dear Mookychick,
I'm starting to think I'm in love with my best friend. We're both girls but I'm a bit older than her, I'm 17 and she's 16, and I've had a boyfriend before and never been attracted to other girls before. I've been feeling this way for about a year now but don't know if it's real. Should I say anything? "
Love, Anonymous Me xxx
The Mookychick answer to your problem
Amanda says...
It's perfectly normal to have feelings for another female at your
age. This often arises more from feelings of admiration, awe and the
intimacy of a close friendship than from sexual desire, so try to explore
exactly how you feel and put it into context. Before you 'fess all to
your pal and pour you heart out, ask yourself two things: Firstly, how
would you feel if she came on to you really strongly in a sexual way?
Would you feel uncomfortable? Could you go through the whole thing? And
secondly, how do you think she would react to your confession? Is your
friendship strong enough to endure the awkwardness if your feelings
aren't reciprocated? Would you even care or do you put your potential sexual
relationship with this girl before your friendship?
If you're still sure you have strong loving and sexual feelings for your friend and you think there may be a chance they will be reciprocated, steer the conversation around to lesbianism and girl on girl action and sound her out before you dive in. Good luck!

Debs says...
Should you tell your best friend? No, no and a half dozen more times no. This isn't to imply that what you're feeling is in any way wrong, it isn't. But unless you are absolutely, definitely, unremittingly sure that your friend feels exactly, totally the same way, it could cause so much trouble.
There's two things we need to address here, both of which are equally important, so don't worry about the order I answer them in. Firstly, she's your best friend. You have a incredibly close relationship with her, which will be very strong. You're both young too, with minds and bodies that are eager to experience things, which can get easily distracted and confused. You are starting to express yourself more forcibly away from your family, which is how you've expressed yourself for most of your life and you're just learning how to do that. There's now this really good and intimate friendship and you're not sure how to cope with it yet. Outside of family and boyfriends, you've not had anything like this, so you don't know how to act. So your brain thinks you obviously have sexual feelings for this person you obviously love, in that wonderful friendly manner in which you do love them, as it's not sure how to cope with the relationship any other way. It will learn, it just takes a bit of time.
Or maybe you could be lesbian. Or bisexual. Which there's nothing wrong with. None of us are ever truly 100% straight or gay, there's always a bit of a mix going on there. We just tend to have stronger preferences, that's all, which we act on. You say you've had a boyfriend and never felt this way about girls before, so you probably have stronger straight preferences. Maybe this could change in the future. But unless you have a very strong friendship, which can honestly survive anything, this is not the time or place to experiment. Which is a shame, as it could also be one of the safest places in the world to experiment.

Char says...
First of all, even at your age, you're not too young to get your first crush on a girl, hell I've even got a thing for Christina Aguilera not to mention various girls I see on the telly and stuff. I've had a few accidental snogs with friends on a night out, but I've never taken it further than that although that's not to say I haven't ever wondered what it would be like. The reason we get crushes on people is because it allows us to act out feelings on someone we like but without the fear of rejection and ridicule (for owning up to our feelings.)
I would say, yes, tell her, but be aware that she may react in two ways - open minded and understanding or she may treat you like a leper. It's fairly unlikely if your friend is straight, that she will turn around and say 'Yeah, go on then baby,' but thats not to say we have to rule it out completely. I think that the danger is that if she's not perticularly liberal, she may freak out and think that you've been getting your jollies every time you've gone swimming, had a sleepover, saw her in her underwear (as girlies often do). Could it be a case of admiration rather than lesbionic feelings?
Either way, there's nothing wrong with feeling this way and if you are gay then you're going to need your friend's acceptance and support. Good Luck!

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