I’m too lazy to write a real post today, so I thought I’d point you all to a pretty decent analysis of the dreaded “friend zone” by Foz Meadows on goodreads.
Here she is addressing the “Nice Guys” of the world:
[S]omewhere along the line, you’ve got it into your head that if you’re romantically interested in a girl who sees you only as a friend, her failure to reciprocate your feelings is just that: a failing. That because you’re nice and treat her well, she therefore owes you at least one opportunity to present yourself as a viable sexual candidate, even if she’s already made it clear that this isn’t what she wants. That because she legitimately enjoys a friendship that you find painful (and which you’re under no obligation to continue), she is using you. That if a man wants more than friendship with a woman, then the friendship itself doesn’t even attain the status of a consolation prize, but is instead viewed as hell: a punishment to be endured because, so long as he thinks she owes him that golden opportunity, he is bound to persist in an association that hurts him – not because he cares about the friendship, but because he feels he’s invested too much kindness not to stick around for the (surely inevitable, albeit delayed) payoff.
Seriously, Nice Guys, if you think of your friendship with a woman as a means to an end, or some kind of purgatory, then it’s not really a friendship, and you’re doing both yourself and your crush a disservice by persisting in it. (I learned this lesson myself the hard way, a long time before there were helpful internet posts explaining to me why Nice Guying was a recipe for crappiness all around.)
Speaking of learning: I also learned from Foz Meadows’ post that there is a Wikipedia entry for “friend zone,” complete with advice on how dudes can avoid getting “friendzoned” in the first place.
Several advisers urged men, during the initial dates, to touch women physically in appropriate places such as elbows or shoulders as a means of increasing the sexual tension. … Adviser Ali Binazir agrees, and suggested for the man to be a “little bit dangerous”, not in a violent sense, but “with a bit of an edge to them”, and be unpredictable and feel “comfortable in their skin as sexual beings.”
Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia … for Your Penis*.
Also: Here is the official Friend Zone anthem, “Consolation Prize” by Orange Juice. Lyrics here.
—
* Hetero cis penis only.
@All responses, EOT:
Keep up the good job; we need more people who’re too afraid to be honest about all bad emotions after rejection, or even pretend “friendship” afterwards, because otherwise they’ll get a jerk label. That’s securing a stable supply of topics on this blog.
Y.
yzek: @All responses, EOT:
Keep up the good job; we need more people who’re too afraid to be honest about all bad emotions after rejection, or even pretend “friendship” afterwards, because otherwise they’ll get a jerk label. That’s securing a stable supply of topics on this blog.
Unh hunh. Keep pretending the responses are all the same. That there isn’t actual substance, nor detailed reply to what you said.
Enjoy that martyrdom you’ve created and keep fucking that chicken.
I’m weak. No one is saying one isn’t entitled to “bad emotions” after rejection. The ex I mentioned… I had homicidal ideations about her. What I didn’t do was kill her. I didn’t tell her about them either. I did tell some of my friends about it.
She and I are not still friends. I’ve not spoken to her in almost 17 years. I’ve got other exes whom I wasn’t happy with when we broke up, with whom I’m friends now. I have some I speak to, but am not, “friends” with. They treated me badly enough I don’t really trust them to not do it again, but not so badly as to justify refusing to see them in social settings.
Go ahead, ask the people here if they think those facts make me a jerk.
Holy fuck this is so wrong-headed I had to read it twice. No, do NOT pretend to be friends with someone if they reject you. That is the thing that we DON’T want.
Wow, this comment seems to come from a basic lack of maturity.
Romantic rejection is inevitable in human relationships and some of them are gonna go that way. Which is why it’s nobody’s fault when someone is hurt by romantic rejection. The person doing the rejecting has a right to decide who to be with romantically, and the person being rejected can’t help being hurt.
But it’s just pain. And like virtually all emotional pain, it gets better over time, often to the point where you can face the person again, and if you really like them as a person and they’re also cool with you, you can be their friend. Which is sometimes awesome. And sometimes totally not worth even trying. It really, really depends.
Yzek, I think we’ve been saying that we’d rather not have someone prentending to be our friend. If you have to walk away from that friend for a while we’d rather you do that and work through your feelings of anger.
For the record? If been on dates that seemed to go quite well and really wanted a relationship with the guy. Getting turned down when you’re so full of hope, when you’ve been lonely for too long really really hurts. I’ve had some big disappointments in my dating life and I’ve really questioned whether or not I’d find a partner. I had a short period of time where I’ve been bitter about how being a single parent seems toi have such a big impact. You know what I did? I told myself to stop dating for just a short while, intil I learned how to cope with the situation. I didn’t take it out on the person I wanted to date. I made some jokes about dating olympics for single parents and got other people to laugh and join in until I laughed. I realized that my being single parent has an impact on how a relationship will progress,and I couldn’t find fault with people who wanted something different. In fact, I learned to be grateful to the men who turned me down because they had the decency to be upfront rather than dragging on a relationship that could only end poorly.
And when you,ve been friendzoned, that’s what has happened. The other person is doing you the kindness of letting you know that the relationship your hoping for doesnt have much chance of going where you want it too.
@Pecunium,
That’s interesting because it’s so contrary to how I experience it. If I’m interested in someone I dread that they find out, because my feelings are fundamentally my problem, and I don’t see what entitles me to burden other people with them. Not telling them is really easy, just don’t say anything.
Now obviously I don’t have a lot of success with that behavior…
Geez, yzek, what do have against actual honest asking someone out? Does every relationship have to begin with months or years of resentful pining to be real?
Also congrats on ignoring everything everyone said about being rejected!
If I reject someone it’s not because I’m being a stuck up princess waiting for something better to come along. It’s because I know in my heart that that person and I will not work in a relationship. Relationships are a bit more than friends having sex, you know.
Kilo, I understand that for some people, being emotionally open and vulnerable is a very difficult thing. I’m like that myself. But telling someone you’ve fallen for them isn’t a huge burden, unless you’re doing something to guilt trip them. Its uncomfortable to turn people down, yes. But its far more uncomfortable to live with wanting someone so much and twisting yourself up inside over it. At least in my experience. Letting someone know I’m interested takes courage and its not easy.
kilo: I’ve not told some people; because the situation was wrong. A few times I’ve wanted a relationship with someone, and refused to let it happen; because the timing was wrong. That was hard. It may have been unfair of me to decide that helping someone break up with an abusive partner meant it was a bad time to get involved with them. It certainly happened that we became friends, but the moment to be lovers never came again.
It was also hard when I was in college, and managing editor on the paper, and some of my subordinates were attractive to me. I was talking with one of them about how the paper was a problem for my love life, because I had no real social life outside of it (managing editor of a weekly paper with a staff of 40, a student body of 20,000; in a nine-campus college district in Los Angeles was a full-time job), and she was confused. She didn’t see why I couldn’t date someone.
She, mostly, understood when I pointed out the problems of avoiding any sense of favoritism if I was dating someone, and they needed a deadline extension, or got a really good beat, or appointed to one of the subordinate editing posistions, etc. Sometimes romance just isn’t an option. I sure as hell wasn’t going to quit a job I loved just to get laid.
@Alpha Asshole Cock Carousel: I should’ve said “only a true friendship could survive” to avoid confusion; or “friedship survives iff frendship was true before rejection”
@Bostionian: see, I’m not the one that “choose to ignore” what sb said.
@The rest: that was probably not your intention, but you made me look more sane and human and less cyborg/Vulcan in my own eyes. Have fun, I’ll probably be back not very soon.
Y.
Telling someone I like them is scary. I’ve been rejected. It hurts. I’ve also had unrequited crushes; because the person was involved, or not interested, or what have you. It sucks.
I’ve had people who were more than flirty with me… who were snogging a blue streak, who didn’t want to take it any further. Oh well. That’s the way it goes. I’ve also been the one who wasn’t interested. I’ve been snogging someone and decided it was all I wanted to do.
Doesn’t make me a bad person. Didn’t make them bad people. Made me, and them, people: with our own agency, and the right to do with that agency what we wanted.
Did it hurt? Yes, it hurt me, and I’m sure it hurt them too. But just because I started snogging with them didn’t entitle them to jumping my bones. Works the same way the other way.
Being hurt is the human thing to do.
Insisting that people are entitled to “romance” for being interested… is being an asshole. It’s not the being interested. It’s thinking that interest “ought” to be returned is the asshole thing to do.
yzek: @The rest: that was probably not your intention, but you made me look more sane and human and less cyborg/Vulcan in my own eyes. Have fun, I’ll probably be back not very soon.
You have no idea what out intent was. Mine was to point out the fallacies in your arguments. If being shown them makes you a better person, fine.
If (as I suspect) you took the interpretations you told us of, and used them to confirm that you have a right to be a jackass; and are right to be that jackass… well you are right, that’s not what I intended. It’s pretty much what I expected, but I live in a starry-eyed hope that reason can triumph over self-delusion.
Foolish, I know, most of us are too wedded to the comfort of our delusions, but I try, and hope.
Okay, I’m going to lay it out here.
You’re friends with someone you’re romantically and/or sexually attracted to.
OKAY: Ask them for a date/lay, see where it goes.
OKAY: Put it out of your mind, never bring it up, and be at peace with that.
OKAY: Decide you can’t be friends in this situation and stop seeing them.
NOT OKAY: Bide your time waiting for the perfect moment to ask for a date/lay, attempting to subtly warm them up to you, pretending to be an ordinary friend when you’re not really.
An attractive friend asks you for a favor.
OKAY: Do it, because you do favors for friends!
OKAY: Do it, and accept recompense in the form of food/drinks/money/your own favor.
OKAY: Refuse to do it, because you don’t want to.
NOT OKAY: Do it resentfully, and mentally chalk up that they owe you now, and you’ll feel ripped off if they don’t give you a date/lay later.
An attractive person tells you about their long sad stories of failed relationships.
OKAY: Listen sympathetically, because you care.
OKAY: Listen politely, because they’re a friend and even though their story is boring/awkward, they need someone to talk to.
OKAY: Take evasive maneuvers and escape the conversation, because you really don’t want to hear this.
NOT OKAY: Listen resentfully while seething with secret jealousy.
You ask a friend for a date/lay and they say no.
OKAY: Feel disappointed, put it out of your mind, and try to be regular friends again.
OKAY: Decide you don’t want to be friends anymore after that.
NOT OKAY: Hang around them pretending to be an ordinary friend while secretly trying to get them to change their mind.
NOT OKAY: Feel angry and betrayed that they turned you down. The only reason to feel this way is if you feel you were owed something, and you really weren’t.
Maybe it’s okay to feel this way in your heart of hearts if you really can’t help it–I have trouble declaring feelings not okay–but it’s not okay to go around ranting about it. Including on the Internet. This is one of those feelings, like feeling glad a friend’s pet died, that is best kept quiet or shared only with awareness of how wrong it is. Not shared with self-righteousness and an assumption everyone secretly feels the same.
Again, that’s using deception and manipulation. The person is not interested in a friendship but goes through the motions so they can make their move later. And incidentally, people ask other people out on dates, without knowing them, all the fucking time. Being a deceptive asshole is not required.
“Compassion for friendzoned people?” Oh please. I have compassion for people experience unrequited attraction because yeah, that hurts. But I have zero compassion for manipulative jerks who game or use deceptive tactics like, you know, pretending to be a friend (even though they’re not) just to get in their target’s pants. So when such a jerk gets “friendzoned,” their butthurt gives me much joy.
So I put my dude friend in the friendzone yesterday. You know what happened? HE PUT ME THERE FIRST.
HE told me that he doesn’t think of me romantically. I told him I feel the same way. We ate cupcakes, and went our friendly ways, and there is no resentment between us because we USED OUR WORDS LIKE BIG KIDS.
@yzek, if you’re still reading
When two people start up a relationship, it can become a platonic friendship, it can become a romantic relationship, or it can become more along the line of acquaintances. My opinion is that it is best for someone who has a crush on someone else to establish from the get go whether or not the other person returns the feelings and know if there’s any hope for a romantic relationship in the future. If the person with the crush doesn’t get things defined, zie may end up being seen as only a platonic friend by the other person. Remember people can’t read each other’s minds. One person might think they’re in the start of a romantic relationship, while the other sees it as the start of a friendship. My husband I were friends before we hooked up, and I had to clearly ask him out on a date to take it to the next level.
If you explicitly state your desires in the beginning and get turned down, it will hurt a whole lot less than if you spend months or years pining for the other person only to be rejected later. One time a girl struck up a conversation with me after class in college, and then asked me if I wanted to go out for drinks with her. I felt bad because I’m not a lesbian and wasn’t interested, so I politely declined her offer. She said “Oh you’re straight. That’s awkward”. Then we laughed about it and moved on. A woman at my husband’s work asked him out for drinks once, and he showed her his wedding ring. She said, “Oops, nevermind” and that was that. These situations weren’t too big of a deal, because everyone involved were just acquaintances and not close friends.
It’s not the end of the world to ask someone out and get rejected. It happens to everyone. I know it’s scary to make a move, because I’ve done it. I know it stings to get turned down, too. However, I think it’s worth those risks for the payout in case the other person likes you back. If you start up a friendship over a long time, though, it becomes much more painful and awkward to try to take it to another level and get rejected. Sometimes a friendship will end if one person confesses feelings for the other person and the feelings aren’t requited.
It’s also not the end of the world if a friendship ends like this. If a friendship is causing someone emotional pain and heartbreak, then it’s probably for the best if it does end. I’ve broken off a friendship that I found to be too one sided. I hated ending it for some reason, like it makes me a bad person to not want to be someone’s friend. Looking back, though, it made me much happier to cut the other person out of my life and not feel resentful because she always had favors to ask but never wanted to do anything nice for me. If a guy starts a friendship with a girl, but feels bitter that she doesn’t want to have sex with him, he needs to end the friendship. It will save him a lot of hurt, and it is the honest way to treat her.
tldr: State your intentions from the beginning in clear, unambiguous language. Take the risk and ask people out. Don’t blame someone for not returning your feelings. End a friendship if it makes you bitter and resentful.
Here you go. That’s from Amazing Spider-Man #350, approximately 1991 or 1992. Art by Todd McFarlane and Erik Larsen (I can’t remember who did which side of the webline).
Feast your eyes on Parker’s swingin’ cod.
It is my impression that supers don’t get their balls drawn in often because they’re basically nudes with clothes painted over them*, and having testicles flapping in the wind would be legitimately offensive, as opposed to Dr. Wertham just reading a sexual relationship into Batman and Robin and going all moral-guardian on us.
If you look for it, you might also notice that a lot of male supers aren’t super detailed in the butt department. This does not go for female supers, unfortunately.
This is also the reason why a lot of supers wear trunks over their pants. Body builders and wrestlers used to do that so they wouldn’t have an embarrassing outline, and it sort of carried over into Superman and Batman and the rest of the genre.
As far as studies of representations of the penis in superheros? None that I know of, beyond the rather basic equation of penis and power.
*This explains a whole lot, especially all the nipples on the women. I’m afraid the particular male gaze in superhero comics is pretty damn straight.
Ugh, I hated the time I was being ambiguously pursued by a friend/classmate I was uninterested in, romantically (I think he’s a pretty decent guy and all, just not someone I wanted to date). I kept getting the vibe he had a crush on me, but he never gave me any unambiguous signals, so I wasn’t sure- until several other friends pointed out how incredibly obvious it was. And even then, it wasn’t like I could be certain: the guy didn’t actually ask me out.
Great. So where did this leave me? Well, the nicest thing to do would be to let him know that there’s not really a chance, so he could get over me and move on. But since he was never honest about his feelings, what could I do, exactly? Pull him over one day and say, “Hey, you obviously have crush on me. I’m flattered, but not interested, sorry.”? The preemptive strike seems kinda cruel, donchathink?
So basically, I dealt with it by being constantly be on guard to try to never EVER lead him on, even by accident, because that would be unkind. It felt I had to second guess all of my behaviors around him and make sure I wasn’t too warm or friendly, all so I could avoid “sending the wrong signals”.
I recognize that he was probably really scared of rejection. But his behavior made being around him really awkward. And I really disliked how he kept pursuing me subtly without letting me just reject him. It was awkward enough about it that I eventually couldn’t really enjoy spending much time around him as friends.
captainbathrobe:
I have a feeling a lot of these people fail to see the upside of being rejected. The thought process is “if I never open up about my feelings, she’ll never say ‘no'”. But when she says “no”, you know where you stand and you can move on to someone else. And if you are capable of friendship with women, there’s that.
Cliff:
If men are overrepresented — relative, I should specify, to our share of the population, not some arbitrary quota — it pruves that women are using men as a front. H*l*c**st deniers use the same lajeek.
I trust I needn’t point out that prufe and lajeek aren’t the same as proof and logic.
ABNOY:
It really isn’t. Even if someone hot did that — and nine out of ten women are not in the top decile of attractiveness, by definition — the fantasy includes the whole thing being on my terms.
Not to put down men who do have that fanatasy, I just don’t think it’s the majority.
yzek:
By “sick” do you mean manipultive? Then no, no one should stay in that sort of relationship. But if the manipulation is all in one party’s head that’s different.
yzek:
It’s both. There’s no way to ask that will guarantee a yes, there are a handful of ways to ask that will guarantee a no (while groping her, say) and anything else irt’s down to how she feels Because women are people and have the same range of feelings as other people. If she likes you a little and you ask her out she’ll probably say yes. Unless she’s been slut-shamed into turning people down more often than she’d like, but again, that has little to do with how you ask.
yzek!
If you pretend friendship after being rejected, you’ve earned the “jerk” label. It’s better to openly walk away. That’s what Pecunium did, and that’s not what makes him a jerk 🙂
Maintaining the friendship, if it’s real, is good if you can do it, but if you can’t, you can’t. Pretending to be friends with someone for some ulterior motive is jerk behavior regardless of who you are, who they are, and what the motive is.
@QuantumSparkle :
http://captainawkward.com/2012/05/08/242-can-i-tell-guys-i-dont-want-to-date-them-before-they-ask-me-to-date-them/
@ Pecunium
You have been treated badly by women in the past and yet you are not a misogynist? What is your secret?
@ Fembot
Ooh! Cookies! The secret is cookies!
(ok, possibly empathy and or a general sense of decency?)
@Kyrie:
Thanks for the awesome link. Yep, and pretty close to the same situation, although in my case, his behavior wasn’t inappropriate or creepy, just awkward and a bit over-nice (didn’t feel quite genuine to me, although he’s also generally nice, too).
Actually, what I did pretty much followed CaptainAwkward’s advice: after being very annoyed for a bit, I realized that nothing I could do would fix his fear of rejection, and it wasn’t my responsibility. And it’s not like I could actually read his mind, anyways. So I went back to acting like myself and dealt with actual things and real, out-loud conversations.
Eventually, we just weren’t really friends anymore. We hadn’t really been close friends before anyways- same classes and sometimes talked after classes or in homework sessions. So, after we stopped having classes together, I just didn’t see him much. I’d say we’re more first-name-basis, yearly-chat-acquaintances.
But yeah, my point here that this behavior is not the behavior of a friend. It was not only totally ineffective at getting me to date him, but it also turned me off from wanting to be friends at all. I mean, I don’t hate him or anything, but I’m not going to pursue that friendship.
Huh. I guess he did manage to avoid the dreaded “friend-zone”, technically.