Anyone managed a successful friendship with an unrequited crush?

[wanderlust333]

I have a close male friend who i developed a crush on a couple of years ago. We were both single and spending a lot of time together. Fairly quickly after my crush started, he started dating someone and at first i was a bit gutted but I managed to ignore / forget about the crush for a long time.

Recently, friend's girlfriend broke up with him. Although he's now single, he's hanging on to the hope that they will get back together, she is apparently the 'one' for him. Since his break-up, I've spent a lot of time with him, mainly virtually but we have seen each other face to face this week (I'm still single BTW). I've realised that the crush is still there but I'm pretty certain that he will never see me as anything more than a friend. Part of me just wants to distance myself from him because I'm not sure that i can keep spending time with him when I want something he doesn't. Is there any hope for us as friends?

Have known people who managed it, but only if the crush faded for some reason, like spending significant time apart or finding a partner that blew the cobwebs out. The people I’m talking about were generally teenagers or early twenties at the time of the initial crush, so their personalities were still developing and they were able to grow/mature out of it, because their taste in people changed.

Otherwise it’s just a recipe for heartbreak.

When I was a teenager one of my ex’s friend had a huge crush on me. He never said anything but it was obvious. We were friends for many years to come. Not sure when he stopped having feelings for me but always made time for me when I was visiting my home town; it’s like I always had a special place in his heart. He later started a relationship with his business partner, who is married, and got tangled in the relationship for many years.I guess he developed a crush on her and he just couldn’t move on.
As for me, I developed a crush on someone about 3 years ago, decided to cut things short as it was very consuming. For the last couple of years we tried to patch things up with no luck. We’ve recently blocked each other everywhere. Wish I had the strength to do it 3 years ago. I couldn’t back then because I so wanted that person in my life, at least as a friend. I’ve noticed that many people that cannot be together with their crush have a hard time removing them from their lives all together and hope for friendship. For me it was just salt added to the wound.
I allowed my self to be a shoulder to cry on thinking it would bring us closer. It did, but it was this very thing that made me reconsider the friendship as I realised that’s all I was, a shoulder to cry on. If you are there for him as friends but it pains you, do yourself a favour and get out before it gets out of hand.