Reflecting on his personal experience, GCN contributor Colin Daly explores the many feelings that come with unrequited love and feeling comfortable with being ‘out’ in a friendship. 

As the Buzzcocks song goes, “Have you ever fallen in love with someone you shouldn’t have fallen in love with?” In this case, I’m referring to falling in love with straight friends who are unaware that you are queer.

How do you handle it? It can be painful as you watch them flirt and romance with others, and you are falling apart from the inside out as you feel that you can never be that special person, the “other half” to the person that you desire.

Based on my own history, you self-compromise into platonic friendship until someone else distracts you, and so it goes on. This can be perceived as disingenuous if your friendship is only skin-deep and warped by a constant lust for your friend.

I was on the top deck of a bus in Dublin, one day, many, many years ago, with a man that I was passionately in love with, and he suddenly leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. But this was something he did from time to time with his friends as a joke. It wasn’t meant in any way romantically or sexually.

I just passed it off as the joke it was meant to be, but things might have taken an entirely different path if I had been unable to contain my feelings. Although truth be told, I was probably more shocked or embarrassed than anything else.

Similar questions and feelings of doubt emerge in the realm of friendship. It’s easy to feel that things are getting better for the LGBTQ+ community, particularly if you live in a queer-friendly city, but this is not the case everywhere.

There is still a lot of animosity, even these days and it could be quite shocking, and alienating, to discover that people you considered friends suddenly despised you when they found out you were queer.

In a perfect world, we could all come out as soon as we are sure of our identity. This would mean we could make friends while staying our authentic selves.

Overall, in my opinion. it is perfectly fine to have friendships that are initially based on attraction. Friendship is much more than a salacious desire.

There is a closeness and even a sort of intimacy in real friendship that transcends a casual attraction, and it isn’t necessary to declare one’s sexuality to establish that scenario. Ultimately, however, it is probably best to let our real friends know the real us.