I told a really big lie to someone I care about and now I want to tell them. We’ve been friends for a little over year, and our friendship is at a really critical point because he’s going through relationship trouble and stress with school, and we’re connecting more than ever before. We have these long, intimate conversations about everything from music to horror movies to graduate school, and we have so much in common. I guess I just want to be honest with him for my own piece of mind, I want to have a clean conscience and feel like I’m presenting my most authentic self. I also want him to be vulnerable with me, especially when he’s struggling with something. We’re not totally there yet and I want us to be, so I guess I just feel like coming clean might help with that.

The lie isn’t something that really negatively or positively affects him. I’ve never had a boyfriend and it’s a big source of insecurity for me, especially because all of my other friends, both close and acquaintances, have had several relationships and are currently in relationships, ranging from 6 months dating to engaged after 6 years of dating. I’ve never even kissed anyone, which at my age (19), is basically unheard of.

I feel awkward and outcast among my friends, so I lied because it was the early stages of our friendship and I wanted him to like me and not think I was strange. It’s not that I’m not open to dating, it just hasn’t happened. I lied and said that I was casually seeing this older guy who went to our school, and I kept lying about our relationship through last month, when I said that we weren’t together anymore because we grew apart and lost interest in one another.

I’m scared that he’ll see me differently and won’t trust me or want to be close friends, but I feel like if I don’t come come clean, it will bother me years down the road. He isn’t someone who when we leave school I expect to never see again, and I don’t want this to weigh on me and guilt me when we’re like 40 and (hopefully) still friends. What should my approach be?