Friend zone is just a way defining a relational space if you will. So it acts as a group of constants by which one person may communicate to another person the state of a relationship. The important factor in this definition is the one which implies unequal feelings. If both parties were equally invested it would be called something else…friends, lovers, friends with benifits etc…the assumption among men seems to be that the friendzone is a shameful place for a man to be…and it opens him to ridicule. In a sense it is viewed as a failure to function as a man. This is not always the case but it can be the case. And the fact is there is always a way to get out of the friend zone wheather one is male or female…the difference for men is the type of brain they face in women…it functions on primal evolutionary emperatives like any other brain…but it has a very large prefrontal cortex which can consciously read a few basic threads of your being while carrying on social interaction. Like every brain it has buttons one can push to achieve the desired results…in order to get out of the friend zone truly a man espicially cannot use guilt…all cues both physical and mental must be manifest…in other words you need to become attractive by functioning as a man. But here’s the most important point…this is a place you created. If you are miserable in the friendzone…then you are really only following her for the sex and she will sense this and reject you…remember that sex is high risk for women…they make a mistake they have a kid…you make a mistake…well…you don’t have a kid. Therefor a women will pick a mate that will stick by her…and thanks to her prefrontal cortex she will see through the bs…you don’t deserve her…if you can fake it long enough to close…then you still don’t deserve her but at least you got laid…the best thing you can do is be upfront or leave. The man is touch the Wang then the mind…the way the female works is touch the brain then the…you know how it works. To answer the question what do women get out of this? The answer is social power which is more heavily ingrained into their being then it is into men’s…think about a world of zero tech…a women can’t defend herself from Neanderthal man…but a group suitors can…the ideal mate, however, would be someone she can’t control…think about the implications in an ancient world. Most of our genes haven’t caught up with the present yet. The friend zone isn’t about making women more open it’s about communicating a state of existance with an aspect of unbalanced feelings between two parties. Also…the tricks won’t work on everyone…just the ones more evolutionarily primed to be taken in by certain behaviors.

I’m answering a handful of the questions posed, so I’m afraid this turned out a bit long. :S

Different folks on the internet have touted one of the following as THE definition of the Friend Zone: 1) Neutral unrequited love which can happen to anybody; 2) Unrequited love, but it only happens to guys, since “reasonably attractive” women can somehow magically bed any dude they like; 3) Unrequited love that only happens to guys, because women think that men and women can just be friends, but of course “all guys” know that’s not true; 4) Unrequited love that only happens to Nice Guys, because women only date jerks and therefore relegate all Nice Guys to “just friends”; 5) Conniving women who use a man’s hormones to wring dinners, drinks, and presents out of him.

In other words, “Friend Zone” has too many definitions to be helpful in regular discussion. It’s much better to just call things what they are. Is it a simple one-way crush? Is it emotional manipulation? Is the other person is already in a relationship with someone else (whom you happen to not like)? What is ACTUALLY happening, besides “boohoo we are not dating”? Call it that.

Aside from being dreadfully unclear, most of the “Friend Zone” definitions assume cruelty or naivete on the part of the woman in a heterosexual pairing. It’s not *strictly* gendered in its use, but in my experience, it is *mostly* gendered and misogynistic. At this point, I find it hard to imagine redeeming the term. It generally comes across as an immature unwillingness to accept the fact that most people do not want to bang most of their acquaintances, which includes you.

It’s not wrong to crush on someone who doesn’t reciprocate. It’s not wrong to be really, really sad and/or hurt that they don’t reciprocate. It’s not wrong to decide that you can’t continue to be friends with them while you are sad and/or hurt. But it’s super wrong to whine about how mean and stupid they are for not wanting to bang you.

Most of my big crushes have been unrequited. The only one that felt like a “Zone” was when my crush/friend asked me who I thought he should date, which seemed like pretty clear code for “I don’t see you that way.” Everyone else I’ve been interested in simply started dating someone else. While I was sad about all of the above, I wasn’t bitter towards them, and I’m still friends with all of them (and their wives/girlfriends), because they are all genuinely good people whom I like without the assistance of hormones.

People who start with a one-way crush can become romantically involved with each other. People who start with a one-way crush can become just friends. Of course that’s not true of every situation, but I’m friends with people I’ve formerly crushed on, as well as with people who have formerly crushed on me.

Life is complicated. You don’t actually want to date most of the people you meet. Most of the people you meet do not want to date you. It’s kind of miraculous any time two adult individuals end up liking each other in the same way at the same time and it leads to something romantic. Rejoice in that part and learn to roll with the punches for the rest.

*blog thing. I meant to say blog thing. Or maybe I meant to say article factory. Please don’t kill me!

@titanblue, @ hellkell. It is fine if you think I am being disingenuous. It is also fine if people believe that these are isolated incidents. We can all speculate as to the regularity with which they occur. No one is using data here. I am reporting once specific type of incident that I have observed with some regularity and contributing it to the problem space. If you assume I am lying I hope you are correct, because it is your model of the world that will be inaccurate for it.

Other “friendzone” things also happen, but I do not understand why everyone is so resistant to this.

I also am not sure why everyone is so quick to assume I have no female friends. The people I am friends with are honest enough with themselves and self aware enough to know what is going and an accurately describe what they are doing with some sense of responsibility. They know they did this and they know they play these guys.

If males commit the counterpart of this, then they are dicks as well.

I assure you that the women themselves were aware of what they were doing and felt guilty. I did not assign any motivations or feelings. They judged themselves and their behaviour the way I outlined.

I just found this site and I am impressed at people’s unwillingness to accept that this is true.

All the best.

See, what’s funny (and I say this as a guy whose high school years were marked by a massive unrequited crush that ended up turning into a friendship) is I always just assumed that “the friend zone” was just a reference to how difficult it can be to turn platonic feelings into sexual ones. But then, I never imputed conscious ill intent when women didn’t want to have sex with me, so I’m probably not the target demographic.

““Nice Guys” seem to think that we can learn to want somebody, yet paradoxically they think that women magically know whether or not we want somebody right away.”

So much yes to this. Sometimes we say we are not sure about something because we really are not sure about something.

I like tree huggers story…to answer to blues question…the benifits of early traditional courtship are cost saving…there was a recent story. I think it was cbs or nbc that ran it and it talked about a woman who racked up thousands of dollars of dinners on someone else’s dime. She showed them her spread sheet where she basically charted breakfast lunch and dinner and kept all the names straight. She met over 100 men and she had no problem doing this with no intention of having even a relationship let alone sex. Of course this is an extreme case, but it does show at least one value of traditional courtship. Also, on the men’s side they were dumb enough to fall for it. Apperently this sort of behavior is common among women…can you blame them? Most people would take advantage of a willing victim. Tree hugger is a good person because she recognizes her part…but the guy is also to blame. He kept pushing something he obviously didn’t really feel either and the hurt is really on him.

@contrapangloss

It’s not ‘friend zoning.’

It’s Schrödinger’s crush. Your observant friends might or might not be right. However, ____ has not chosen to express their feelings, and so if the friendship is reciprocal and fun, then it’s best to respect that and just let it be. You can’t react one way or the other to fix the situation because you don’t know which is true. If you continue to treat someone who acts like a friend as a friend, then you’re operating in good faith, not relegating them to some weird zone of hurt.

@contrapangloss, in my (limited) experience, when person X has a crush on person Y, often the last person to notice the telltale signs is person Y. In other words, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you are bad at “reading” other people.

Good luck with your talk!! You’re going to be awesome. Hope there’s a video..?

I am female and straight and have felt “friendzoned” several times in my life, sometimes also feeling “led on” in the process. But I think the difference between me and Nice Guys ™* is that I tend to see the disappointment of being rejected as bad luck, not an evil conspiracy against me by all men. True, sometimes sour feelings lead me to blame my culture a little bit for whatever unjust biases against my personal characteristics might have influenced the boy’s unconscious state of not being attracted to me, but it’s never his “fault.” He is not individually responsible for “rewarding” me for whatever good traits I have with attention, love, or sex.

Romance and sex are not a currency, and I have always felt it is sick to expect someone to take responsibility for giving you what you “deserve” rather than build relationships based on mutual interest and attraction. Nice Guy philosophy often seems to assume that women have total control over who they are attracted to - who they benevolently bestow their attraction upon - and treat affairs of the heart and sexuality like a business transaction. Friendship in, sexual or emotional reward out. Men can be attracted to whomever takes their fancy, and women alone are burdened with being the arbiters of appropriate matches. It is no wonder, therefore, that some MRAs have followed that line of “logic” to the conclusion that women do not actually fall in love or feel desire, and that when they do appear to love or desire someone who is not you, they are simply wielding feeling as a weapon for the sake of your personal humiliation and pain.

*I have seen women display symptoms of Nice Guy Syndrome as well (see self-pitying women protagonists in love stories, Taylor Swift, probably some of your friends), but in my experience they are far less common, and much less respected and sympathized with by the general public. A love story about an “unattractive” man capturing the heart of an “attractive” woman is just a love story. A love story about the reverse is emphatically niche. Usually falling under the category of “sappy feel-good Mary Sue shit for chicks” (or else just super indie). I think this is one of the main reasons so many gleefully mock and dismiss the Twilight series (which should be mocked and dismissed for a whole host of other creepy and horrible things instead), which disturbed me. When I do see women express frustration with friendzoning, they usually follow it up with a complaint about themselves rather than a complaint about the man who rejected them, men as a group, or the culture that may have contributed to their rejection. Unlike Nice Guys(tm), their self-pity is mixed with self-loathing and the desire to “improve” whatever it is about them that men as a group supposedly dislike. Both female and male Nice Guys(tm), then, make irrational generalizations about the opposite group, but one is overly obliging and the other overly entitled.

I also get the impression that, as a direct result of these expectations, women tend to feel much guiltier about rejections for any reason than men do. As with any pattern, there are exceptions, of course, but overall it is considered acceptable by both women and men for a man to reject a woman with or without an explicit reason (generally including looks), but a woman who rejects a man without an “excuse” is cruel - and, if she cites his looks, shallow.

I’m for abolishing the “league” system. Although physical appearance does and should influence attraction, the degree to which we fixate on it is absurd. This is partially true for men as well, and it is appallingly, destructively, mind-bogglingly true for women. Personally I find my interest in someone’s looks grows in response to how attracted I am to the way we interact, the way his brain is wired and the way it interacts with mine. That actually makes him more physically attractive to me as well. I feel like women are kind of expected to have this ability because we’re taught to see men as whole people. Whatever idiotic reductionist readings of biological determinism studies say, I’m certain men can have this ability too. Attraction is really complicated and no matter what your gender is or how desirable the other person is “supposed” to be, or how “good” of a person you think they are, you never, ever need a reason not to be attracted to someone.

Are you sexually attracted to every person you care about? No. Hell no. Nor should you be expected to be. Regardless of whether that person happens to be in your courting demographic.