The War Between Head and Heart

If only our heads knew which way our hearts will go, but the heart has its reasons of which reason cannot know.

Oh boy.  The total is now at four as the number of women whom I greatly respect who have given me the exact same advice.  Advice that I know is right and true and exactly what I need to do, yet can't bring myself to follow through with.

I need to create distance between me and someone who is very, very, inexplicably dear to me.  (No, it's not Brennan.  He and I are, surprisingly, absolutely fine.)  It's the only thing that will keep me from falling even harder in a direction that will only end in a messy catastrophe.  I know that's what will be best for me in the long run.  I know what God wants for me, what the Bible says about people of faith and relationships.

But I'm scared.  Scared of what life would be like without closeness to a person who has been such a rock in my chaotic life for years.  Closeness that seems impossible to an outsider considering the physical distance between us.  Things started changing between us long before I was a Christian.  Me becoming more and more passionate about my faith has added a whole new level of complication to our already strange and complicated friendship, but I still haven't been able to quit him, because beyond everything else, we were friends first, friends that shared just about everything with each other without fear.  And I know that he is a good person.

I know that I need to stop things before they go any further, in order to preserve my walk with God as the #1 priority in my life.  I know that that's what I need to do.  But I don't know how to explain that to him without hurting him.  He's so much like me, sensitive, emotional, takes things personally even when they're not meant to be.  I don't know how to tell him that without it coming off like I think he's not good enough for me.  

And the thing is...part of me just doesn't want to create that distance.  My selfish wants and desires say that he isn't causing me harm, even while my head is telling me that putting my heart so far into a friendship with someone like this is causing me harm.  Every time my head tells my heart the truth, my heart comes up with another "but...", another excuse, another reason why I don't want to give in and do what is best.

To put it simply, I want him, I want to be with him, even though I know that's exactly what I shouldn't want.  And I'm not sure how to proceed from here without hurting someone I care about so, so much...and hurting myself, too.