I don't see anyone commenting from the perspective of that friend, and what being them might be like after you talk to them.

I am currently friends with someone I used to be in love with, but she did not feel the same way, so while we dated a few months, she eventually told me it wasn't going anywhere.

That hurt like hell. But the love and respect I felt and feel for her meant that not spewing a bunch of negative feelings her way was my first concern. If your friend is a wonderful person, they will probably think along similar lines, but you can't let them entirely spare you. Show them you feel with them.

I was probably the saddest I've been, learning it wouldn't work out, and the time after was akward af.

She told me point blank that some of her friends had adviced her to cut me out of her life entirely, that it would be the "kinder" thing to do. Thank the deities she didn't follow that advice as we both still wanted each other in our lives. And we DID make it work.

Maintaining the relationship was extra difficult for a while. Years. We came to a kind of unspoken agreement that our romantic lives were a taboo between us, but we went through the motions of a frienship even as she felt she was walking on glass with how I was hurting, and me essentially pretending to be ok when I wasn't.

That doesn't mean we didn't enjoy each others company throughout that, but we made an effort to focus on good things. If we went into the complicated stuff, there was a feedback-loop of empathy where she'd feel bad because I was hurting, which would make me feel bad for making her feel bad for something which was in no way her fault... Etc.

A thing we did when meeting, was that she'd ask "are you ok" to which I'd reply, "no, but I'm going to be". This way we acknowledged it was there, but buried it most of the time because it was the kind of thing that would get worse the more we dwelled on it. So we didn't.

I spared her any displays of heartache best I could, and she never rubbed her new boyfriend in my face.

Eventually, I came to the realization that I wasn't in love anymore. That hearing about her going on dates or moving in with her SO, didn't cause a twinge of misery. Next time we met, I took up the subject of my former infatuation, and we talked through all the things that had been taboo between us, catching up on things we would have talked about, if not for the need to spare each others feelings. From that day, we've been easy friends, able to talk about everything again.

She told me that conversation was really important, as she wasn't going to put in the extra effort forever. Neither was I, but unlike me she had no way of knowing whether she had to keep it up, unless I told her.

This is to say, when you talk to your friend and figure out how your feelings for each other differ, and what you might want from other people, make a plan for how to get to a new normal, and how you want things to work in-between.

My current friendship with this woman is quite different from the friendship I had before I fell for her, but it's just as stable, if not more so. But the time in-between required a lot of effort, and a couple very honest conversations. In hindsight, I can find a ton of points when we might've just stopped meeting. But neither of us wanted to lose the other. Make that VERY clear. We both told each other, many times, and I think that's why neither of us ever got into the mindset that it would be "kinder" to "let the other go".