My friend took his life a few weeks ago. I found out today he was in love with me for the last five years

I don't really know what I'm looking for by posting this. Maybe I just need to tell people who don't know any of us and hear what they make of it. Maybe just release from loads of new information I've learned in the last 24 hours. I recently lost a friend. I'll call him John. We met when I was 22 and he was 24. A mutual friend, Dan, invited me to spend a day at a theme park with a group of Marines from the local base. John was new to the base and since he was Dan's new roommate he invited him along too. We met at lunch that day and immediately clicked. I'm not a big roller-coaster person, so I mostly did things like the small less thrilling stuff. John went on every single one with me. We'd just met and he spent his whole day with me. At the end of the day he asked if he could see me again. We dated for around six weeks. It was never officially defined, but I really liked him. I'd only had one relationship before him, and it had been a toxic two-year relationship. I'd also grown up pretty sheltered, so at 22 I was still figuring out relationships and adulthood in general. (Being autistic was never helpful back then either). John was different from anything I'd experienced. He was incredibly gentle with me. Before our first kiss, he actually asked if he could kiss me. About a month into dating, we spent our first night together. He made sure I was comfortable with everything, even things that seemed too small to need asking about. I remember the next morning like it happened yesterday. His arm around me, little forehead kisses, his thumb rubbing my shoulder. I remember knowing he was smiling even though I wasn't looking at his face. We never said "I love you." But retrospect is 20/20 and it seems so obvious now. Shortly afterward, I thought he'd started seeing someone else. I was hurt and pulled away. Eventually we became friends again, and we never discussed the fact that we'd dated. We never talked about anything regarding else. There was no official "exclusivity" conversation so there was no break up one either. I spent years believing he'd simply chosen someone else over me and it was just over. I genuinely believed I'd simply cared about him more than he'd cared about me. Life moved on. There were relationships, deployments, periods where we didn't talk as much, periods where we were closer again. Eventually I got married last year and John remained my friend. Almost a month ago he took his life. It was very unexpected, from what we know of it was unplanned but very unfortunately it was on a group video chat. Looking back to that night, he asked me to join the chat. I think he just wanted to see me again though. I don't really know what was going through his mind before the conversation took a turn for the worst. But if what he needed was to see me I'm okay with that. Last night I got some of John's letters sent from Dan who had been holding onto them. He said he'd loved me for years. He wrote that he'd wanted to tell me, but every time he considered it, there was a reason he believed he shouldn't. If I was with someone, he wouldn't interfere. When I was going through something difficult, he didn't want me choosing him because I was vulnerable. When I was single but had specifically said I wanted to be alone, he believed that meant I should be left alone. He wanted me to choose him because I genuinely wanted him, not because I was lonely, hurt, or needed someone. To say I'm stunned is an understatement. I reached out to Dan today. I had no idea how much I misunderstood almost our entire history. I only learned today, according to Dan and one of their other friends, that a superior had unfairly set him up for an NJP and used it to pressure him into going out with the superior's daughter. John told her he wasn't interested and he was with someone already, and she then threatened to report him for assault if he "left her for someone else". He took her out only once to save his career and never intended for anything more than a quick "yeah I'm not interested but you seem nice" conversation. He just wanted to make it so his superior couldn't hold it over his head anymore. I knew none of this until this afternoon. I asked around, the superior eventually got kicked out because John wasn't the last he tried to do this to. He probably wasn't the first either. Then Dan started telling me what John had been like when I wasn't around. About 30 minutes after meeting me, while I was away from the lunch table, John told Dan, "Wow... just wow. She's amazing" and started listing things he liked about me. I was funny, witty, smart, didn't care what people thought, didn't wear makeup or act fake, and, hilariously, apparently my little knife collection was a major selling point. After the theme park day, he said John stayed up half the night texting me while simultaneously asking Dan what he should say to me. After our first date, Dan remembers him coming back grinning like a lovestruck teenager. Dan said John talked about me constantly. Little things I never would've imagined mattered to him, like the fact that I always wore my hair in a ponytail. After our first kiss, everybody got to hear about it. Then Dan told me something that absolutely broke me today. Around three weeks into us dating, a week before our first night together, John came home and told Dan I was the girl he was going to marry someday. Dan says that by three weeks, John loved really, really me. From what he told me today, even years later, Dan would encourage him to tell me how he felt. John felt like he always had a reason not to. Wrong timing. I was seeing someone. I was hurting. I wanted to be alone. Eventually I was married, and that was obviously the end of the question for him. Dan said John loved being my friend more than he cared about "having" me. He wanted me happy, even if that didn't include him. I love my husband, and learning this doesn't make me regret my marriage or wish away the life I have. That's not what this is. I'm grieving the fact that I didn't know. According to Dan, John even did a background check on my now-husband just to make sure I was okay and that I was truly with someone safe. There were years when I thought I had been some girl John briefly dated before deciding he wanted someone else. Now I'm being handed an entirely different view of my own memories. I'm remembering that first morning together. The forehead kisses. His arm around me. His thumb rubbing my shoulder. The smile I could feel without looking at him. At 22, I thought he was just being incredibly sweet but now I know he'd already gone home and told his best friend that he loved me and thought he was going to marry me someday. And I can't stop thinking about how did I never know how much this man loved me? I wish he'd told me. I wish I'd known everything. I'd have believed him! Why did he never tell me what really happened? We just moved forward as friends and never discussed us ever again. If I had known maybe he'd still be here?