Reddit Question: Should I or Shouldn't I?

What can I say?  I get bored easily, and so wade through the spam to find that one singularly important personal question that I'm sure I can answer correctly.  Here were have a young man who thinks he's trapped between Scylla and Charybdis, when he's really just horny as hell and doesn't know what to do about it.  Shades of Eros, what should I tell him?

Here's the question, along with a link.  Given Reddit's thin skin, I don't think my answer will last long, but you never know.

Reddit Dating Advice

I (21m) dont know if I should ask out a friend (22f) who has an open relationship.

I asked out a girl some months ago, she refused because she had a long distance relationship. Some time later she invited me to dinner but wasn't possible due to quarantine. We flirted quite a bit. Some friend of her asked her out and she accepted. I kind of went bananas (I am quite ashamed) and told her that it wasnt only a game for me. We kind of grew apart.She told me that if she were single she would have loved to be my girlfriend.

Some time forward she has realized that her boyfriend is asexual, so he for the sake of the relationship stability has" enabled" her to have sex with other people.

The problem is that we truly conect so we hang out alone from time to time, kind of couplish plans like dinner, going for some drinks, extreme sports,we have true intimacy in the sense that no matter how twisted or personal thing happened to her she is going to tell me regardless. She gets nervous and smily, inconsciously gets close, plays with her hair and so on. She has made me complete sexual personality test. LOL. When we are together we lose the sense of time...

I am scared of advancing because she is in a relationship. The problem is she is trully a friend of mine. (I asked her about her relationship and described it as a strong friendship with cuddling).

My Response:

You're both in your early 20s?  Advance to the next level, then take it up a notch or two.  The absolute worst that could happen is that she and her 'asexual' (but probably gay and in the closet) significant other decides he's suffering some kind of emotional train wreck and she feels guilty about the whole thing because he blames her, and-and-and... you end up with someone else who isn't so screwed up in the head.

However, there's also the best case scenario, where she leaves him but only because you have the strength to help her, and she moves in for a few days just until she can find her own place, and the two of you shake the paint off the walls every night.

Me, I'd go for it. You only go around once, and it's a very here and now thing.