What are your stories about telling your best friend you love him?

For the past few months, I've fallen hard for my best friend (guy) whose sexuality was (and still is) relatively unknown. This week I told him and he made it clear that he valued our friendship but didn't feel the same way. I don't regret telling him because I just had to know how he felt because it wasn't good for me to be thinking "what if" all the time and now I can work on trying to move on. The only thing I'm worried, and very worried about, is how it might affect our friendship because, while I think we will still be very good friends, things will definitely be different and I feel like we won't be as close.I just wanted to hear experiences and stories of other people who went through same or similar situations