About two years ago, I met this wonderful girl a few states over. It was incredible. We have the same taste in music, movies, shows, plays, and we work so well with each other. We even started saying we loved each other before we started dating. It took a while, though, quite a few in-person visits, before we actually became a couple. Most of my friends were happy for me, except one. He just seemed neutral about it, which I brushed off as jealousy (since he hadn’t been in a relationship yet) or the fact that he still had some hangups about lgbtqia+ relationships, which I can understand to a point. About six months into my relationship, and right after a trip to see my girlfriend, he told me he was in love with me. I didn’t know what to say, so I just did my best to cheer him up. We decided that this wouldn’t change our friendship at all.

Boy, were we wrong. Since confessing his love for me he has:

1. Told a number of his friends his feelings for me, to the point where it reached several of our non-mutual friends, and a few people we don’t even associate with anymore.

2. Asked multiple times “how lesbian sex works” or what’s “the best part about sex with another girl” no matter how clear I am about how it makes me uncomfortable.

3. Told me multiple times how he doesn’t want me to move to another state to be with my girlfriend, even if I’ve tried to say it would be a few years before I could do that anyway.

4. Doesn’t listen to my grievances anymore. At one point, something awful (I’m not going to go into detail) happened, and when I came to him for comfort, he talked about how terrible his friends are and how badly they treat him.

This kind of thing has been happening for over eight months now and I’m both mentally and physically sick of it.

It all came to a head when we were at a party a few weeks back. I didn’t want to drink because I had work in the morning, and I’d had a really, really long day, but he drank enough to get himself drunk and stupid. He was saying things to try and get me annoyed (his words, not mine) and he was succeeding in spades, starting to really piss me off. So I told him he was pissing me off, and instead of saying “sorry, I’ll give you some space” or something to that effect, he withdrew completely, and started to quietly cry. I tried telling jokes the whole drive home to cheer him up, but that only worked for a short moment before he got sad again. We haven’t talked much since and I don’t really feel any desire to.

I used to think he was one of the only things to keep me from leaving my hometown, but now, I can’t wait to go. That being said, I’m the only support system he has, and the only person he can talk to about anything, really. So I’m stuck. It’s a cycle and I can’t help but feel like I’m trapped. My mental state has plummeted, and my anxiety has gone through the roof. At the same time, it’s doing a number on his state of being too. Our mental illnesses have done a number on us since everything happened.

It will be a while before I can leave to be with her, but should I stop being friends with him now? Should we take a break? Should I try to break his heart, and risk the friendship being destroyed too? I put this off for as long as I could, but now I know I really need help.