love is a many-splendidly confusing thing

I had a "friend" for years that I had a huge crush on, and I never said anything, and yes nothing ever came of it. And my reasons for not saying anything were because I didn't want to lose him as a friend and all that other stuff or I thought it would be weird, blah blah,blah. Well looking back, I doubt I made the right choice, because our friendship was forever tainted with my hope of us falling in love, and so I don't know...
I have mixed thoughts about it. Part of me thinks, that if the friendship was more important to me than telling him how I felt, then maybe that's all it was meant to be. Or maybe my feelings were not as important to me as spending time with this person - or maybe that's what my feeling were - wanting to spend time with this person, when I thought that I wanted this person to return the affection that I had for him... Part of me thinks that I just wanted his affection to validate my own worth. Part of me thinks, if I had it to do over, I would definitely tell him how I felt. The truth is, for all we know, maybe he did feel the same way, and we were both too chicken to say anything, so how ridiculous is that?

He's married now to the perfect girl for him, so none of this matters. But really looking back, I wonder if I really liked him as much as I thought I did, and didn't just want him to like me more than any other girl in the world.

And I wonder if you can really be a true friend to someone if you are always hoping that it will turn into something else? Because friends are supposed to be supportive and caring and I think that when you hang around with someone, hoping that they will have feelings for you, then THAT is what gets in the way of the friendship. Because it can tend to breed a hostility towards them, becase of them not returning your affection. I've been on both sides of this.

Emotions can be very confusing, especially when mixed with insecurity.
I really think that if you have feelings for someone, you should tell them. And it doesn't have to be this huge dramatic thing, either. The best confession of someone's feelings I ever had was when this guy who I was hanging out with, told me, "I am interested in you as more than a friend."
Now this didn't make me like him, but he was honest about his feelings, and wasn't trying to manipulate mine. It was an open invitation and an intelligent statement about only that he had feelings for me, and also his willingness to accept MY feelings, even if they didn't match his. I think this is a VERY important thing.

Well I guess everyone is different, but when a guy tells me his feelings for me, it doesn't change how I feel. If I liked him before, then I still do, if I didn't, then I still don't. The only exception to this is, when some guy expresses some ridiculous thing like "we are meant for each other" - that pisses me off, because how the hell is he supposed to know what I want or need? It is very important to be able to distinguish between feelings, wants and desires. They are not the same thing. Your feelings are, "I like this person". Your wants are, " I want this person to like me in return". Desires may be, " I want to make out with this person". or, "I want this person as a constant romantic companion". The thing is, it is just so complicated.

Now as intelligent people we must be willing to accept another person's feelings as just as valid as our own. Or lack thereof. And if they don't feel the same way about us as we do about them, then I guess we have no equation. Truth is, even when we find that the person dOES like us back and we start a relationship, we may find discrepancies in our feelings, wants, and desires later on, when we thought that their returning of our affection was one thing, and we find out it was something completely different. I think this is part of what people refer to as "emotional intelligence". It is so hard to distinguish between our feelings of affection, and our desires.