I think it only changes things if you dwell on it, if you dwell on what you can't have at the exclusion of what you do. Here's the thing, Beleth. If you don't tell him and he figures it out, things will be weird anyway. He'll wonder why you didn't say, wish you would so it would be out there, and so on. If you tell him, and remember that he's valuable to you as "just" a friend, as long as he is, then it doesn't have to be weird.

You'll still have feelings. They won't simply vanish. But you have control of them.