by Bhavya Dabas

Created on: October 14, 2009

In a perfect world, we would all fall in love with somebody who's perfect for us, who exactly matches what we are looking for in a partner, and that person would love us back and we would live happily ever after.

But life is not a fairytale, is it?

I've seen both sides of the situation. I've fallen in love and not had the feeling reciprocated, and I've had someone love me and not been able to reciprocate, and I've seen both these situations simultaneously. I've done some pretty stupid things (which I will not talk about)while dealing with it all, but I've come out more mature, having learnt from the mistakes.

If you love someone who doesn't love you back, and you see the person getting all uncomfortable around you and trying to avoid you, it's easy to tell yourself that if the person is not mature enough to handle something as natural as love, maybe he didn't deserve your affection in the first place. Maybe what you felt was not love, it was just an infatuation, a moment of temporary insanity, which will pass. And it does pass. Because you see and talk to that person a lot less in that situation.

But what happens if you fall in love with your best friend? The one who's always been the shoulder you cry on over heartbreaks, the companion you laugh with at goofy movies, the one you call when you don't feel like eating out by yourself? Well, even such a person could turn into someone who suddenly feels noticeably uncomfortable around you. But what if he doesn't? What if he tells you that he values your friendship, respects your feelings, always wants to see you smiling? What if he asks if there is anything, absolutely anything, he can do to help? You fall even more in love with him with each passing moment.

You have to make yourself understand a few things in this sort of situation. First, just because your friend doesn't love you the way you want him to, doesn't mean that he doesn't love you with all his heart and soul. That he won't still always be there for you when you need him. Even when you refuse to acknowledge that you need him. Second, it's neither his fault nor yours that he can't reciprocate your feelings. These things just happen. But the point is, if he doesn't love you, he won't be happy if he got romantically involved with you. And, though you may not be able to see it now, you won't be happy either. How could you be, if the one person you care for the most, is unhappy?

This is a time when this person has two sides to his personality. One is a guy who can't fall in love with a girl who loves him. The other is someone who knows that his best friend has just had her heart broken, and needs him to be by her side and to be her friend. It's tricky, but you need to draw your focus away from the first guy to the second one, and make the most of the friendship. It has always been your emotional support, and it will still be. If you give it a chance to be. Trust me, the friendship will emerge stronger than ever before after the whole thing blows over. And it will blow over.

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