"You were wrong. Just admit you're wrong and move on. They are the one hurt. Not you. You don't get to be hurt. Grow up."

You are a terrible person.

You are heartless.

You are stupid.

How could you do that to them?

I've said all that before. Either to myself or to someone else for hurting someone who wanted them in the romantic ways that weren't reciprocated. I used to be one of the many sheep who berated someone for "Friend-zoning" someone who genuinely cared about them or didn't give someone a chance because they weren't interested. At one point in time we have all been that outsider thinking we know better than the person who won't give that poor friend a chance.

Then we become that terrible person.

Being naive and hopeful isn't the same as being manipulative and selfish. But every once in a while, it becomes amazingly easy to confuse the two.

Lets say you have a best friend. As nature would have it you are members of the opposite sex. One confesses their true feelings, they want to be more than friends. You try to be honest, tell them you don't feel that way, you don't know what the future holds but you don't feel that way towards them now. You think its a sign of maturity and level headiness that this friend doesn't want anything to change, still wants to be friends and doesn't want to lose you as that friend. There in the back of your mind though, lingering like a bad taste, is the nightmare alternative. The worst case scenario that ends with one or both of you hurt; and that friendship you hold dear? Its done. Theres no saving it.

You have a few choices, though, on how this can play out.

Scenario 1 (and the most common): You both hold on and carry on with your friendship for as long as it can. One of you keeps the hope that one day the other will come around. That they WILL get what they want. (They might even be the type that knows what they want and that they usually get it.) Eventually they reach their breaking point and you have to make the choice to love them back or let them go. You still don't have feelings for them that way. It was fun while it lasted but the friendship has run its course. You are now the bad guy.

Scenario 2 (your nightmare): After years of giving it your all as the best friends you can be you realize that everything they are doing is to try to win you over. In no way are they doing it because of your friendship, they want to win your love. Make you see them in the light they see you. Whether by surprising you or showering you with gifts. You can tell them "No." "Please don't do that." and they do it anyway. Why? Because they want you to want them. They want you to be touched by their gestures and fall in love with the person they are. You can appreciate them and love them more but you still aren't in love with them the way they want. You second guess yourself. Maybe you just aren't thinking about this clearly. Just give them a chance see what happens, they deserve it! Everyone says you are great together, everyone will be so happy, most importantly your best friend! And you know you guys make a great team. You can have a good life, the wedding of your dreams, your best friend as a husband or wife! WHY WOULDN'T THIS BE RIGHT?! On paper they are perfect, this whole scenario is PERFECT!

Except its not.

It isn't perfect at all. Because when you really love someone, you don't have to try to convince yourself to be with them. You don't flinch when they touch you, you don't move away automatically and feel bad after when you realize it was because they were trying to hold your hand. You don't feel uncomfortable or terrible when they try to take you to a nice restaurant because you realize that all the times you dreamed of going to places like that, you dreamed you were with someone you wanted to stare dreamily at and hold hands with over the table. And the person you are with is not that person.

You realize you made a huge mistake and now what you have done is unforgivable. Give someone you love false hope for a love you can't give them beyond friendship. Doesn't matter how you got to this point, or what roles you both played in how it came to be, you are the bad guy. You are the terrible person. The friendship has been destroyed and no one cares how you felt. You were wrong. On paper they were perfect and you were too stupid to love them back.

Scenario 3 (Worst case scenario): You follow through with the chance. You have the relationship, you continue to tell yourself this is love and this is how its supposed to be. You know you don't love them, you know it doesn't feel the way you thought it should but you marry them anyway. Start your life together and have that partnership you knew you would. Except, one day you wake up and realize you became someone you never wanted to be. You don't appreciate your spouse the way they deserve. You don't love them the way they love you and now you have devoted years of your life to them. Getting a divorce is inevitable. But now you are the person who not only wasted part of your life, but the one who wasted part of their's as well. Whether you are together less than ten or close to forty years, the investment is a now failing. You ruined that.

This is what goes on.

Every scenario is different but for the most part, the results are still the same. One person is the bad guy because they don't return the feelings of another. But here's the part no one cares about......

YOU ARE NOT OBLIGATED TO LOVE SOMEONE YOU DON'T WANT TO LOVE.

YOU matter. YOU (the person sitting right here probably drinking some form of alcoholic or hot beverage, surrounded by sounds of the tv or people passing by) MATTER.

Being kind, being the type of person who doesn't want to hurt someone does not guarantee you WON'T ever be that person. You know what you want, you know what feels right, you go with your gut and you do the best you can to make this life extraordinary.

It is going to be awful for a while. your family and friends may judge you, may tell you you are wrong and to admit it and just accept you screwed up. But theres someone that won't do that. Someone that won't try to chew you out for it. They may have gone through it themselves or maybe they just were with you throughout the whole time and will be the only one to tell you "your feelings matter too". Because the next time someone you know ends up breaking the heart of someone else, you won't be just another one of the sheep, berating them for being heartless. Instead you will have that bad taste resurface and remember what it was like to be in that lose lose situation. The one you unceremoniously dragged out for too long and let blow up in your face. You won't be just another sheep mourning the loss of another slaughtered heart. You will be a shoulder for the fellow wolf who did the slaughtering to lean on.

Its easy to give advice and pass judgement from the outside on how to lift with your knees when you don't know how heavy the weight is. You have to carry it alone though.

Wolves understand that.