Are you quirky, fun, and a fiercely loyal friend who always tells it like it is? Do you have the kind of face that makes strangers want to tell you their deepest secrets? Do you sometimes suspect you might be a secondary character in someone else’s love story? If so, you might be affected by Romance Novel Best Friend Syndrome (RNBFS).

This can be a frightening condition to experience, but you are not alone. Best friends are the unpaid emotional laborers that make the romance world go ‘round. Hundreds of people (maybe?) fall in love each year. The impact of all the swooning and “will-they-won’t-they” tension on those lovers’ best friends too often goes unrecognized. If not for best friends, upon whom would protagonists dump their excitement and fears about their burgeoning new relationship? Whose dog/cat/baby/shoes would the protagonists borrow to inspire an unlikely meet-cute? And who, I ask, would give their new beau a “hurt my best friend and you die” tongue-lashing? (Your best friend is presumably already giving them the more fun kind of tongue-lashing.)

Luckily, there’s hope for those suffering from RNBFS. Read on for symptoms and treatment options to help you step out of the “quirky best friend” role and into your own spotlight.

Symptoms of RNBFS

• A distinct lack of personal backstory beyond a decades-long friendship with someone currently being swept off their feet
• A fierce protective instinct for your best friend and take-no-bullshit attitude toward their prospective romantic partners
• A quippy sense of humor that cuts through rampant sexual tension
• An insatiable thirst for gossip
• Strong fashion sense and unexpected urges to give your single friends dramatic makeovers
• Elite, psychiatrist-level emotional intelligence
• A pattern of disappearing for long periods of time and reappearing when your best friend needs relationship advice

Treatment for RNBFS

The only known treatment for Romance Novel Best Friend Syndrome is becoming the protagonist of your own story. This has proved remarkably successful for hundreds (maybe?) of best friends. And not to worry; no harm will come to the person on the other side of your friendship. They’ll likely appear as a secondary character in your love story. You might even meet your true love at their wedding! (If you’re already in a monogamous relationship… Well, I guess the “marriage-in-trouble” trope is always an option?)

Check out these books where former victims of RNBFS heal through finding love of their own.

The Wedding Party by Jasmine Guillory Alexa, the protagonist of Jasmine Guillory’s The Wedding Date, has two best friends who hate each other. (Could RNBFS be the underlying cause of that hatred? Just saying.) In The Wedding Party, Maddie and Theo have to overcome their mutual dislike to help plan Alexa’s wedding festivities. But putting aside their differences opens them up to an unexpected new connection.

Iris Kelly Doesn’t Date by Ashley Herring Blake Iris Kelly had to watch not one but two best friends fall in love in the first two books of Ashley Herring Blake’s Bright Falls series. She’s even become a romance author without finding love of her own. If only she could find romantic inspiration to break her writer’s block… But don’t worry! Iris is the star of the romance novel in Iris Kelly Doesn’t Date, so you know things are going to turn around for her soon.

This Could Be Us by Kennedy Ryan In Kennedy Ryan’s Before I Let Go, best friend Soledad had to suffer through the tumultuous divorce and re-falling in love of Yasmen and Josiah. Now Soledad’s own marriage is over. But she’s breaking through RNBFS to find her own chance at new love—with the one guy she shouldn’t want. Get even more relief by watching the other best friend in the group find love in the next book in the series, Can’t Get Enough.

Fall for Him by Andie Burke Between a high-stress job as an ER nurse and supporting his best friend Olive through a fake-dating-turned-real-love situation in Andie Burke’s Fly with Me, Derek Chang had a major case of RNBFS. But after watching Olive fall in love, Derek fell too — right through the floor of his apartment and into the bed of his hot downstairs neighbor.

I hope this guide to Romance Novel Best Friend Syndrome helped you find a solution to your secondary character problem. For further healing comfort reads, check out:

Steamy Reads for Frigid Nights

Yearn, Baby! Yearn: Five Romances Full of Pining

8 of the Best Grumpy/Grumpy Romances