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What do you do when the man you want to spend the rest of your life with is your best friend's boyfriend? If you're a good friend, you swallow all selfish urges and avert your eyes as he scurries from her bedroom to the bathroom in his boxers. If you don't, you're ... me.

Kate and I were inseparable. We became best friends in high-school algebra, after I helped pluck out pink strings of bubblegum stuck in her wavy hair. Once we were in college, signing a joint lease on an apartment seemed like a natural progression.

Shortly after we'd unpacked, Rob, a brooding lead-singer type, asked her out. "I don't know what to say to a guy like him," Kate said as she pulled my favorite black blouse over her head before their date. "You have to come with me."

When we walked into the smoky bar where his band was playing, my stomach dropped. He was the kind of pierced, tattooed bad boy I had always gone for. I just couldn't picture them together.

But soon, all of their movie nights and cheap beer binges took place in our living room. I typically tried to avoid third-wheel status with Kate's boyfriends, but this was different -- I liked him. We had so much in common that Kate would jokingly say, "You two should just have sex already."

I love her too much to do that, I thought.

The Point of No Return
Kate and Rob were together for nearly six months when they began an incessant bickering that peaked at a friend's party. When Kate stormed off, she asked if I'd drive Rob back to our apartment.

When we rolled into a parking spot at my apartment, I didn't want to unbuckle my seat belt. With only a gearshift standing between us, I wondered if he thought of kissing me. In one fell swoop, Rob drove his lips into mine.

This is the point where I could've blamed it on the alcohol or whatever else we fault to reconcile the horrible things we do when we want something we shouldn't have. Instead, I led him upstairs and said, "Wait until Kate's asleep, and come to my room." Twenty minutes later, Rob crawled into bed beside me. There was no turning back.

Right Under Her Nose
I took to calling him from the corner of my closet each night. When we were at home with Kate, I would follow him to the kitchen, where he would press me against the counter and kiss me. Even when we were at the bar with friends, the tabletop often concealed our clutching fingers. On some level, I knew it was gross. But I had never felt such a magnetic pull to someone. I chose Rob and simply stopped thinking about what that meant to my friendship with Kate.

When Kate made a surprise visit to Rob's place and found me, the charade was over. "How could you do this to me?" she asked. The truth was brutal: From the moment I laid eyes on Rob, I started falling away from her and in love with him.

Soon Rob and I moved in together. Our careers took us on cross-country treks to Los Angeles and then Nashville -- places where we would meet new people and concoct tidier stories of how we fell in love. We rarely talked about what we did to Kate. The truth seemed to cheapen what we had.

Would I Do It All Again?
When Rob and I broke up four years later, my first thought was to call Kate. I couldn't though, partly because I knew I had lost the right to turn to her. But mostly because I considered this a different kind of boyfriend thievery -- the kind that resulted in a meaningful, long-term relationship.

Sans wedding, I was just another boyfriend snatcher. And aren't such hussies right up there with dog kickers and followers of the Third Reich? Now I realize: I'm the girl who ditches a friend in the name of love. Looking back, I'm not convinced that there's something so wrong with that.

Elizabeth Ulrich is a freelance writer and blogger who lives in Portland, Ore.