I disagree with most of the advice on this thread- people are telling you to get a new best friend? Really? I'm not one to throw away relationships that quickly if the person is someone I care about and is important to me.

I'm also kinda biased haha. I had a best friend (guy) who I (lady) developed a very close relationship and eventually dated for a short period of time. What's slightly different is that I'm a lesbian, and I kinda knew that going in to the relationship, but our friendship was so close that I sort of mistook that platonic intimacy for romantic intimacy and thought maaaybe I was more bi than I thought. (I was also just not in a good place at this time - in active addiction with severe mental health problems, so while looking back I wouldn't experiment with someone's feelings like that, I wasn't making good choices at the time).

Anyway, it ended because turns out I'm super not straight. We ended on good terms, put a bit of distance between us, but eventually our friendship got back to being very close. He's my roommate to this day, and has been for the past few years. I adore him and he adores me- but very platonically.

There is no one that I would give this friendship up for. He's one of the more important people in my life. And honestly I would not want to be someone willing to toss aside a person like that, nor would I be attracted to someone who could.

Neither of us have really dated again since we were both in active addiction and now are focusing on our recoveries, not dating, so I haven't really had to cross that bridge of how to disclose that we used to date. I know that people will find it threatening, but there is literally 0 threat there, on both of our ends. I dunno man. I don't have a solution for you, but I just wanted to add another opinion to the sea of "hell no's" you're getting in this thread.