I’ve been really good friends with him for roughly 6 months. I knew I had feelings for him around Christmas and I distanced myself from him a bit to get over them because I didn’t want to ruin our friendship. Recently, we started talking regularly again, I thought I had squashed all feelings but they were still there. I love being around him, if for nothing but his friendship.

These past few nights, we’ve been talking until the wee hours of the morning, even though he has work in the morning. We talked about our past relationships and what went wrong and what we would do next time. Over the past few weeks, I would be sending cute memes of cats just hanging/cuddling and I would say “this us?” And he would agree without hesitation every time with “yes”.

Two nights ago, I made a half-truth joke about how I’d have his kids and off we went. We started referring to each other as baby momma and baby daddy, he would call me his future wife and make remarks about how he can’t wait for the future where we’d be together. I don’t like ambiguity amongst my friends and at the back my head, there was the possibility that he likes me too. It was being confirmed by all this talk of being together, even though I half thought he was just going with my bullshit to entertain me. So I asked him if he liked me and he said he did, he just didn’t know how to tell me because I’ve been going through some shit and he wanted to give me my space.

This is where I feel I made a huge mistake. We confirmed our feelings without ever exchanging photos of one another. I’m a bigger woman. I’m aware that there are people out there attracted to my body type, but there are people out there who aren’t. I immediately became scared. I knew at the back of my mind that he wouldn’t be attracted to my body type, but I had to chance it. So I sent him a full body photo and prayed to all the gods possible that he was an outlier.

Unfortunately, for me, he is not an outlier. What makes it hurt even more, is before I ever sent that photo, he told me that what my body looks like doesn’t matter and that he likes me for who I am, but I had to push and give him an out if he didn’t like my body. Now I have to navigate a difficult situation. I don’t want to lose my close friend, but we just admitted our feelings for one another and then he takes it back, kind of, by not finding my body attractive. I honestly am lost. Lost and a little heartbroken. I know I can get over him and be friends again, but I don’t know if he can. Any advice for how to navigate this situation moving forward? I don’t want to lose my friend and the feelings honestly are not strong enough to warrant throwing away our friendship.