Conditional Friendship

This is a public blog so I have to be careful on this one, but I'm frustrated right now and have to rant. I have a friend that is an ex. I don't know if any of you are familiar with that, but sometimes it's really difficult to maintain friendship with an ex, particularly when that ex still has feelings for you. It's been something like 2 years since we have been together, and during the course of the past 2 years we have had bouts of time when we would not speak to each other because things were just too hard, or my ex needed a little space. The last such bout lasted several months... to the point where I really thought our friendship had reached it's end.

Well that bout finally passed and we are now friends again, but I find that every time I consider moving on, or trying to date, the friendship gets rocky again. I know it's not fair to be one-sided about this, as my ex still has feelings and it's hard to see someone you care about moving on to someone else, but at what point do you just realize that things are what they are, we can't change them, and the best we can do is pick up the pieces of our lives that are still intact and keep on trucking?

So here's my situation. I have met someone and started dating. I think there is a possibility that it may become more serious down the road and would like to share this with my best friend. Yet my best friend has been feeling a little mopey, both from the Winter months dragging on and on, and with life in general. There has been expression that things are just hard right now, and so I feel I must be delicate about sharing my new-found joy. It's hard to have news that you wish you could share with your friends, but feel you can't because you know your friendship is conditional, and sharing that joy may end the friendship. Then again, if that is true, what kind of friendship is it really?

*sigh*