In love with my "straight" friend - really confused

Hello there folks. I'm new to this site, and I'm in need of some advice. I've been reading it for a while and am looking forward to interacting with you guys.

This post is really long, a lot longer than I expected, I am really sorry about that. It's very cheeky of me, my first post being a damn dissertation. It's just because this means so much to me, and it's hard to narrow it down. It's about a really confusing, emotionally horrific situation I'm in, which is why it's hard to leave out details. (It's very complex.) I've never written on anything like this before, but I've been reading many people's stories and decided, to vent these thoughts and hopefully get some advice, I'd share my own.

This thing is so powerful and un-ignorable, and I really need help. If any of you have the time to read this for me, I would very greatly appreciate it.

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So I have fallen quite deeply in love with a straight man, one of my best friends. He's 22 and I'm 19. I've never fallen in love with a man before, and I've also never fallen in love this intensely in my life. It's been going now for about five and a half months.

We met at a party in March, and just had an instant connection. We were talking all night, smoking together, him pretending to move in to kiss me and licking my face instead. Just flirting, really; drunk and happy. All quite friendly I guess. And so I start to develop feelings for him. He's on my Uni course, but we didn't, during second semester, have any classes in common, so the only times i got to see him for a while (about 6 weeks) were from accidentally bumping into him in uni, and we'd go and smoke on the grass.

He found out I liked him in May, and asked me about it outside a nightclub (we were out for a smoke) and I told him it was true etc. Then he kissed me, said "My minds telling me to kiss girls, I'm not ready for this" and "Perhaps that [kiss] will progress... when we're drunk-er". A week later, he suggested we move in together.

We started hanging out more. There would always be lingering eye contact, and a lot (apparently) said under the surface of what we would say to each-other. We get on really well, the conversations always flow and it's always really interesting. One night we were out in Glasgow (we're scottish) for a screening of one of my films, and we went for a drunk before it. There was a lot of wine at the screening so we got a bit tipsy. I remember walking round the city with him, and it was so beautiful. Neither of us said this, but it felt like we were a couple. We would stand so close, waiting for the subway, and he'd just give me this warm, loving look and smile at me. I'd look at him and laugh, saying "What?" or something. He'd just shake his head and chuckle. That night he winked at me about 400 times.

It felt like this bond was sort of growing organically. The way we were around each-other, though, started to change a bit after another party in June, when everyone in the room was trying to make us kiss in a game of "Gay chicken"... he said "Obviously he'll win... because" and stuff like that. (Gay Chicken: a party game where two guys have to kiss each-other and the one who can go the longest without pulling away wins) So we had our foreheads pressed against each-other, staring at each-other, him smiling, for about 20 minutes. I tried to encourage him... but no sale!
One night, also in June, I took him to see a show at my favourite theatre in Glasgow. Had a great time, good chat afterwards, he really enjoyed it. I suggested we go for a drink afterwards, so we went to one of my favourite bars. Haha, I remember him pointing at the poster, after a while. It said "Gay Indie Night - first Friday of every month". As it happens, we were sitting in there on the first Friday of June. And we laughed...
...A few drinks in, drinking a pint he bought me, "the conversation" managed to come up. I told him, again, that I liked him a lot (I was drunk). And he said, chuckling it off: "Hah, nothings gonna happen."
"What?"
He's smiling a bit, trying to be sincere, "Nothings gonna happen, I'm sorry."

At some point he said "I wish I was gay, I really do. We would be amazing."

I'm obviously completely in shock, like I've been living a lie for the past two and a half months.
"Okay..." I say, sort of shrugging my shoulders and making a face. I had no idea what to do.
Then he sort of laughed a bit, probably due to the awkwardness, saying over the laughter: "We can't move in together?"
"Why?"
"Nah, nah, it'll be fine."

I just shut down, I had no idea what to say or do or anything. We left the pub, and waiting to cross the road, he says
"What's wrong? You've always got so much to say."
"I've said everything."
We crossed the road and he gave me a hug, squeezed me a bit, patting my back. We sat on the train in silence, and I explained to him, fairly near tears, but not breaking, how he has to be careful, if this is the case, how he leads people on (words to that effect, not those specifically though). He apologised.

I was going on a long 14 day holiday soon after that, and he saw me again for a day we spent writing at my sisters. We still got on, good friends, and all that jazz. I was still completely lost, though, and I hadn't really come to terms with it.

I moved out of my family home to stay near our university over the second half of summer break (from july onwards), planning to move in with Sean (pseudonym) in September when uni starts again. My flatmate went away on holiday with his girlfriend for a long weekend, so Sean came down to stay for a few days. We have a cute name for us as a duo, it's a combination of both our first names, and we love it respectively. As a celebration of "[insert pseudonym hybrid here]" and our friendship I bought us a bottle of whiskey, which he was delighted to see "Excellent, let's get tore into that". In my building, upstairs live my two lesbian neighbours. They are one of the loveliest couples I've ever seen. I had told them he was coming to stay for a few nights, realising after telling them that I probably made it sound slightly as if we were a couple. They chapped our door when we were half way through the whiskey and invited us upstairs.

We were all really drunk, and passing a joint round, sitting in their kitchen. Allison (pseudonym) is talking to Sean about how much she loves her girlfriend Samantha (pseudonym), while I'm rolling a cigarette and talking a bit to Samantha. Allison talks about how much her girlfriend means to her, and Sean says "He loves me," motioning to me, "and I love him as well." I nearly fainted. Samantha and Allison are all "Aww that's so nice," and I'm just sitting there completely mind blown. After saying that he didn't make eye contact with me for about 6 minutes, until the subject had changed. That night, when we got in to mine, we chatted more and stuff. I was desperate to kiss him, but he wouldn't really let me. I passed out on the couch. Wrecked.

The next night we soberly discussed it all. He's saying how he's straight, etc, doesn't want to hurt me, and how he's annoyed to hear that our friends thought he liked me too.
This is where I really started to worry if either he's telling the truth, or if our friends knowing has scared him off. I could never really get much clarity out of him though. He would go, "Friends," and give me his hand to shake it. We went to bed (he slept in my flatmates room), and I hugged him, saying I loved him. He said "I love you too. As my friend." and we laughed a bit, and went to bed.

My friends I had spoken to were convinced he liked me, having worked it out before I even told them, and I clung to the thought that he may be deeply closeted (he comes from a bit of a 'lad' conditioning/culture, though he's something of a misfit) as I was, and still am, convinced that we have something.
So, there isn't much left to go. A few weeks ago, he was down to visit, and my flatmate Thomas (our mutual friend, pseudonym) and his girlfriend were here also. We sat and smoked, got really drunk (as usual. I don't actually drink that much, usually when I'm with him haha).
Despite the doubts my flatmate had about him liking me after what had just happened, Thomas complained to me the next day saying all night he was just thinking "get a f*cking room", because basically for the whole evening Sean was lying there, on the couch, staring at me and smiling, telling me all the things he loves about me, and me telling him, out of obligation, things I love about him. He gazed at me with these tired, sexy eyes, drunk, with his cigarette, for literally about 25 minutes, rarely looking away. Smiling. At one point he came to climb up over me, touching my thigh, moving to my crotch, closing his eyes, tilting his head, the way he always did before. I wasn't taking the bait, I just made a terrified face and he started laughing about 5 inches from my face. He started going on about how he wishes he was gay again, in front of Thomas and his girlfriend, how much he admires me and all this, but isn't sexually attracted to me.
So Thomas and his girlfriend vote to go to bed at 3am-ish. The usual time, roughly. Usually at this time when I'm smoking/drinking with Sean and friends, we've exchanged so much knowing/awkward eye contact throughout the night that we don't speak to each-other when people leave. We're just mostly silent, crack a few jokes, go to sleep. But this time he asked to stay up with him for a bit longer. He put the light off, the only light was from a computer screen. We smoked another joint, had another drink. He came up to me and said "Please, give me a big, non-sexual hug." He held his arms out and I put mine around his body. We fell onto the couch, and he was lying on top of me. Our legs were entwined, and we sighed. It was really beautiful. He rubbed the side of his face against mine for a bit, and we lay there for a couple of minutes. It was so, so incredibly comfortable. Then, he sat up on the couch, my legs still laying across his. And he got up eventually again, of course, and we weren't touching any more. Later on I told him, laying half-on him on the sofa,
"You know how much I love you, right?"
"Yeah,"
"And you must think... that I talk about you, and us, to other people a lot,"
"Mhmm."
"Well, I don't want to do that any more. I don't want to be confused by you any more. I want to know you, I want to be your best friend."
He agrees. I add,
"And if we do have anything more than friendship,"
"Yeah,"
"It's between me and you."
"Okay."
he nods, we hug, and I go to bed.

Now I promise this is that last thing I'm going to say here:
It seems, after that, that he pines for my attention more than ever. Thomas observed this. He makes more of an effort now with spending time with me. A couple of weeks ago, I asked if we could hang out for what I intended to be a few hours at his hometown (before going back to my family home). He turned it into two whole days, asking if we could walk to my hometown, then stay over at mine, etc; just spending time with me. And it was really nice. We walked for hours, talked for hours, sat on a bench by the lake and took photos of eachother, ate take away food... it was really bliss.


So basically the reason I'm writing this post is because, though this guy is saying he isn't interested in me, despite the fact that, under the right influence of alcohol, occasionally when sober, he can't help but show it (well, if I'm interpreting him right.)
I expected, like with all my last rejections, he might distance himself slightly, but he hasn't. In fact he tries to spend more time with me. When I give him less attention, he craves it and gives me more attention than ever.

We move in together in a couple of weeks, and I'm absolutely terrified, but excited all the same. He told me in passing on the phone the other night, about having sex with his best friends friend from America (a girl, not a guy, he asserts), and how awkward it was getting up in the morning to leave for work. It drilled my stomach, but I just said "fabulous," and laughingly rounded the conversation off. He immediately afterwards initiated a conversation on facebook (which isn't common of him at all, he isn't dreadfully active on facebook).

I have no idea what to think. This thing is killing me, I've never loved someone like how I love him. I think about him every day, and he makes me feel things I've never felt before. It is the strongest emotion I have ever felt in my life. And I'd tell you more on why I love him, but this post is long enough!

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If you have took the time to read this, you have no idea how much I appreciate that from the bottom of my heart. I really need some advice from people, and to hear your thoughts I'd be very greatful.

What do you guys think?

My name is Sebastian, and thank you, emptyclosets.com, for existing!

Sebastian x