I’m gay - and I’m in love with my straight friend

DEAR BEL

I FEEL so desperate I don’t know what to do. I’m a 35-year-old gay (but not out) man who has fallen in love with a colleague. Let’s call him T. He is 29, and single but straight.

We have worked together for nearly two years and have a really good friendship, but for me the feelings are so much stronger.

We lunch together most days and sometimes socialise outside work.

You may call this a case of unrequited love, but I am finding it really difficult to accept. He is dating women and I am so ravaged with jealousy that it’s starting to make me feel sick and depressed.

Of course, I have not told him how I feel, but seeing him every day and knowing he is potentially embarking on a relationship with someone else is killing me inside. No matter how I distract myself, I can’t get him out of my head.

Please tell me what should I do. JAMES

ROf course Douglas and Wilde had good reason to be cautious — homosexuality was a criminal offence back then. But not now, thank goodness.

Therefore I wonder why you are adding to the pain you feel by not acknowledging your sexuality?

It’s a serious question. Obviously, any individual is entitled to keep his or her feelings on any issue private, and you may have good reasons.

Yet in this age, when most people are relaxed about sexuality in all forms, wouldn’t it make you happier to be open about yours and to stand proud in the world? That has to be my first piece of counsel.

Let’s think about that phrase ‘unrequited love’. There are many sorts of love, and yours for T is just one — the passion the Greeks (who identified six forms of love) identified as ‘eros’. They would have called T’s feeling for you ‘philia’ — a very warm friendship. So your love is not ‘unrequited,’ it is just a different sort of love.

And I’m afraid you have to face the fact that, since T is straight, he will never be able to love you in any other way.

I am very glad you haven’t ruined the special feeling you guys share by letting him know your real desires.

It could be different. Maybe. Supposing you came out and made him your confidant? He would be surprised — or he might already have guessed. Your honesty might draw you closer. . . or not. Who knows?

What if T turned out to be secretly bisexual? Again . . . who knows? He’d hardly be likely to tell you if he had no idea of your sexuality. So isn’t this secrecy the core of your problem?

Two things are important now. First, that you cherish this friendship for what it is and do nothing to damage it. Second, that you visit the a website like lgbt.ie to help with the question of coming out. Do look — and consider counselling.

You write, ‘I can’t get him out of my head,’ and my answer is, you don’t have to! But you should come to terms with the reality that he will probably meet a girlfriend — and tell you. Your response must be that of a true friend, however hard that is.

Meanwhile, the key to happiness surely starts with accepting who you are. EADING this, I couldn’t help but think of the phrase ‘the love that dare not speak its name’ — first used by Oscar Wilde’s destructive friend, Lord Alfred Douglas, in his poem Two Loves, printed in 1894.