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.
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* Hetero cis penis only.
Perhaps if we made a list of ineffective times and ways to try hooking up?
A) hoping for a relationship when the object of your affections is going through a very rough patch in life, be it emotional, financial, relationship ect. Especially if that rough patch happens to be something devastating. Your sweetheart may need an understanding or helpful person but they also need time to straighten their lives out and that’s where their attentions are going to be focused. Not on staritng and maintaining a new relationship. And that’s really what you want isn’t it? Also, watching how your sweetheart deals with issues can give you very valuable information about them and how a relationship is likely to go.
B) hoping for a relationship when that person has stated that all they are looking for is to expand the number of friends.
C) hoping for a relationship when the person states and or shows strong preferences for certain things and those preferences do not match yours. Trying to hook up with a clean freak when your cleaning habits are indifferent at best…not likely to happen. If you like to drink or party and the other person abstains…not likely to happen. Especially if your sweetheart has outright told you what they are looking for in a relationship. Having harmonious values is important if you want a happy relationship.
D) your sweetheart has chosen someone else for a relationship. Hoping for a breakup isn’t the kind of things friends do. Neither is going around talking about how they chose your competitor because they have better looks or make more money.
SO MUCH THIS. I was sort of “friendzoned” by a guy (what a weird world we live in, where guys want ladies as friends!) for about a year and a half where we basically just danced around each other, made out sometimes, but never really talked constructively about what we wanted from each other. We’d made it obvious we both liked each other, but I think we were on different pages communication wise. He said he wanted to “take things slow”. I figured that meant a slow easy relationship. For him, I think that meant, “I don’t want to be exclusive” because we weren’t. Well, he wasn’t anyway. And for a long time I harbored so much resentment because he’d made out with other girls. I don’t truly think he was totally in the clear on that (he had a manipulative streak), but during all that time, you know what I could have done? I could have opened my mouth and said I wasn’t ok with the way things were. I could have said I wanted to date, to be exclusive, I could have said what I was feeling. But I didn’t because I was afraid of rejection.
Meanwhile, a different great, attractive guy was very much into me but I couldn’t even SEE that because I was still so hung up on guy 1. Had I opened my mouth sooner, we both could have moved on with our lives, and I might not have missed out on a chance with guy 2. Granted, guy 2 turned out to be a libertarian fuckbrain of the worst degree, so I’ve now come to realize I probably dodged a bullet there, but still.
I also sometimes wonder if perhaps moving on is exactly what some people are afraid of. Because sometimes moving on is HARD fucking work. It’s hard to come to terms with what you felt, and it’s scary to let yourself feel something different. Moreover, sometimes I think too folks who don’t actually want a relationship tend to latch onto someone who’s unavailable in some capacity sort of as an excuse. Because we live in a culture so focused on romantical love, I think sometimes it can be easier for someone who doesn’t want to be in a relationship, to just say “no I don’t want to be single. Just the person I want doesn’t want me.” Moving on requires coming to terms with all sorts of icky realizations. It involves that hard work humans often do called “growing” and it involves admitting to yourself that what you wanted probably won’t come to fruition. That SUCKS, but part of being an adult is learning to cope with things that don’t always go your way.
So yeah, being “friendzoned” sucks, but it isn’t the fault of the friendzoner. It’s because somebody not feeling the same way you do can really suck. It’s because disappointment sucks. And that’s ok. What’s not ok is feeling “owed” for the amount of time you spent pining over them. Emotions aren’t a currency. You don’t get to trade all your pining for sex and/or relationships.
I wish people would stop conflating physical attraction and the desire for a romantic relationship. Yes, these things often coexist and influence each other, and when they come together just right it’s wonderful. But thinking someone is hot is not the same thing as being in love with them, and how it feels to be in a friendship with someone who you’d just kind of like to fuck is very different from being involved in a friendship with someone who you’re actually in love with. Scenario a. can be awkward, but it can also be kind of fun, if we’re going to be honest, and can easily bleed into a friends with benefits scenario for a while, and then back into a platonic friendship. Scenario b. is going to be much more difficult for everyone involved, and has the potential for a lot of heartbreak.
When guys start talking about this whole friendzone thing I’m never sure which scenario they’re talking about. I am sure that regardless of which one it is, the other person doesn’t owe you what you secretely want (sex, or romantic love), and if you’re going to resent them for not giving you whatever it is that you want then you should probably end the friendship, but you have no cause to be angry at the other person. Disappointed, sure, or hurt, but if you’re feeling anger then I really doubt that you ever cared about the other person very much in the first place.
and back and forth and can actually be quite fun if those involved act like mature adults (ymmv of course, but friends with benefits can actually work) — except FWB requires you be actual friends, and that seems beyond the MRA view of women
I think the anger comes from over investing in the fantasy of who the person is or how the relationship will go. We get angry when we feel betrayed, but in this instance there was no betrayal because that person/relationship doesn’t really quite exist.
That’s the thing, the guys who complain about this stuff don’t seem to really believe that men can want to be friends with women. A man hanging around a woman is either fucking her, or upset that he’s not fucking her because she’s being a big meanie. Categories like “fucking but just friends”, “friends but not attracted to each other”, and “would fuck under different circumstances but the timing was never right” don’t exist in their view of the universe.
I want to give a copy of The Ethical Slut to every stupidhead guy who complains about being friendzoned, while screaming at them “YOU own your own emotions!” until they figure it out. Nobody owes you anything just because you’re pining for someone. If you can be a friend be one, if you can’t just GTFO instead of hanging about passive-aggressively whining about how you can’t get what you want. Nobody is making you feel bad. You’re doing that to yourself.
Blacbloc: yeah, but its more fun taking it out on someone else in small and petty ways.
Also, that is a book I’ve wanted to burn because I’ve seen adherants who’ve totally misapplied it. I’m supposing that it was meant to improve relationships? Unfortunately, I’ve seen people use it as part of game theory.
I wonder if the 3rd commenter “kindness” is MR. AL. Or maybe Paul Elam, except Elam would have told the little boy to fuck her shit up, or beat the living shit out of her.
Or maybe it was a joke. I’m just seeing MRAs everywhere.
Is it friendzone when a someone, doesn’t want to be with you, then gets outraged when you give somone else all your attention?
No that’s jealousy.
Le John, no that’s just jerkish (and abusive red flags, more like dodging a bullet) — friendzone here is referring to: when someone, doesn’t want to be with you, then you get outraged. Everyone’s been saying the non-jerk thing to do when someone doesn’t want to be with you is move on (eg “give somone else all your attention”)
It’s also an excellent cue to avoid that person as much as you possibly can, since they don’t sound like much of a friend.
Le John, at best I would call the behavior you describe as stringing someone along. It’s an awful way to treat someone, and as Argenti and Cliff said, it’s a good signal that the friendship needs ending.
Just when I thought the ways of men were beginning to make a little bit of sense, there’s this weird notion of the “friend zone.”
When a man-hating Amazon dyke develops romantic feelings for one of her friends, she lets her know. If the friend isn’t similarly interested, that’s life. We deal with it. There’s no concept of being “friend-zoned.” Having one’s romantic advances rebuffed doesn’t mean one has been unfairly relegated to some punitive, impenetrable social “zone” despite valiant efforts that by all rights should have entitled us to sex. That’s not a thing.
Looks like MRAs are doing friendship all wrong, too. Which makes me wonder how it’s even possible to for an MRA to also be a brony.
Well the full story is kind of funny, I was in love with this girl for a year, I would do anything for her, lapping up any affection I got. she was adamant she only wanted friendship… untill of course I got with other girls. Then she sent me a message telng me the only person she wanted me to be with, was her. Thus began the crappiest 2 months of my life. We lived a kilometer away from each other, yet i saw her about 5 times, kissed her once, always got the same excuse, that she was too busy or sick. i was devastated. Then she told me she wanted a break. i ended it then. I’m in a happy healthy relationship now, but I’ve always considered myself as a nice guy that’s been in a friendzone, and i can sort of empthasize.
John, glad to hear you got out. But that was blatent manipulation, not thre friendzone as MRAs promote it.
That’s a shitty experience to have gone through dude.
John, I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make here. You’ve implied several times that the “friendzone” talked about in the OP is not really like that, it’s like your specific experience. Do you understand that there’s a difference between the passive-aggressive rage that these guys who call themselves “friendzoned” experience towards someone who probably has no idea they wanted something more? Or are you just going to continue projecting your own experience on them?
Actually, John’s story kinda does sound like the Nice Guy friendzone, with this part:
If you’re pathetically in love with someone and they don’t love you back, get out. This is not a situation that ever ends well.
Granted the girl then went on to be manipulative and assholish in ways that went way beyond not returning his affection, but I really side-eye at any guy puppydogging and nursing his Secret Love around a girl who’s said in clear words that she wants to be just friends.
Seconding what Cliff said, and also, I’m more than a little weirded out by “give somone else all your attention” — no one should get *all* your attention, get a hobby, or other friends, or fish, or something. If they aren’t interested and you’re too head-over-heels to be friends, then definitely give someone else your attention, just not all of it, it’s not healthy for you or your potential partner (or an actual partner, just to cover all the bases here)
http://static.someecards.com/someecards/usercards/1327364428776_948151.png
Well, yes I was head over heels for her and I was straight out of boarding school, with little contact with females. So I was obviously unhealthy.
By attention I mean Affection ~ Romantic, “Let’s go to the movies together, lets go out bike riding, lets sleep out under the stars etc”. That was what I thought I had to to do if I wanted to whoo someone I really liked. ( unhealthy), In fact I felt guilty if I did anything like that with other girls.
She definitely knew I liked her, “but we’d had the lets just be friends” talk, and so I was always just a friend to her, despite everything we’d done and shared together (and continued to do), that was somewhat frustrating. That’s why I don’t really like the vending machine analolgy, because when you’re a young and stupid boy it’s not a transaction at all, You think your heart will burst, during magical summers with the girl you like, you think its the process of courting, it’s how people fall in love, etc. So when she turns around and says, “lets keep it magical and nice” but i dont like you that way… FUUU
In fact probably the only thing seperating me from rage comic guy, was the things she would say and do when I fooled around with others. (A lot of jealousy)
It was when i had a bit of a FUUUUUUUU moment, and gave up on her. ( slept with a girl she hated) that things changed.
Le John, I mean this as nicely as possible, but that no one had yet taught you that women aren’t vending machines doesn’t make it less jerkish to treat women like transactions. It might be a good time to just go “we all did stupid things when we were young” and stop explaining to the internet though — my last comment was intended as advice not to keep making the same mistakes, but it sounds like you’ve got that covered.
Seriously, you’re allowed to be upset things don’t go the way you’d like them too, you just aren’t allowed to be angry at the person declining you — you want to go sob into a pint of ice cream or beer, or go complain to your barber or priest or psych or whatever, that’s your business — the point is the being upset part is your problem, not the problem of the person rejecting you.
That’s the point of the vending machine analogy, you do not put in friendship tokens and receive sexytimes. (this is more for any confused MRAs reading along John, you do seem to have figured this out since your teenaged days)
Damn, this is frustrating. I don’t think John does get it now, actually. I think he’s just nicer than the rage comic guys, so he’s expressing himself in a less ragey way, but the underlying idea that women are supposed to be machines that you put kindness tokens into until a relationship falls out remains. It’s still not seeing a woman as a person so much as a vehicle through which your wishes can be fulfilled. The idea that if you’re friends with a woman and treat her well and you and she enjoy each other’s company then she should eventually fall for you is still there, and that’s just not how things work.
What I’m getting at is that the basic fact that a woman can genuinely like you and enjoy your company, and still not want to date you, and that’s OK and doesn’t mean she’s doing something cruel and unfair to you, doesn’t seem to be getting through.