I hooked up several times with one of my best friends, we were both closeted, and in the end I had to break the cycle

I’m 26 and he’s 27. We’ve known each other since high school and have been friends for years. We were always close, but over the last year things got much more intense: we talked almost every day, made plans all the time, told each other we loved each other, and our friends would even joke that we acted like a married couple.
I’d always considered myself straight and had never had any kind of experience with a guy. Then a few months ago, one night, we ended up kissing.
We talked about it afterwards, both pretty confused, and basically agreed that it had been a weird one-off thing and couldn’t happen again.
It happened again. More than once.
Over the course of about a month, we hooked up three times, and on a couple of those occasions things went quite a bit further than kissing. One of those times we were completely sober too, so at some point it became ridiculous to keep pretending it was just some random drunken mistake.
Because of all this, he eventually admitted he was gay, and I had to accept that I clearly wasn’t as straight as I’d always thought either. I now consider myself bisexual.
The real problem came afterwards.
Our relationship became really weird. We could spend weeks getting along amazingly, talking constantly, seeing each other all the time and being much closer than what I’d consider a normal friendship. But sooner or later something would go wrong. He’d become distant, I’d try to figure out what the hell was happening, we’d argue and then stop talking for a few days.
Then one of us would come back and, before long, we’d be right back to normal.
That went on for months.
For a long time I tried to explain his behavior to myself. Maybe he was scared of accepting that he was gay, scared someone would find out, scared of ruining our friendship, or simply had no idea how to deal with what was happening. There was probably some truth to all of that, but I became way too emotionally invested in the whole situation.
If he was distant, I’d overthink it. If he was especially affectionate, I’d convince myself it meant something. And it didn’t help that it never felt like it was just about sex or curiosity. There was jealousy, a lot of affection, we were constantly checking in on each other and, from the outside, we often looked more like a couple than friends.
The thing is, I ended up falling in love with him. Hard.
That’s probably why I put up with more than I would have with anyone else. He wasn’t some guy I’d met a few months earlier. He was one of my best friends of many years. If everything went to shit, I could lose the friendship too.
I didn’t handle everything well either. I overthought things constantly, pushed for answers when he probably didn’t want to give them, and eventually my mood depended way too much on how things were between us.
Over time, the arguments got worse and I just got exhausted.
During one of those situations, he left me on read and I decided not to chase him this time. I also didn’t reply when he wrote something in a group chat we share with another friend. It wasn’t some strategy to make him miss me. I was just tired of always ending up in the same place.
After some time without talking, we had a conversation about two weeks ago.
And I think that conversation was exactly what I needed to finally see things differently.
Among other things, he blamed me for not reaching out to him and for not replying in the group chat. And something just clicked in my head.
After everything that had happened between us, we were still arguing about who was supposed to text first, why I hadn’t replied, or who was showing more interest.
I remember thinking: are we seriously still doing this?
Until then, part of me was still desperately trying to understand him and fix everything. That conversation made me realize that it didn’t really matter anymore who was right in each individual argument. The dynamic itself was unhealthy.
I didn’t want to keep wondering whether he would text me, whether I should text him, whether replying meant getting too close again, or whether not replying would cause another argument.
That conversation ended up giving me some kind of closure.
Not because I suddenly stopped caring about him or because I think everything between us was fake. I still love him a lot. But for the first time, I understood that loving someone doesn’t mean you have to keep a relationship in your life at any cost when it’s making you miserable.
And since then, I’ve actually been surprisingly calm.
I miss him, obviously, but I hadn’t felt this peaceful in months. I’m no longer constantly wondering whether he’s distant today, affectionate tomorrow, whether we’ve argued again, or whose turn it is to make the next move.
For months I was obsessed with figuring out whether he was actually in love with me.
Now I’m starting to think it doesn’t really matter.
Maybe he was. Maybe he wasn’t. I’ll probably never know.
But even if he did feel the same way, what we had had still become a complete mess. Loving each other doesn’t automatically mean you know how to be together.
Right now, I have no intention of reaching out again. If he comes back someday, I’ll deal with it then, but I know I couldn’t just pretend nothing happened and go straight back to the same relationship we had before.
And if he never comes back, it still hurts to think that a friendship of so many years could end like this. But keeping the whole thing going just because I was scared of losing him wasn’t a solution either.
I’d really like to hear how this looks from the outside, especially from people who have gone through something similar while figuring out their sexuality or falling for a close friend.
Do you think someone can have real feelings for another person and still behave like this?
Does it sound as ridiculous from the outside as it felt to end up arguing about who should have reached out first after everything that happened?
And when a relationship gets to this point, do you think the healthiest thing is just to break the cycle, even if there are still feelings there?
TL;DR: One of my best friends of many years and I hooked up several times, and things went well beyond kissing. He eventually accepted that he was gay and I realized I’m bisexual. For months we went back and forth between periods where we practically acted like a couple and periods of arguing and distancing, and I ended up falling in love with him. After some time without speaking, we had a conversation where he even blamed me for not reaching out or replying in a group chat. That made me realize we were still stuck in the same push-and-pull dynamic and that, whatever feelings were there, it wasn’t healthy anymore. I still care about him a lot, but since deciding to end the cycle, I’ve felt much calmer.