Imagine being afraid of the ‘friend zone’
Oh no, my miserable life that’s devoid of any connection and anyone altogether otherwise *at least contains a friend.
What the fuck man, is this a real concern average people have that I’m way too fucking alienated to understand
[Medium: Failure] — "The friend-zone" is the single worst place any wöman could dare to put you in. It's where you're sent when — for some unknown, female reason — she doesn't value you as a potential mate. That she values someone with better mate qualities than you. That's what the friend-zone is; it's wöman's way of saying "fuck you".
— It's really that bad?
— Of course, bröther. The gynocentrists want you to think it's fine. Break your conditioning. Keep pushing. Your persistence will prove how much you deserve her.
Art Moderne
Amazing, this posting is on par with the game at this point.
On the converse, I tried to take a relationship with a close friend to the next level.
It did not go well and we do not talk anymore
red_stapler
corgiwithalaptoplosing a friend trying to break the volcel oath
Yeah see, even if I was deeply interested in a romantic relationship with that person, I’d never take it to the next level and stay within boundaries out of fear of not losing them.
Is that conceited?
Nah, it just seems like a defense mechanism I guess. As @red_stapler@hexbear.net, we learned our lessons.
Wish I had thought like you did at the time. Oh well. Maybe in another life.
Bit idea.
It would be so funny
Ambiguity over definitions is the lifeblood of struggle sessions
I don't buy the misogyny arguments here. I remember being a teenager, and that shit feels desperate. Everybody else is hooked up and they seem so happy, and you've found someone you feel like you can really connect with, but they don't feel the same. So you've made a big deal of it in your mind and when they say "I think of you more as a friend", it feels like a full-on breakup.
Of course, you still have to get over it, just like a breakup. Learning to deal with that stuff is part of growing up.
Even as an adult, couples tend to hang out with other couples, and it can be challenging to be the single person in a group.
I know some people go too far, wallowing in self-pity over being friendzoned, and it can poison a person. Maybe it seems silly from the outside, and you think they should just get over it, but I think people deserve empathy and support as much as possible. Ideally we can help people work through their shit and not let this little blip in their lives come to define them.
Okay I'm done rambling. Thanks for reading.
What part of "you've found someone you feel like you can really connect with" excludes being friends or queerplatonic partners with that person? Ideally all your friendships should have a deep feeling of personal connection and love.
While I agree principally, I think a good percentage of people in the world reserve that kind of intimacy for their romantic partner, or select one or two long-term friends already in their life. So if they're unwilling to have a romance, I think the odds are very small that a deep personal connection will then bloom.
I think you summed up my thoughts on this better than I could ever articulate. It’s like it’s become a thing now to take any negative feelings about romantic or sexual rejection and ascribe to it the label “incel” just because some / many people deal with that rejection in unhealthy ways.
I found myself in the friend zone lots of times in my single days. It sucks and it hurt. But I didn’t go online and whinge about it or say all women are bad or whatever or let it mutate into anti-social behaviors. I maybe felt down for a bit and then moved on, nbd. That’s how I bet most people deal with it.
Maybe it seems silly from the outside, and you think they should just get over it, but I think people deserve empathy and support as much as possible. Ideally we can help people work through their shit and not let this little blip in their lives come to define them.
Yeah it definitely is a shitty feeling, and those that try to convince you it's not are honestly trying to gaslight you (whether intentionally or not).
I mean, having romantic feelings for someone who doesn’t feel the same is a bummer. Like, you should get over it because obsessing over that is teenager shit. But it’s still a bummer.
I grow to dislike the concept. Notice how it focuses only on the one who wants to pursue a sexual/romantic relationship, as if platonic relationship is somehow lesser. Why don't we ever hear about the "sexual zone" or "romantic zone" about people who desire a deep platonic relationship with someone but who are placed in the "sexual/romantic zone" by that someone? It hurts to be previously friends with someone who gives you the cold shoulder once they find out you don't want to fuck them. Why should the sexual zoned person's feelings perspective and feelings be cast aside for the friend zoned person's feelings and perspective?
It hurts to be previously friends with someone who gives you the cold shoulder once they find out you don't want to fuck them.
I guess in that case there was never really a friendship to begin with.
There was one parody Tumblr post about being put in the "girlfriend zone".
Why don't we ever hear about the "sexual zone" or "romantic zone" about people who desire a deep platonic relationship with someone but who are placed in the "sexual/romantic zone" by that someone?
I think the kids are calling this a "situationship" these days.
A "situationship" is an ambiguous dating relationship where one person maybe wants to get serious and the other doesn't want to talk about it. Risk factors include "short-term open to long" in tinder bio
Socialism is when you take an archetypical trope, (unrequited love), common to every time and culture, and dismiss it w/ performative, incredibly hamfisted, body-and-spaces discourse (whiteness, toxic masculinity).
the idea of the friend zone is definitely not just good old unrequited love. the unspoken implication is that women only like "bad guys" and thus you should never be nice to women, lest you end up in the friend zone
Socialism is when you ignore the fact that tropes can play out in many different ways and that particular manifestations of it can in fact reflect broader social issues
This feels contrarian for the sake of it. Being in a limbo with someone you have feelings for is understandably uncomfortable for anyone. I honestly think dunking on someone for this just kind of shows emotional immaturity
I view it more as dunking on the particular type of dweeb that starts an obnoxious screed about how women only want to date assholes and that they don't ever look at the nice guys in their lives and wonder why their lives suck.
definitely think if you care and talk about the 'friendzone' as a concept it raises red flags about how one approaches romance, but there's nothing inherently wrong with someone feeling unhappy that their romantic feelings were unreciprocated. like with most things when it comes to this subject i think the issue is thinking critically about why you feel a certain way - for a lot of people the sting of rejection comes from feeling entitled to romance which is clearly problematic.
I do have a friend who does only date assholes, it's very sad and she says so. They have done things like break her arm, break into her house after they'd broken up and steal all of her knives etc. It's actually a repeated pattern in her relationships that strikes me as pathological.
That said, the incel/"nice guy" vibe is defining asshole as "someone who is more confident than me".
I honestly think dunking on someone for this just kind of shows emotional immaturity
A few weeks ago I met a system and was thinking about the possibility of a relationship with them, but they said they were taken so I was friendzoned. A few days ago they said they were willing to try polyamory again and want to date me and join my swarm, but one of their members has some creepy incel behaviours and I want to deprogram the alt right shit in his head before I get too close to him, so I friendzoned them.
Being friendzoned didn't suck and friendzoning them didn't suck. We're simply not in a place where a relationship would be healthy right now, even though we've quickly become close friends. It doesn't suck because I know how to communicate and set clear boundaries from both sides.
I think this "wah I'm in the friendzone" shit comes from straight men who never learned how to be honest with their feelings and others. Honestly, that kind of behaviour is why I'm not dating my friend. If these men spent more time learning about feelings, maybe they wouldn't be friendzoned in the first place.
EDIT: oh and obviously being monoamorous is a big source of angst for straight people, but that's their own fault too.
A few weeks ago I met a system and was thinking about the possibility of a relationship with them, but they said they were taken so I was friendzoned. A few days ago they said they were willing to try polyamory again and want to date me and join my swarm, but one of their members has some creepy incel behaviours and I want to deprogram the alt right shit in his head before I get too close to him, so I friendzoned them.
This is entirely illegible to me, lmao.
it happens to a lot of folks, and no doubt it hurts like hell, but once they see the ingredients, they realize the problem and they can choose to grow... or get worse.
Damn if all the romantic poets, pining away for unrequited love, simply realized they were only misogynists. Lol.
If the romantic poets were complaining bitterly about how they've been wronged by women because they don't want to date them then yeah maybe they were
Byron has entered the chat
A lot of them definitely were lol
Yeah, agreed about the misogyny.
Also, as I think about it, what if it partially stems from people politely rejecting others, after a date, by telling them they just want to be friends when they don’t actually mean it?
I’ve had that shit happen to before and it kind of blows. Went on a date with a cool, attractive girl in a new city where I didn’t know anyone, and she let me know afterwards that she thinks I’m cool but just wants to be friends. I was like ‘fuck yeah, I don’t give a shit’ but we never spoke after that :( Don’t say it if you don’t mean it, but then again maybe I should have put in more effort into staying in contact with her.
For me the way I see it as a guy, being friends with someone, while secretly or not so secretly holding out for something more romantically and/or sexually, is just disingenuous. It also comes across as really needy, desperate behaviour. Which, in my personal experience, is the biggest turn off for women. So you're not going to change their mind this way. The true motivations behind the "friendship" are extremely transparent and plain for everyone else to see. People can tell what's going on, you know what you're doing, the woman knows, all your mutual friends know on some level. There's a reason "orbiters" get made fun of constantly for orbiting a specific woman.
If you still want to be friends with the person you have a crush on after being rejected or realising that it can't happen for whatever reason, you're going to have to fully accept that they don't see you in that way. Then the friendship is longer based off of the idea that you can have a relationship. Failure to accept that will doom any future friendship for the reasons I've listed above. If you cant accept that, it's probably better to have less contact with the person or even stop seeing them, instead of going though the motions in some "friendship" which is built off of the idea/fantasy that you'll eventually date them.
Yea, this is 100% it. If you can't kill your romantic feelings for them friendship is just not going to work. You'll just be hurting the whole time you're with them, especially if they get involved with someone else and like you said it can definitely stray into creepy behavior. It's a shitty situation for both parties and of course it'd be great if we could just switch those feelings off but that's not always an easy thing to do.
I mean, if I'm romantically interested in someone and they say that they're not romantically interested in me, that sucks.
Emotions are not rational. I can cognitively know "I am not entitled to this person's romantic interest and having them in my life as a friend is just as valuable as being in a romantic relationship with them" but my emotions will still feel disappointed and saddened because my romantic feelings aren't being reciprocated. Confessing your feelings to someone is also a huge moment of emotional vulnerability, and being rejected in that situation can make one feel powerless and inadequate.
Are you gonna tell me that if you confess your feelings to someone and they give you the whole "Let's just be friends" response, your reaction is "Oh yay, I made a friend"?
What the fuck man, is this a real concern average people have that I’m way too fucking alienated to understand
Yes it is a real concern. And honestly, I think leftists are terrible at giving dating advice, especially when it comes to men. There are some considerate leftists that actually give concrete advice (like start exercising, find clothes that fit better, maybe trim the beard so it looks nice, get a good haircut or shave it completely if balding, try to look people in the eye instead of looking down all the time, learn small talk, learn banter, learn how to express romantic interest, find that difference between confident and creepy and know when you've crossed it, etc.) Most of the "advice" I see is just "don't be a r!pist!" and "don't harass women!" Like bro that's obvious, but to the guy that's constantly getting rejected, especially when apps like Tinder make it so the a few super good looking guys pretty much clean house (and this dynamic absolutely spills over into offline interactions), there needs to be better advice.
When this advice is lacking, or people dismiss these young men because "there are so many other problems why would I care about MEN!", this can lead to alienated young men finding their way into reactionary spaces. In this case a little prevention is worth ten tons of cure.
And lastly, I'll say this, it's completely disingenuous to remain "friends" with someone after you've been friendzoned if you initially had romantic feelings for them and those romantic feelings still persist. Unless your feelings magically also changed to platonic ones, then there's a relational imbalance that will always linger. It's better to just say "hey I like you in a more romantic way and even though you want to be friends, perhaps it's better that we don't hang out."
I expanded on what I meant in the rest of the sentence (since you only quoted part of it and not the whole).
It's already rare enough for cishet men to have nonromantic friendships with cishet women; making it more antagonistic over time by normalizing fear and anger about "friendzoning" only makes that a little worse for everyone as time goes on.
Yeah I agree that the fear and anger shouldn't be normalized, but we should also normalize being open about our feelings and not suppressing them and remaining "friends" while still holding hope that it will become something more (which I also think can be super dangerous). I expanded on that in a reply to someone else if you wanna see it.
it's completely disingenuous to remain "friends" with someone after you've been friendzoned
Retort: no it's not. Try being a normal person.
And lastly, I'll say this, it's completely disingenuous to remain "friends" with someone after you've been friendzoned if you initially had romantic feelings for them and those romantic feelings still persist
Disagree. It's not hard to turn a crush into a squish. I know 2000s era TV made it seem like it's impossible to be friends with someone you love without acting like a creep, but that's just not true. Just have a little honesty. "I find you romantically attractive but I also value your friendship."
Yeah people I've friendzoned have secretly introjected me and pursued a relationship with the introject in the past, but that's called being a creep, it's not called having feelings.
I agree with most of what you said, but I really don't see why you couldn't be friends with someone you had/have feelings for. You can keep stuff to yourself, and be okay with being friends. Obviously the crusher has to accept that going further isn't going to happen. You can logically know something, and behave accordingly, even if your feelings are different.
You can logically know something, and behave accordingly, even if your feelings are different.
I think that may sound good in theory, but in practice emotions really fuck with us. So if one is trying to assess how to best proceed, there needs to be an honest accounting on the strength and frequency of these feelings. It's almost like a calculated risk to be honest. You need to really know yourself. If you think you can do it then yeah good for you, but I think in our current environment it might just create more danger to the women because they may not know who is honestly trying to be friends and who is "just trying to get in" under the guise of friendship. Maybe this analogy isn't that good, but it's almost like job hunting, if you get rejected I suppose you can try to "follow up and keep trying" but it's better to move on (and I fully acknowledge that dating isn't transactional like a job but it still kind of is a "market" for lack of a better term).
And lastly, I'll say this, it's completely disingenuous to remain "friends" with someone after you've been friendzoned if you initially had romantic feelings for them and those romantic feelings still persist. Unless your feelings magically also changed to platonic ones, then there's a relational imbalance that will always linger. It's better to just say "hey I like you in a more romantic way and even though you want to be friends, perhaps it's better that we don't hang out."
Interesting, can you expand on this and why you shouldn’t be friends with someone you’re attracted to? Like, do you think ‘platonic’ and ‘romantic’ are binary conditions?
I’m not aaying you’re wrong but I’m interested in why you think it’s strictly disingenuous. I completely agree with the rest of what you said btw
Because if you continue hanging out with that person, the feelings will always remain. Like I said, maybe they somehow changed, but honestly, will a guy (this example is hetero-cis obv) who was initially attracted to a girl and then told "hey let's just be friends" actually change his feelings? I mean they're feelings because we kind of can't control them. So the guy needs to be honest with himself and with the girl. Otherwise he's basically staying in there to "try and get in" at a later time. That's disingenuous. He's better off spending his time trying with someone else. Maybe in that case he can remain friends with the girl since he has other options.
Interesting, can you expand on this and why you shouldn’t be friends with someone you’re attracted to? Like, do you think ‘platonic’ and ‘romantic’ are binary conditions?
Not strictly but they are more cut and dry then people like to think. And it seems to be perceived differently along gender lines (at least for straight cis relationships). Check out this video and look at the responses: https://youtu.be/T_lh5fR4DMA?feature=shared.
Now whether these responses are socially conditioned or somehow "innate" is a debate I leave to the scientists and sociologists, but there is obviously a perceived difference. I mean just look up "friend zone" standup routines on youtube or anywhere really, people talk about it all the time (https://youtube.com/shorts/zbjMJBixZI8?feature=shared and https://youtu.be/_KE6Y3VrMg4?feature=shared). The truth is that there are many dudes basically remaining in "friendships" disingenuously in order to get with the girl. This is not only disingenuous, but if the guy harbors resentment on being only considered "a friend" then it can lead to violent outbursts later in the "friendship." So it's not only bad for the guys involved, but can be potentially life-threatening for the women. So like I said, it's better to admit how you feel and if you still have those feelings, it's probably better to maybe be aquiantances at best, but not friends (unless your feelings have actually changed, which I think represents a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of those who get friendzoned).
At one time I thought I’d try my hand at being a “leftist dating advice” person, just given my perspective as being now over 40 and in a long term relationship. But I’ve since come to the opinion that all generic dating advice is mostly pointless. Trying to understand what you are doing wrong (or right) in dating is just too specific to each individual person, IMO. We all just have too many blind spots when it comes to ourselves. Not to mention so much of getting dating right is “be like this but don’t go too far in the other direction either”.
I spent so much time and energy in my single days trying to read up on dating advice and try to figure out what I was doing wrong. But ultimately what I was going wrong was a few things that were hyper-specific to myself, and generic dating advice wouldn’t mention that or if it did, I didn’t realize it applied to me.
I guess if I had any dating advice, it would be to ignore generic dating advice and try and have people in your life (friends, family, even exes) who know you well and will be brutally honest with you. And you have to be brutally honest with yourself, or otherwise you will never be able to internalize what other people tell you.
That, and being with someone is also a leftist, sympathetic to your political views, or at least apolitical but cool if you want to do praxis or occasionally rant about stuff like how capitalism evolved out of feudalism is pretty dang important.
That, and being with someone is also a leftist, sympathetic to your political views, or at least apolitical but cool if you want to do praxis or occasionally rant about stuff like how capitalism evolved out of feudalism is pretty dang important.
So I'm kind of torn on this, because of how I keep hearing about romantic relationships causing orgs to basically implode. It's like there are so few leftists that when people meet in an org it becomes desperate people meeting other desperate people and basically forgetting the whole point of the org.
I guess if I had any dating advice, it would be to ignore generic dating advice and try and have people in your life (friends, family, even exes) who know you well and will be brutally honest with you.
I don't know, in my experience they'll never be brutally honest with you. Actually, they may not even know what to tell you in the first place and they may actually think that you're "a catch" so to speak and "who wouldn't want to date you!" I actually think hiring a dating coach might not be a bad idea, because they can assess you and actually give you good advice. And it would be specifically tailored to you.
Finally an actual good comment.
To my fellow guys, there is nothing more pathetic than being an "orbiter" that stays friends with a women in the vague hope that they change their minds and want a romantic relationship with you. Everyone can tell it's disingenuous. You know it, the woman knows it, her friends and your friends can tell. Trust me on this one. Either accept that she doesn't see you that way if you want to remain friends, and if you can't accept that, it's best to put some distance between you and the person.
To my fellow guys, there is nothing more pathetic than being an "orbiter" that stays friends with a women in the vague hope that they change their minds and want a romantic relationship with you.
It's better to just say "hey I like you in a more romantic way and even though you want to be friends, perhaps it's better that we don't hang out."
I guess I don't have any experience from the"friendzoned" side, but this feels kinda manipulative? You're basically giving them them an ultimatum to date you or cut off contact. I might just be sensitive or have completely different kind of relationship with my friends, but this would definitely burn bridges.
but this would definitely burn bridges.
I guess I should clarified that this is more of something you'd say in the beginning, not too long after meeting someone.
You're basically giving them them an ultimatum to date you or cut off contact.
I mean I see it more as you know who you are and are setting boundaries for yourself. If the other person insists on being friends while knowing that you are into them, I see that as kind of manipulative, because you're kind of pressuring the person with the feelings to make a decision to stay in an awkward situation.
I will say, a lot of men's "friendships" are, uh, surface level and very emotionally unfulfilling.
Fuck, isn't that the truth. I fell in love the first time largely because she would/could actually talk with me about feelings and fears and I felt seen as a person for the first time.
no more half measures walter
you always dropping the wisdom round these parts
Name a single "zone" you'd ever want to be in. Ozone. Aphotic zone. Demilitarized zone. Dead zone. Twilight zone. I will not enter the Friend Zone.
FUCK
What about the chill zone, or the cool zone, or the calzone?
Calzone?!
Extraction zone
I prefer friends, some people spend way too much time thinking having sex with eachother anyways. miss me with that shit
is this a real concern average people have
No, it is a concern that incels have. The actual truth is that the people who complain about this shit have never even been friends with a girl and this "fRiEnD zOnEd" shit is just incels making up a scenario and getting mad about. In reality they would be over-joyed to have the privilege of being considered a friend by their crush or whatever.
In reality they would be over-joyed to have the privilege of being considered a friend by their crush or whatever
Oh you sweet summer child. They wouldn't. Believe me :sadness:
ok, maybe not. incels are pretty fucked up.
couplehood is the modern religion and by that awesomely glib take i mean: there is tremendous socialization to find purpose and meaning (and absolution) in "the special someone", which has only seemed to heighten in the parts of society that want to stay on program while our institutions fail and the climate crisis looms. all that to say, i understand the desperation especially among the young. so much mass culture (TV, movies, music) tells them that the only thing they will ever do that matters is find someone who completes them (because of course they're incomplete as they are!).... it's a very efficient way to get everyone (single and not) out there consuming.
but of course, i agree completely with you, especially as i've gotten older. i value my friends and treasure making new ones in whatever context or however long it works out. i would rather have a new limited scope work friend to joke around with than a new ex- from a fraught relationship where at least one of us was not paying attention to the warnings of a bad match.
To maybe add a little. Alienation under capitalism is such that it forces all care to fall to the insular family unit and destroys other modes of material support. For instance, most help with housing, food, and care come from blood relationships. Especially from those lines that will support accumulation. Capitalism like the shit prion disease it is folds all into its like.
That being said, finding a friend is somewhat a luxury but finding family is to find a survival tool in this hellscape.
Also people really love to fuck. So finding out the person you're trying to fuck doesn't want to fuck you is kind of a bummer. Not to try and justify the toxic levels it goes to but it can be disappointing.
(because of course they're incomplete as they are!)
Aren't we though, isn't that the whole point of having social solidarity with other people? If you don't need anyone else, why would you ever care about the state of society?
Why wouldn't you just be a Randian, then?
it is implying that the only way to have social solidarity is through a romantic relationship, when in reality, the way many people in the US practice romance is to let other social connections wither and make one other person their entire aocial support network.
contrary to the messaging of mass culture, the opposite of couplehood is not loneliness or solitude.
im a pathetic loser unhealthily obsessed with their nearly unbroken lifelong loneliness and i dont really use the friend zone as a mental archetype or schema or trope, i just kinda emit jealousy waves at every happy person in line of sight/thought. even aside from romantic or sexual partners, it sucks to see other people that have the things i always wanted but never had, like social acceptance, physical fitness, opportunities and experiences during youth, and financial success. having non-romantic/sexual friends usually helps deal with these kinds of negative thoughts by forcing me to adopt a more socially acceptable persona, which gives me something else to focus on besides my own endless self deprecating internal monologue. but still i never seem to have friends irl that have the same intellectual/aesthetic interests/hobbies as me, as nice as they are otherwise.
Are you some sort of identity thief who is living my life
Are you coming to steal my skin
I've come to understand the "friend zone" as a place where a person puts himself by being too spineless to either ask out the person in question and make their feelings clear, or resolve them internally on their own time and make peace with not pursuing them and keeping them as a friend. It's a painful cognitive dissonance that is brought entirely upon oneself. The proper way out is growth, but many just rage at it and refuse to change themselves.
I relate to this. But I think generally the term is used to mean when you ask the person to take the relationship to something more than friends, but they'd rather stay friends. We should come up for a name for what you say, the self-imposed friend zone?
I would say it's still the same spot, because at that point the feelings have been resolved on one end, and it's your responsibility to deal with yours. If you're okay with staying friends, that's fine. If the rejection is too painful and you need some space, just let them know in a respectful way and take time to handle your emotions.
Either way it's a state of mind.
if youre friends with me you are invited to the cuddle zone
I can't answer that because I've never been rejected by anyone. when you see my bodycount, you'll be like, what is that? the username of the guy who makes the news megathreads?
I'm afraid of the friend zone. By that I mean I'm afraid of making friends and have severe social anxiety
It's men who feel women are obligated to be their gf and or provide them with sex so they get pissed off when someone rightfully wants to just be a friend.
I has a HS friend who was madly in love with some guy and it messed up her life real bad pretending she can just be his friend. She was like some vampire thrall, it was heartbreaking to watch. Pretty sure she's still suffering from it. I wouldn't recommend deluding yourself that you can genuinely be friends with someone you're romantically attracted to. It is neither in your nor their best interest.
Anyone who complains about the friendzone is an incel that doesn't see women as anything other than objects to fuck
As a bi enby I can't even separate "wanting to be like someone" from "wanting to be with someone," let alone clearly separating platonic, romantic, and sexual feelings. Like I just wanna hang out and do whatever we vibe with, and that could include sexy stuff or cuddly stuff or hobby stuff or deep conversations or whatever. I guess ideally I would try to see someone not being interested in sex as similar to them not being interested in going skydiving together, though there's a lot of social conditioning that can make that difficult in practice. Generally though if I think somebody's cool then I'm happy to be able to hang out with them in whatever capacity works.
Especially when many of us are willing to send people to the enemy zone
life will beat the egotism out of you
I've met way too many mediocre (mostly)white (mainly)men who think they know everything to believe that.
Once upon a time I was scared of the friend zone until I realized that's such a shitty thing to be afraid of. Like, oh no, you're such good friends with someone they're not willing to potentially damage your relationship with one another by pushing it further. The friend zone is a good thing. Enjoy platonic love, share that love and relish in it.
The “friend zone” is also harder than it seems
It’s hard as fuck to make new friends as an adult because so many are just trying to keep their head above water
In my experience, the friend zone is the result of attraction that’s gone unaddressed and has been overtaken by fantasy. If you spent more time fantasizing about your interactions with a person than you spend actually interacting with them, understand that there’s a good risk that they aren’t on the same page with your fantasies and may feel weirded out by you expressing them as if they were true. Better to be up front early about an attraction imo
I’m ace so I get kinda offended when people act like being friends is a bad thing
It’s a cishet world
Don't you mean you're aro so you get kinda offended when people act like being friends is a bad thing?
There are plenty of aces dating all over the place and plenty of aros getting nasty with their friends
This zone thing is fortunately more of a younger person's deal. Mid 40s, here - so not a problem.
For example, my very lovely former coworker just had a baby 2 months ago. I made (CW) BBQ for her and her husband and ran it over tonight to their house. I know how it is with having kids, and that first 6 months new parents don't really leave the house. So I made dinner.
Anyhow, I'd be lying if I said I'm not attracted to her but we really are just friends. I have no idea how she feels about me, and I'm trying to find out since I'm married. We're both married. Point is, I really don't have many friends so I'm happy that she's my friend and vice versa. Today was the best day because I did something nice for her and her dude with no strings attached.
Be happy someone is happy with you in their life on any level.
Yeah fr young people be like "I'm so angsty because I love my friends and desire a deep personal connection with them" that's what friends are for you fools!
Fixed my wording but I think my point remains. If you have a genuine friend who isn’t romantically interested but is there for you otherwise, whatsdabigdeal hea?
After reading all these comments...
I want to stay weird AND be loved so I feel you
Thanks, glad to see I'm not the only one.
edit: whoops I forgot about the incel conception of it, that if you're friendly to a woman she'll put you in the "unfuckable" box. Anyone who has dated a friend knows that just isn't true lol.
This is a struggle session tier controversial topic, but "friend zone" is what happens when
(a) you don't want to date someone, but are afraid to reject them completely. A lot of people soften the blow by saying "oh we can still be friends", in the lying polite way you'd say "we should hang out more!" before never following up on it. Especially prevalent among women, because men are dangerous, and especially prevalent when you don't want to rock the boat in a friend group. It's actually quite difficult to be friends with an ex or failed romantic prospect even if both people genuinely do want to be friends; you have to manage strong emotions without being able to directly change them.
(b) the rejected party either doesn't understand or refuses to accept the rejection. Classically, this leads to men trying to "win over" women who don't want them, and honestly probably don't even want to be friends now that the dude is being weird about it, while thinly pretending to just be a good platonic friend. Let me get that door for you mlady.
It's totally legit to want to date someone but not be "just friends" with them. It sucks to lose a friend that way, it's happened to me, but we're all adults here and sometimes people have enough friends already or don't want to be friends with you badly enough to deal with any additional heartache from working through those emotions.
It's simple: just don't be bothered by something that's bothering you
The entire concept of friend zone is just the obvious display of the emotional stuntedness and hyper-ingrained mysogyny that are the hallmarks of the empty husks men are turned into in this culture. Anybody using the concept of "the friendzone" is incapable of forming actual bonds to other people and sees women as nothing but fuck machines, i'm not buying any other explanation for this garbage.
I had written out a long effortpost earlier today, about how ridiculous this concept seems from a queer, particularly transbian, poly and acespec point of view, how people who are actually capable of more complex and nuanced relationships than "bro" and "longterm monogamous fuckmeat" may view this, and it was pretty good actually. It got into a lot of the emotional complexities of having to navigate the depths of friendship and dating as a queer woman, how difficult it can be to draw a line between very intimate friendship and romantic and / or sexual and / or sensual attraction when you have social relations that lack the distance, rudeness, shallow affect and fear of tenderness that are the hallmarks of the deeply damaged masculine condition, and it did get a lot into how all the emotional wealth that comes from that in all my relationships is worth the confusion of the condition we describe as "useless lesbian", which is what the community calls a person like me who is incapable of telling where the normal amount of teasing and compliments and displays of affection between girls ends and where genuine flirting starts. And it had a whole paragraph about how it's ok and normal to remain friends with people you've had sex with, how it can actually deepen instead of "ruin" a friendship to know sides of each other you don't show to anybody. How liberating it is to ditch monogamous notions of relationships as a form of possession that leads to an inherently brutalized and competitive way to engage with other human beings. How complex and layered the range of things you can feel for people can be if you're somewhere on the asexual spectrum and hornyness isn't constantly clouding the rest of your feelings and sex isn't all about fucking, how much of this thread is dominated by a mindset of a cishet allo mononormative ideal of relationships where the straights all get told all day by mass culture how to feel and none of them have to make sense of their feelings and their desires to the same extend queer people have and how much poorer straight people are for being trapped in that kind of prescriptive disneyfied themepark version of sexuality.
But the site crashed when i tried to send it because on top of ruining hexbear culture, this whole federation garbage has also wrecked site performance. If this dumpster fire of a thread is any indication, good luck with how this place is going to develop, because i do not see myself on here much longer when the main goal of hexbear is onboarding as many cishet dudes as possible. This shit is so gross, i pitty anybody who has no choice but date men.
Ah, how reliably the "not all men" faction shows up. Funny how the 4 day old account who mostly has posted in this thread becomes a fragile lib as soon as those beneath you call you out and make you not feel like the default anymore. Do you also think cracker is a slur? Do you think i'm being cis-sexist here? Heterophobic? Misandristic? Or are allophobia and ... uh, monogamophobia the only made-up forms of bigottry that you use as a cudgel when your lessers dare to raise their voices?
And yes, they're made up by you bad faith reddit ass debatebro. Letting aside that none of these things exist as systemic forms of opression, whereas mysogyny, transphobia, lesbophobia, acephobia and mononormativity very much do exist, i did not, at any point, say anything against allo people or monogamous people. I touched upon how i have different perspectives than these, is all. But i did call out men and the norms you use to uphold our sexual subjugation, because of course you extend that to not just the straight women unfortunate enough to only be attracted to dudes, but to all of us. And a woman calling that objectification out is what set you off and you know it. You wouldn't have felt the need to type out the longest post in your 4 day user history on hexbearand then delete it if this wouldn't have hit too close to home, Amerikan boy. But you can't say that because it would reveal how much of a mysogynist pig you are and would get you banned, so you have to resort to that kind of smug snarkyness you've just hurled at me.
And look, i'm sorry to say this so bluntly, but you have zero lived experience with how varying testosterone and estradiole levels affect your emotions and libido and what that does to you as a person. You have no idea what it means for your entire behavorial routines when you completely discard the notion of ever wanting to be seen as a man again. You do not know what societal pressures and hormonal influences do to your ability to feel and to connect to people because you have never been on the other side of this. You do not know what it's like to go from allosexual to acespec within a matter of weeks when the cyproterone acetate kicks in. You do not know what it's like to make the switch from existing as somebody just seen as some dude to somebody constantly seen as various porn genres. You do not know what it's like to suddenly lose large parts of your agency, your credibility and your ability to not be talked over and silenced due to the fact that people now perceive you as a girl. But i do. I know all of this, and more, firsthand. My hatred of men, no, don't worry, not all men, only all men who feel the need to post garbage like yours, has a firm foundation in knowing what makes you tick. I did an A/B test on that and i didn't like the results. Sorry if that hurts two of the three feelings you're still allowed to have, but it is what it is. And when i put that into words, it sets you off and you lash out to defend the status quo.
You see, just like racism isn't exclusively the fault of some deplorable hicks in the KKK, patriarchy is not this thing that's only the fault of Andrew Tate and his incel minions, it's something every man is expected to play his little part in to uphold. Including you when you get mad about queer women venting about how mainstream society does relationships. That's you fortifying a power structure. That's you silencing dissent. Do you think you're beyond this? What gives you that idea when my post makes you feel as obviously called out as it did?
I also hate it how people in this thread are acting like men can’t control their emotions. Of course you can’t control who you’re attracted to, but you can control whatever comes after
Why are some insinuating that humans are wild animals
Of course you can’t control who you’re attracted to, but you can control whatever comes after
I find that the easiest way to get over romantic feelings for someone is to stop feeding energy to those emotions by reducing contact with them. That's incompatible with being close friends, at least in the short term. After things didn't work out with a girl I dated, we didn't talk for a month while we worked through things on our own terms, and now we're cautiously building a friendship. I certainly can't turn attraction on and off like a light switch.
It's pretty easy. Just be their friend. In my experience as a boring straight man, my women friends have gotten me laid more than I have myself. When you make friends, you make more friends. Ask them to hook you up with someone single.
Friends are nice to have. And it's ok if someone isn't interested in you. Move on, fuck their friends. lol
This whole struggle session has made it crystal clear that the west is pretty much guaranteed to descend into fascism. A lot of people basically seem to knee-jerk dismiss concerns people have about being in the friend zone, and without a legitimate leftist response to this, tons of alienated young men are going to find their way to reactionary figures and basically become the foot soldiers of fascism. There needs to be more concrete help for these alienated guys other than saying "it's all capitalism's fault that you feel that way" or saying "oh you even mention the friend zone? tHaT mEaNs YoU'rE aN iNcEl!" I mean yes capitalism has really alienated us and commodified dating but that's not gonna help the lonely guy who gets rejected all the time other than in an intellectual way. Also telling him that "you should just be content with life" is also not helpful either. I mean yeah you can be all Buddhist about it but would you say that to other disenfranchised people as well? "Hey sorry about the discrimination but it's better to just be content with life." Is this what an AES nation would do? Sounds like some idealist western shit rather than a principled materialist approach that takes into account the realities on the ground. The USSR industrialized, developed, and got rid of cyclical famines. China lifted millions out of poverty. They didn't just say "it's capitalism's fault that you're homeless" and then just leave it at that, they actually did concrete stuff. There needs to be concrete action done to deal with this issue other than mockery/dunking or simple platitudes like "hey just be yourself and be content."
Anyways, like I've said before, the west is doomed.
Im laughing so hard im crying, i ran into my partners room to read this to him omg thank you. this is the funniest thing ive read all month. comparing not getting laid to homelessness how the fuck are you not an incel?
below 22, at which dating is viewed as uncommon among most of the normal population anyway
?? who is your normal population, most people I grew up with started dating in high school
No, those who are lead to reactionary figures is irregardless of dating someone.
That seems essentialistic.
Not to mention so many of these people that complain about this are below 22, at which dating is viewed as uncommon among most of the normal population anyway
??? What are you talking about?
The caucasity of this post
Relationships are hard and people have all sorts of fucked up expectations of what a partner is and hang ups about communicating. I'm not in my 20s anymore and I'm just starting to explore the craft of remediating friendships/relationships. When I was younger, I had to discover sympathy for not wanting to fuck up a friendship because I cut people out so much more easily than I explain how inappropriate someone is acting. I would tear through a friendship turned relationship when they criticize me for something I don't feel is worthy of criticism and it's RIP Bozo for what we had before. This shit still makes me consider whether I'm aromantic because I'm prepared to just be alone rather than try to make a relationship work. A good friend can be a shitty room mate. If you're the shitty room mate and your friend wants to move in together that shit would be heartbreaking to hear because you'd need to immediately start processing the loss.
You should always say in no uncertain terms that you're into someone and play that hand. You have the one life to live and I imagine some people are happier in relationships. As long as you don't start a platonic friendship as a wolf in sheep's clothing, it's all fair game as I see it. If you decide that your newly grown feelings aren't reciprocated and you stop making an effort, whatever. If you don't bother to know them better after you confess from the get go, whatever. If you can keep newfound feelings to yourself and never confess, fair enough. There aren't rules to relationships. A wolf in sheep's clothing is the only thing that is bad manner.
I would love to have a friend but I'm busy here in the stranger zone
Friendship
I think there's a few different contexts that get lumped together here that can lead to some confusion.
dating (both parties are obviously flirtatious) followed by getting zoned or soft rejection leading to ghosting etc
thinking it's dating, but not both sides agree, so in the zone the whole time, just didn't realize it
actually friends, then trying to make it more, getting rejected leading to awkwardness etc
these are all very different scenarios that are conflated by the term in unhelpful ways
Just some food for thought.
e: what I'm getting at is that the term is providing cover for some seriously bad behaviors in a lot of cases, but not all necessarily, and this makes is pretty sus kinda like a dog whistle
And yet pretty much everyone I became platonic with I develop a crush on / slightly fall for if they remain cool.
I have trouble telling between my crushes and squishes sometimes, so I just choose to label the feelings based on whether the two of us feel like getting naughty. If we're not doing naughty stuff together then it's a squish, and I choose to be happy to be spending platonic time with them
Yeah the whole incel thing has really poisoned the well on a legitimate issue like this. It's kind of funny how some leftists will talk about context when it comes to the faults of former AES states but on other issues (especially ones like this, i.e. dating) they completely ignore context and sound like your average lib. Oh well I guess we all have to continue to grow.
I mean it works out for some people I suppose (for ex UlyssessT in this thread) but yeah I think remaining friends while still holding out hope is disingenuous.
I agree with everything you said, except this one here, every functioning long term relationship (and i mean decades long term) i saw in my life was evolved from this. Platonic friends are better at solving their problems in general, way better than people who came together cause they wanted to fuck each other.
While I have indeed been 'friend zone'd, I've had more than three platonic friendships turn into romantic relationships in my lifetime, which is the majority of my actual relationships. Obviously don't rely on it, maybe the key was that I went into all those friendships fully accepting that we might only ever be friends and that was fine.
It depends how long the platonic relationship has been. If it only been a few weeks or even months if you don't see each other often, moving over to a romantic relationship can go really well. If you're trying to turn a years long platonic relationship into a romantic one, yeah in most cases that I'd a fools errand.