Asking for a Friend is the Daily Emerald’s sex and relationship column. Em Chan answers anonymous questions about anything from how to date during quarantine to how to heal a broken heart. Submit a question here: https://forms.gle/AZgBBMD65ZepY3KRA. 

“I’ve been dating someone for a little while (not too serious) but have been gradually developing a crush on my other guy friend. What should I do?” 

– Crushing but committed

Dear Crushing,

Your question has a lot of layers to it, so we’ll address this layer by layer. Before I answer it though, I’d like to ask: What got you into this scenario? 

This is not to gaslight you but to encourage you to take a hard look at your situation and figure out how and why things turned out the way they did. To some degree, you may not realize you already know what you want to do — but trying to clearly articulate why is the challenge. 

Let’s start from the beginning: When you decided to casually date this person, what was your intention? People primarily date for two reasons: to find a life partner or for someone to pass the time with. The two are similar, but have extremely hardlined differences.

This isn’t to say one is better than the other — do whatever you want and whoever you want — but the difference dictates how much time and energy you’ll put into the person. 

Before you pick one guy over the other, you should figure out which type of relationship you want, and then which person fits that description better. As far as I can tell, you were looking for someone to pass the time with and settled on someone. Now, you may have suddenly realized you potentially want to date someone seriously and aren’t sure how to proceed because you don’t know what you want in the long term from either relationship.

Since you mentioned it’s still a recent development, giving it more time may be beneficial. Like I mentioned earlier, if your intent to pursue your crush is fueled primarily by wanting to jump their bones, I would rethink if you actually want a relationship with them. Again, it’s okay to realize you don’t want more than sex, as long as you’re transparent about that with the people you’re involved with. 

Perhaps it’s not even just sex you’re looking for, but a certain aspect of their personality or interaction that they provide you gives you fulfillment in a way that your current partner doesn’t. That’s also valid, but again, requires you to look into yourself for what you truly want out of your relationship and how to get those wants fulfilled. 

Whatever you choose to do, I would caution against rushing into action, because you’re not sure how deep your crush is. On one hand, your crush might just be momentary lusting after something “better” that has caught your attention but ends up not being as deep as you thought. On the other hand, you could have a genuine connection and find a great partner.

Overall, reflect on the state of your current relationship. Even if you both aren’t looking for anything serious, to be tempted out of it because of a crush is not a great sign for the two of you. If you’re certain you’re more interested in this friend of yours than in your current casual relationship, you should break it off and pursue the friend.

However, you did mention that the person you’re developing a crush on is already a friend. I would make sure you’re absolutely certain that your feelings for this person are beyond wanting friendship. If you are wanting just a sexual relationship, you should ask them (yes, have a direct conversation!) if they’d want that too. If you’re looking for a romantic relationship, ask what kind of relationship they want. Like I mentioned earlier, it is not in your favor to end your current relationship if the next one you’re going into is not as, if not more, fulfilling to your life. 

Even if you realize now that your current partner isn’t adding anything to your relationship, you can also choose to dump them. Our time is too precious to be spent on people who do not improve the quality of our lives in some regard.

Sure, it may seem strange to think of a relationship as fulfilling to your life, but what’s the point of having things or people in your life that don’t actively make life better — especially someone you’re in a relationship with? Think over what you want and be extremely honest with yourself, because only you can make the next move toward finding what you want.