Yea, this is 100% it. If you can't kill your romantic feelings for them friendship is just not going to work. You'll just be hurting the whole time you're with them, especially if they get involved with someone else and like you said it can definitely stray into creepy behavior. It's a shitty situation for both parties and of course it'd be great if we could just switch those feelings off but that's not always an easy thing to do.