It’s a good, important step that you know this about yourself. But yeah, for both of your long term happiness, as well as for your friendship, it’ll be very important to talk about the kind of relationship you have. Even if it’s super tough and mightn’t have the outcome you’d like. But the resentment it would inevitably breed if you couldn’t date because you don’t know where you stand with your friend wouldn’t be healthy for your friendship. Maybe it’s easier to not do it all at once?

Either way, your situation sounds tough. Best of luck to the both of you!

Bit of a different take from many of the other comments.

Relationships don’t have to be the way they are traditionally. You don’t have to be monogamous. You can be in two relationships, one of which is romantic, one of which is a strong friendship with sexual aspects. It’d be under the polyamory umbrella. There’s plenty of potential partners out there who are ok with or would even want this kind of a constellation.

The very important caveat though: even more so than in any other kind of close relationship, this requires a LOT of communication. You need to clarify with your best friend what kind of a relationship it is that you have. You don’t have to label it, but you have to figure out together what you want from each other and what your boundaries are. The latter includes what kind of relationships you’re ok with the other one having with someone else. Then, when you date someone else, you have to have the same conversations and be open about your other relationship(s). I’d be upfront about the latter, the former can happen over time.

If none of this sounds like something you’d want, that’s of course perfectly valid. The point stands though that you need to clarify with each other what you want from your relationship and what your boundaries and needs are. This might mean having to change your relationship dynamic.

Some context: my best friend and I are super close and find each other sexually attractive, but aren’t romantically interested in each other. We’ve talked about that and keep checking in. We’ve done some second base things and cuddled. I now have a partner that’s decidedly monogamous. Now, I might still lightly cuddle with my best friend, but we wouldn’t kiss anymore. Those are all boundaries that had to be talked through.

Possibly controversial: if it’s obvious they don’t like it, don’t put it on them. They’re living beings, not dolls.

Imo what’s key to a cosy game is that you choose within the game how much you want to challenge yourself. Take stardew, for example. My mum was content just farming crops. I went into the difficult mines with lots of combat etc. You can enjoy the game if you don’t do the hard parts, or you can do them sparsely, or all the time. You choose, and that’s what makes it so relaxing.

I’m not a hardcore gamer, but usually mostly into RPGs. But I’ve also got hundreds of hours in stardew and thousands in the Sims. When I play one of those, I’m always low key scared to grow bored because I LOVE those games and I know that there won’t be another good one right around the corner.

When I got bored of Skyrim, I played the Witcher, and when I got bored of that, I played Fallout. Repeat ad nauseam, because there’s more playable, entertaining RPGs out there than any one human could play in a lifetime.

With cosy games, not so much. When you grow bored of one, chances are, there won’t be another one that’ll be enjoyable to you at all, and you’ll have to hope and wait that something good will come out at some point.

Pretty sure you have to pay if you back out as well, so that’s not an incentive to kill you either.

You can get help setting everything up, but you have to be the one to push the button, pick up the lethal medicine, etc

I’m not neurotypical at all, you can’t tell with a lot of us if you don’t talk to us

Omg very similar here! My best friend, who lives oversees now, is coming to visit for 3 weeks. It’s been about 2 years since I’ve seen him. If I didn’t know him, I wouldn’t think it possible for another human to understand me on such a fundamental and intuitive level as he does. I’m stoked!

Mostly things that fall under the category of women not being able to be a threat/dangerous. Especially white women, which im usually read as.

This includes everything from talking to children in public to actual minor crimes like shoplifting.

ETA: this is in fact a prime example of how sexism is mean to everyone. Women are not dangerous because they’re weak, men are dangerous because they’re strong. Neither is generally true.

I’ve silently cried in public many many times and nobody ever bats an eye. If your town is over a certain size, people tend to prefer to mind their business.

I’m not even in tech. I teach maths at night school to support myself while doing my masters. Somehow I’ve become the ‘computer guy’ at my job. All the teachers and even office staff ask me to explain software to them that I myself have never even used. I need to learn to say no.

Semi related, but my mum likes to pretend she doesn’t know what ‘Netflix and chill’ means. She keeps saying it to people. One time I said mum please google that phrase. She said she’s well aware of the meaning and just likes to see people’s reactions.

My friends and I still quote Monty Python to each other. Embrace tradition.

A bit of a more serious comment on that: knowledge is never useless. Many, maybe most, researchers agree with that. It’s why we do what we do. Publishers and sources of funding (be they third party or governmental), however, disagree. So we have to sell them on the importance of our research this way.

My room is a nightmare of a mess and I’m not a drug dealer. We exist

What phone has two sockets? I’m interested, especially since my current one is about to die

We used to be able to use headphones and charge our phones at the same time

I asked an 18yo I know whether ‘rizzler’ was actually a thing people say and they said no. ‘Rizz’, however, is a common term.

It’s me. I’m the fae. At least I think I must be, since I use any pronouns.