I actually don't know what to do with my feelings so I can remain friends with Blue.
Compartmentalize sounds right to me. Like I can treat him like I would a friend, but it takes putting my loving feelings in a different compartment. For example, today I saw him to retrieve something from his place and it took effort not to hug him hello like I always do and I thought if I looked him in the eyes any more than absolutely necessary I was going to cry. So I gotta hide all that, or wait for it to fade or whatever it does. This could take a while.
One can "deal" by putting the feelings in that box over there and not looking at it for a while.
Before I got together with either my bf or my gf, they were involved with each other. My gf, B, was head over heels in love with my (now) male mate, J, however he just thought of her as a really dear friend with whom he occasionally had sex. Unfortunately, it took J and I getting together before B truly accepted that he didn't feel the same way and never had. It was such a huge blow to her. And I have always felt guilty for being the agent of her misery, even as she was occasionally the cause of mine.
In the year or so between J putting a halt to their FWB status and B and I entering our own relationship, she had to do a LOT of soul searching and work in order to get over him, firstly, then to be able to make peace with the fact that he and I had a serious thing going, and still be able to be friends with us both.
As B tells it, she avoided social media (blocking me for months), spent a lot of time walking in nature (for the exercise and the peace), and read a lot, especially about Buddhist philosophy and the notion of non-attachment... eventually concluding that a really deep, true platonic friendship is its own unique thing, and not something that's inherently "lesser" in quality than a romantic relationship, even if the scope of relating might've shifted ie: no sex, marriage off the cards.
Another year later, and B, J and I are all in a triad of sorts, though those two are not intimately involved. We have all holidayed together and are planning on either moving in together, or very close by. B and J see each other as best friends and family members now and the friendship remains intact.
I am NOT trying to give you false hope here, because I don't know if or how you and Blue intend to move forward, but I'm trying to say there IS hope that you will heal and get past the current confusion of emotions, even if your future may look different to how you planned it in your head.
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