Why I think the "friend zone" is a load of crap.

[Gunner_Guardian]

Alright seriously I've seen more threads like this then the stereotypical "OMG I GOT FRIENDZONED" threads, it's getting ridiculous

 

[tobi the good boy]

Snip for size

I always assumed the friendzone was what happens when a guy/girl asks a girl/guy out and she/he gives him/her the "I just want to be friends" line.

My only problem with the friendzone situation is the huge negative stigma placed on the party that asks the girl/guy out if they don't want to be friends. I often hear lines like

"You don't want to be her friend now? So you just wanted to sleep with her? You (insert nasty word here)"

From what I've seen, the asking party is seeking romantic interest, if the other person can't provide why should they hang around in a relationship that ends up (90% of the time) being beneficial for only one member. The asker only wanted a romantic relationship and it ended up being a fruitless effort.

Some people lose contact with their ex's because they couldn't provide on a romantic level, the situations practically the same.

 

[Dogstile]

Notice I never stated that it was impossible, I said less likely. I'm in a serious relationship with my best friend of 10 years and its great so clearly I know its possible, however I do reiterate that i can see the less likely aptitude of going after someone you consider family. But the "friendzone" seems to imply that it's a place where girls put guys they already don't see as anything else into, and it associates more with the implication that girls want a guy more take charge and bad boyish.

Quite aware that you didn't state that it was an impossibility (though I agree that it's an improbability that people who are super close date).

I wonder though, can a girl be in a guy's "friendzone" or is the "friendzone" exclusive to guys?

A girl can. I've placed a few there myself. That's purely because i'm secretly dating my ex who everybody hates though

 

[manic_depressive13]

There's a book by a guy named Chad Eastham, and in it he gave what I think is about the most accurate comparison of girl and guy's minds. Guys are like waffles. Everything in their mind is in totally separate compartment from all the other parts. This is why guys are often better at not being emotionally attached about sex than women are. Their sex drive and their desire for a single, dedicated mate are quite detached from each other (not always, and I realize that's broad, but compared to most women you have to admit most guys just do that better).

Now, the mind of a girl is more like spaghetti. Everything is all mixed and intermingled, one thing leading to the next and another and another thing. This is why girls tend to multitask better, can talk about a million things for hours on end, and have no problem continuing such conversations into the bathroom and back. "Bathroom? Whatever, it's just a more private place to chat!" There's less of a barrier there. Peeing and talking just isn't that big of a deal. There's no barrier (though being able to use stalls does help that, I suppose).

"Most accurate comparison"? Waffles and spaghetti? I'm sorry but that's one of the stupidest analogies I've ever heard. Girls aren't even better at multitasking. No one can multitask effectively. Human brains just aren't designed for it. And no, peeing and talking isn't multitasking.

The only thing that pisses me off more than guys saying "Girls are like this" is girls rocking up and saying "No! Girls are like this!" Girls are people. Stop trying to make wild generalisations based on gender. There is more variation between individuals of each gender than there is between the genders themselves.

Also, you're a bit late on the bandwagon. The friendzone thing has been pretty much done to death already.

 

[TheVioletBandit]

Aw, for real, the friend-zone thread again? "I rejected you first, but when you rejected me back I got all butthurt about it, and called you a jerk." < does this not sum up everyone of these threads?

If it's cool for you to reject their romantic advances why is it so uncool for them to reject your friendship? There are these things called "feelings" that men have, and since rejection hurts these previously mentioned feelings they may not want to be your best buddy anymore.

 

[Esotera]

Same is true for reverse genders etc, although it does seem to be a bigger problem in some males (at least from my experience)

One thing that sort of irritates me is how some people have the expectation that an individual will want to remain friends with them either before attempting to get a relationship, or after.

 

[Nickolai77]

The concept of the "friend zone" is based on the situation of a guy likes a girl but she doesn't seem to be reciprocating. Meaning, the guy is running on the assumption that the girl does like him, she just hasn't realized it yet.

I disagree here. Your bang on with your first sentence were guy likes girl but girl isn't reciprocating but i don't think all "nice guys" think that she somehow likes him she just hasn't realised. Speaking from experience, most nice guys have no idea if the girl likes them back or not, after all how they can they tell? Most nice guys are in their mid-teens, they're still learning the ropes of the dating game, and don't forget that in high school girls are socially more mature than guys. When the nice guy's talking to and being nice to this girl the girl in questions obviously going to be nice back to him, the guy's going to be thinking "oh she likes me because she said this!".....or, "she doesn't like me because she did this". The nice guy's left clueless, hope against hope, that she likes him.

In the end you get fed up with this double guessing of her feelings, ask her out and then your teenage confidence get's destroyed. Why do guy's do this approach? Well, what else is a guy in highschool going to do if he finds a girl he likes? He has to sum up the courage to approach her, get to know her her to find out if she's right for him and if she actually likes him back (this is where nice guys come stuck) and from that basis find the courage to ask her out. The onus is on the guy to approach the girl, impress her and ask her out. That is demanding a lot from young guys, who only a few years into puberty, socially two to three years behind girls in maturity, and are still learning how dating works. The most logical approach is to make friends with a girl, be nice to her because that's what nice guys are, and hope that niceness will pay off.

The nice guy phenomena is the result of masculine gender norms dictating that guys have to approach and impress a girl- and for young teenage boys i think this is simply asking a bit too much of them.

 

[manic_depressive13]

The only thing that pisses me off more than guys saying "Girls are like this" is girls rocking up and saying "No! Girls are like this!" Girls are people. Stop trying to make wild generalisations based on gender. There is more variation between individuals of each gender than there is between the genders themselves.

Yeah, I want the OP to apologize for this. After all, there arent any things two members of a gender likely have in common. No, not at all. Its not like all women have vaginas. Its not like theres a standard to how the brain works and everyone who falls out of that standard is actually retarded.

Nah. Everyones completely different. People who study psychology could learn a lot from you.

You are either deliberately misrepresenting my post or you need to go back to primary school to study comprehension.

I didn't say that members of each gender have nothing in common with each other. I said that the differences in the mental processes of each gender are so remarkably insignificant as to make classifications based on gender absurd and inappropriate. For example, to claim that boys are more visual learners while girls are auditory learners (as people have tried to claim in the past) is simply fallacious because you would get more variation between individual girls and individual boys than you would between 'girls' and 'boys'. By extension, to claim that boys think like waffles while girls think like spaghetti is equally erroneous.

But don't feel bad. Despite your complete failure to understand what I had written, I'm certain you tried very hard and you ought to give yourself a pat on the back.

 

[Sexy Devil]

God damn it!

We were so close to breaking free of this stupid topic for a while! Why'd you have to go and do that, OP?! People can't help who they're attracted to, we all know that. We don't need yet another thread which will inevitably devolve into two basic arguments.

The first will be "Well if a guy was a true friend he'd suck it up and be there for me! Clearly he was just in it for sex, can't possibly be that it's kind of a bummer to hang out with someone you like or anything." And the second argument will be "Well I put the work in so clearly I deserve some sex. What's free will? Some kind of salad?"

Both arguments are equally nonsensical and by making this thread you're perpetuating them.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

If you've been on the Internet for more than a few hours, I'm sure you've probably heard something about this mysterious "friend zone" so many guys apparently get trapped in. If you haven't, the basic theory is this: If you are friends with a girl you like, she will not notice or consider your interest because you are friends. In her mind, you are a friend and ONLY a friend, never to be considered as anything else.

I mean usually the stereotypes about guys and girls and relationships are based in SOME sort of logic or plausible event, but this is utter nonsense. And I think I've figured why. The way I see it, the friend zone is based on three misconceptions about women and relationships.

So in short, I feel like this "friend zone" is nothing more the invention of insecure guys who either don't understand how relationships work, or can't get up the gumption to get up and do something about the girl they are pining over.

You are misunderstanding one fundamental premise, and that is that there is a difference between the way men see women and the way women see men. Of the points you raised, two is irrelevant, 3 you are absolutely correct on and 1 is where this issue lies and the reason that the friend-zone does exist. This video kinda demonstrates the point.

​

I hope that I have not cheapened your excellent argument with the above but wanted to highlight this. You are right that it is not her fault if she simply doesn't feel that way about him. But "if only she could see themselves the way he did", that is simply how men feel about women. Asking them to stop that is no different than asking you to change your instinctual feelings toward a particular guy.

Some points to consider:
- This changes as people get older and friends get married. It becomes easier to see a woman as a friend when you're both unavailable. Teenage passions and hormones also complicate what might have otherwise been a friendship. If an available member of the opposite sex is interested in us, it's only another step to becoming more than friends.
- Women are inconsistent (men are too, but that is irrelevant for this discussion). Because attraction has so many variables, it gives rise to situations where one man may succeed where another has failed using the same approach with the same woman. This is because we're humans, with emotions that are organic and inexplicable.
- Men will almost always consider any available woman as a potential mate, even if she is a friend. It's when she doesn't reciprocate that he's been "friend zoned". This can be hard for the man to deal with if he has genuine feelings for her (ie. not a fickle crush or simple lust).

The "friend-zone" is just the name given to a phenomena that comes in-fact in many forms. It is at it's most basic level, a rejection of a person's romantic and sexual interest. Indirectly it can be compared to a man breaking up with his girlfriend (or vice versa) for whatever reason. She has feelings of attraction, love, desire, etc which he has rejected and no longer has those feelings for her. That is difficult to deal with, painful and takes time. It's a sign of maturity that men and women can and do deal with it however.

 

[Sexy Devil]

you will never

TOPICS!bwahahahahaha

Oh you'll see. I'll become a software giant, and if somebody types the phrase "friend zone" into the awesome OS that I'll make somehow even though I don't know how to code, their computer will lock for 24 hours and come up with the message "You can use the internet again when you develop a brain."

Then who'll be laughing?! I will be!

 

[Keoul]

1. ANY girl you like will like you back if given the opportunity.

The concept of the "friend zone" is based on the situation of a guy likes a girl but she doesn't seem to be reciprocating. Meaning, the guy is running on the assumption that the girl does like him, she just hasn't realized it yet. Guys, I have some bad news for you. Just because you like a girl, it doesn't mean she's going to like you back. I don't care how well you know her, I don't care how well she knows you, I don't care how much you think you were made for each other. That's just not how it works. Relationships are a two way street--she has to like you just as much as you like her. And, believe it or not, it is very possible for you to be head over heels for someone, and they be totally disinterested. Trust me, that's the short version of the all stories of my crushes in high school, and I've seen many a friend join me in it. That's probably why they're called "crushes."

So first of all that sub-heading is contradictory to what you're saying "it is very possible for you to be head over heels for someone, and they be totally disinterested."

Secondly as long as there's friendship between male and female, the friendzone is going to exist because as you've said, one could have feeling and the other doesn't thus leaving the other in the "fried zone" where they like you as a friend just "not that way"

Also just because you haven't experienced/seen it doesn't mean it is fictional and non-existent >:[

 

[RustlessPotato]

Well they way I see it there 4 types of Friend Zones.

First you got the "nice guys" friend zones, where a guy is only being nice to a girl because he wants to do... stuff. And when she doesn't reciprocate he's going to be angry: How can she not like me back after i was being nice to her ?? Which in my eyes is hypocritical, because he's not being nice genuinly. Those guys are assholes. When a guy is genuinly nice and asks a girl out and she says no, he will understand and if he can't deal with it, end the friendship. Women don't HAVE to like a guy back because he likes her, it is absurd.

Then you got "I shall keep him as my pet friend zone, or The Hook". Where A guy who's genuinly nice but full of hormones will ask a girl out, where she says no, but will keep him as a pet to do stuff for her (I know it sounds cruel, but it does happen.) Those girls are also assholes.

The other two are the same but the gender replaced.

In short, both guys and girls can be assholes and "friendzone" eachother. Though they're not genuinly nice or just want to bone (or the female equivalent of "boning") the other.

 

[FoolKiller]

snip

"Most accurate comparison"? Waffles and spaghetti? I'm sorry but that's one of the stupidest analogies I've ever heard. Girls aren't even better at multitasking. No one can multitask effectively. Human brains just aren't designed for it. And no, peeing and talking isn't multitasking.

Actually its been shown through studies that females are better at multi-tasking than males. What they don't say is that they suck at it too. Multi-tasking only works when at most one of the activities requires higher brain functions (read thinking). Peeing does not.

As for the friend zone debate. I'd say it exists because we all created the damn thing. It's mainly a result of people doing two things:
1. Being chickenshit
2. Misplaced expectations

For the first, guys who are not necessarily confident enough befriend girls they are interested in so that they demonstrate their value (which is good), but they never move forward from there. They hope it just happens. They are too scared of getting rejected by the girl they are interested in. Then, if the guy manages to pull together enough courage to ask her out, she ends up scared of hurting her friend and says something dumb like "I don't want to ruin the friendship" when what she really means is "There is no way on Earth I would date you because I'm not attracted to you".

And all this stems from the second point which is misplaced expectations. The guy believes that the girl will like him romantically if he gets closer to her, and she believes that a guy wants to be her friend without being romantically interested in her.

Here is a basic rule to follow:

99.9% of the time, if a guy wants to befriend a girl and he's single, then he's interested.

And of course the captcha is: ding a ling

 

[Bloodtrozorx]

Guys are like waffles.

Guys like waffles.

waffles.

I'm sorry I got side tracked there.
(Am I crazy or is this just a repeat thread?)

OT: Men feel like they can be nice and friendly and a relationship will bloom, Women (shockingly) don't work that way. Can we move on now?

 

[Smooth Operator]

Well now OP you hit sexism, trolling, stating opinions as facts,... add ponies and you got the perfect thread.

I kinda get the impression this thread is off by 26 days.

 

[Doclector]

Rejection f***ing hurts.

Deal with it. Preferably without bitching about it in friendzone threads on this forum.

That doesn't help either. Am I blaming women? No. I blame myself. Sure, some people do, but that doesn't mean you judge everyone by their problems. That's like putting everyone trying to stop smoking in a support group, it ain't gonna help everyone.