I've been friends with the girl who I call my best friend for about five years now. We're online friends and live in different countries. We've always been super close, despite not always sharing interests (though we do tend to gravitate towards the same area of interest, even if our specific interests aren't the same). She's just someone who I can naturally get along with. I think I could trust her with pretty much anything.
We've both had crushes on each other before, though neither one of us ever said anything about it until after the fact. We used to talk about platonically getting married and moving in together when we were younger. Looking back, that's an ambitious and sort of immature goal to have for a friendship, especially since we were 15ish at the time, but it does just go to show how close we were. Since our relationship never progressed past whatever mutual pining we had going on, I sort of dropped the idea of ever pursuing her and eventually got a boyfriend. During that time, we did drift apart and stopped talking for a few months, but we found each other again, either towards the end of my relationship with my now-ex boyfriend or after we already broke up after a little over a year. We broke up in February of this year, and I've been talking to my friend pretty consistently since then. She had crushes on other people as well through the course of our friendship, but as far as I'm aware, they never progressed to an actual relationship-relationship.
Every time she told me about one of these crushes, I got pretty bitter internally. I don't think it was necessarily because I wanted to date her myself because my sort-of-crush towards her was off and on. But I do have a history of being possessive and obsessive over select people, and I grow to resent anyone who gets in the way of whoever's the object of my attention until my brain no longer deems them as a "threat" to our relationship. It sounds sort of cringe when I write it out, but that's genuinely just how my mind sees people sometimes. Anyway, I think she was one of those people who I held to a high regard in my mind whenever she had these crushes, which is why I just felt so gross.
The issue is that she seems to be interested in another guy (19M) currently, and we're both pretty sure he likes her back. And, this time, it looks like this might actually go somewhere, and that scares me. I love her a lot, and right now, it just feels like genuine love. I don't feel super possessive over her, and I don't hate the guy who she'll probably end up with for once. He, for the most part, genuinely does seem like a really good guy. Today she was talking a bit about him, and I've been supportive, but it honestly just made me depressed. We were on call after that and she noticed that I was off and asked if I was okay. I just told her I was fine. I really do not want to trouble her by telling her how I feel, and I especially did not want to tell her over voice. I don't want to complicate things by throwing another variable in for her to consider. I'm not super self-absorbed or anything, but I know her, and I know she'll be concerned about my feelings if she does decide to pursue this guy, and I don't want that for her. I want her to be happy, even if it's not with me. It hurts though.
Is it worth saying anything to her at all? I think at this point it's too late. I've realized that, and I think that's going to be the general consensus, but I'd like to hear some other people's opinions. She's really special to me, and at this point in time, I couldn't imagine myself with anyone else, and I think her being with someone else would really break me for a while. I can't imagine finding anyone else who I trust so wholly. I know there's other people out there, and I know I'm still young and naive, but she really just means a lot to me, and I know I also mean a lot to her.
TL;DR: I love my best friend who will probably end up with another guy and I haven't said anything about my feelings so I don't complicate the situation further but it really hurts and sucks so I want some other people's opinions.