I've been thinking alot about life in general for myself lately too.

For your situation, I would say that a person can DEFINATLEY be happy being close to someone without having a spoken romantic spark between the two. I personally was once very close to a girl who I simply will probably never be with, but my way of dealing with it was to tell her that I would always care about her. That I would always be her friend and be there for her. Somehow that is even more amazing than real romance- it's an everlasting promise that you will always be special to one another.

Hope that made sense. Just my take on it.

As far as happiness goes... I'm a pretty strong believer in finding a way to be happy on your own, and once you master that... you don't have to be jerked around so strongly by relationships. But it's still really hard.

Still, if you could only be perfectly happy for no reason...

-applecyder