of ruining friendships and other cheerful topics

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I recently asked out, and was rejected by, a girl I really like and with whom I was good friends with. Her reasons were that she has a bf (which I knew, but I also knew she's unhappy with him, and it's a long-distance relationship) and that we're from different cultures (true, and we don't speak each other's native language (we can talk in English), but her culture doesn't seem incomprehensible to me). I fully expected her to say no, but decided to tell her anyway, because, while my chances of getting a yes were close to zero, they were exactly zero if I didn't ask. Also, it was something I felt I needed to get off my chest eventually and I also felt she had a right to know - it seemed hypocritical to pretend I only wanted friendship.
It's not so much that I'm fully in love with her but that the seed is definitely there, I really like her and I know I would quickly fall madly in love if we dated. She's one of the kindest, nicest, friendliest girls you could ever meet. Ironically enough, she told me that I could easily find a better girl, and that there is another girl that does like me in that way - I answered the truth, that I don't like that girl in that way.
Predictably, even though neither one wants to end the friendship, it seems pretty dead - a barrier has been created, it's created awkwardness. So I'm on a downer both for ending any hopes I had of getting together with her and losing a good friend, of which I don't have many.

i know how you feel, sadly.

I've been there.
Even just recently. I had a good online rapport with a girl going on for about half a year until I started getting feelings for her and asked her out. Boy that messed things up... Yet it couldn't have been helped. It was killing me to not do anything.
I was kind of hoping to keep her as a friend, but she just stopped talking to me altogether and that was it. That was a little over a month ago...

Thats why I'm so afraid of initiating anything.

The one time I asked a girl out and was promptly rejected, she still wanted to be friends (she was a friend at the time), and we're still sort of in a limbo state between friends and more than friends, although I don't see her around that much anymore, my feelings for her starting near the end of middle school and now we both went off to college...

Know this feeling exactly. Only I didn't know that she had a boyfriend when I asked. But I can fully sympathise with you

I guess at least I ruined it for the right reasons, if that makes sense - it's nobody's fault. it's made me feel more isolated from other people too, for some reason.

im lucky that my obsession is patient with me and we seem to bounce back... but there's always THAT on the table now.

It's not even that she was angry, or that she had no patience. She was so astonished that she just didn't know how to react, then she felt afraid that her rejection would make me hate her, then a bit guilty thinking that maybe she'd misled me unintentionally. We both want to remain friends but I don't think we can bounce back (it's just too awkward for her I think, her current bf is her first, she doesn't want to be seen in a bathing suit by a man, I'm pretty sure she's a virgin, etc).
I'm glad for you that at least the friendship bounced back.

I had been planning to go on a trip later this year with her and a mutual friend, instead I'll be going alone.
It's been literally years since I met a girl that was both single and that I wanted to date, this was the first time I asked a girl out since my teens, and the first time I ask a girl with a boyfriend (also the first time I ask a girl out not in my native language). When I eventually ask someone out again, it will probably be another taken girl, just my luck...

Zara, maybe it's easier that way, cutting all contact, I don't know.

Don't worry about it, homie. You asked her out. You released the tension, and you got that monkey off your back. There is no point being "just friends" with someone who you are really attracted to in that way. I truely believe straight men and women cannot be "just friends" if one is attracted to or in love with the other. That just doesnt "jive" (for lack of a better term). If the friendship is ruined, then that's what happens. If the tension kept building and building and building, the friendship would have becomed strained, and it would simply break, and erupt into flames.

Better to ruin it now, when it's an ant-hill then later, when it's a volcano.

I agree, I've had good female friends but those friendships have worked only because neither one was attracted to the other.
I need a holiday, it doesn't help when you're fed up with your colleagues and your boss tells you your work is repulsive.