What If You Fall In Love With Your Friend?

Do you have a close friend from the opposite sex? I wonder if this ever happened to you, but they say this happens a lot of times to ladies, that the deep but unromantic friendly affection you feel for a man can very easily be transformed into a compelling dramatic, romantic love.

You can't seem to tell your heart to switch gears or to stop your feeling at a certain point. When a man starts spending time with you, supporting you, giving of himself, becoming involved in your life, your hearts sometimes can't help falling in love with him in the process. Things are fine if he's falling in love with you, too. But what if he isn't? You probably don't want the intense feeling to develop. It becomes difficult for you to keep the closeness and the friendship.

So, should you suppress your feelings and get back to the easy relationship you used to have? Should you stop seeing him because it is too painful? Should you cry and be angry or get bitter because he made you fall in love with him and had no intention of following through on it? Should you just own it inside and try to pretend it isn't there so you won't scare him anyway? What will you do?

Once your care for him has grown beyond a sisterly affection to a deeper love, how can you suddenly empty out some of that feeling unless you lie to yourself? If you stop seeing each other, it avoids the problems, but it doesn't solve it, and you will not grow from it, or learn whatever it is that the Lord is trying to teach you through that friendship.

So, why does this happen? These feeling actually result from expectations. Expectations of having the relationship led somewhere, of being love, of being fulfilled, of being protected and cherished, of being cared for in a special way. Expectations which rob a relationship of spontaneity and unselfconsciousness and make us inordinately preoccupied with ourselves and an imagined, hoped for future.

These expectations rob us of the freedom to enjoy each other unselfishly, as well as the ability to love each other with truly agape love. You start seeking your own satisfaction, rather that the other person's total good. The solution of this problem is not in your fighting the fact that you love the man, or in trying to love less, but to love more. the kind of love that the Lord has for us. This is called agape love.

It is finding out that you truly can love someone very deeply and yet allow him or her complete freedom to respond to you in whatever way God leads them to respond. The goal of love is not always marriage. Sometimes, it's a beautiful friendship between a man and a woman. Think about this. As you love, whose interest are you seeking to serve. yours or his? As you trust God and yield your heart to him, let God direct your relationships, you can be free from the leech of expectations and free to let the Lord love that man through you. You can pray wholeheartedly for his happiness, secure in the knowledge that God is going to fulfill all your needs, and that you don't have to depend on a man to do it. you have realized that only God can truly meet your needs.

You can say with our whole being "I love you, and there are no string attached. I just want to be around to support you in whatever way you and the Lord want me to. I want to pray for you, share your burdens, and be involved in your life because I love you, but I'm not expecting anything from you. I simply and truly want to see you happy, fulfilled and joyful." That is serving rather that being served. That is loving rather that being loved