I’m sure you’ve been in the exact situation where some otherworldly beautiful person has taken the time of day to look around themselves in the Starbucks line, notice you standing behind them, and smile. It’s a breathtaking experience, to say the least. Perhaps, in a less universally experienced chain of events, you talk to the person, get to know them, even trade phone numbers and go about your days. It is important that you understand that this does not, right off the bat, mean romance.

Let’s rewind the clock a little bit. Back to the Starbucks line. The beautiful person looks around, smiles at you, you turn firetruck red and so on and so forth. Instead of talking to this person, you turn back to your best friend in the whole world and talk to them instead about this amazing thing that just happened to you even though they just witnessed the whole thing. You and your friend get your coffee, sit down and talk for hours, go back to your dorm.

Once you get there you turn on "The Office," sit on one of the beds and keep watching till you both fall asleep laughing the whole way. You wake up, they’re still sleeping and at that moment you notice how strangely beautiful they are, maybe even more so than the Starbucks god/goddess. Congratulations! You’ve developed a crush, and maybe that’s all that it is.

I’m not saying that you shouldn’t act on your feelings - leaving things to boil and fester is never the right call, but things may not always work out in your favor. That could be confusing to understand. However, if you tell them, the person from Starbucks or your friend, and things go south, it’s important to remember that that’s not the end of the line for your relationship—as friends.

For some, the following statement is false in every sense of the word, however, I hope you come to understand what it means one day: romantic love is not in any way more important than platonic love. I’m sure you know what the word "platonic" means but if you don’t, it means, in the words of Merriam-Webster, "of, relating to, or being a relationship marked by the absence of romance or sex."

Being friends with someone is not any less important than being their significant other - both relationships are of equal importance to the person involved.

So, if you pour your heart out to the person at Starbucks, or perhaps even more painfully your best friend and they hit you with the, "I value our friendship too much to pursue that" or something to that effect, please notice how much that phrase means. They would rather be your friend for as long as possible rather than have something fall off the rails in the world of romance.

Romances, as cool as they are, are rickety, to say the least. Friends are, more or less, forever. For someone to say that they don’t want to risk losing you over something as tricky as a romantic relationship definitely speaks to the true importance of platonic love.