I’m 19, and have never been in any sort of relationship. Never even gone on a date.

Despite being at college 5+ hours away from my parents, I’m still terrified to post this for fear of my parents managing to read it somehow, as pathetic as that sounds. 😂

My best friend of 6 years is a guy, and began liking him about half a year into our friendship. He had a girlfriend at the time and I wasn’t yet allowed to date, so obviously I couldn’t do anything at that point. I just kinda let it be and hoped I would stop liking him.

I never did. We’re really close friends now, and I still like him, even more than I did to begin with. Now that I’m finally old enough to act on my feelings without parental oversight, we go to colleges 12 hours away from each other, because that’s my luck. 😂. If we were to have a relationship, it would be long distance for the next four years, and I know long distance is really hard. We text all the time as it is though, and do a good job of keeping in touch with each other.

So that was barrier # 1. Barrier # 2 is that I really, really, really value our friendship, and I don’t want to mess up our dynamic by dating him and then it not working out.

Barrier # 3 is that even after both of us finish college, we’re both going into the military, where we’ll likely be deployed to different bases.

Barrier # 4 is that he’s got a girlfriend, and as much as I don’t want to, I think she’s pretty cool. She’s good for him and vice versa, and I don’t want to mess that up for them if it’s meant to be.

I just keep waiting for me to stop liking him, but I don’t think that’s going to happen anytime soon, given that I’ve liked him for 5 years already. What should I do?