sometimes when you’re friends with a dude, you get this feeling they want to be more than friends, and you don’t want to but you can’t reject them because they never come out and just say what they want. basically, the classic “friendzone” (ugh) situation that reddit-type dudes whine about constantly.
a conversation with someone on twitter reminded me i’ve had thoughts about this kind of drifting around in my mind for a while but i haven’t been able to express them very clearly.
to be a bit more specific, if a guy doesn’t just tell you straight up he wants to date you/have sex with you/whatever it’s difficult to reject him. there exists a sort of mutual agreement to talk as if feelings are platonic on both sides. if you just announce out of the blue “i don’t find you attractive”, most guys will reply with “um, okay? why are you saying that all of a sudden? we’re just friends” or something similar. even if they know why you announced it, they’ll still act like they don’t, just to save face.
and there is a type of guy who takes advantage of that.
a couple of months ago i was friends with this guy who i knew was interested in me. he asked me out once or twice, i said that i didn’t like him in that way and nor would i ever, and he said okay. but see, he continued to do little things that were, quite obviously romantic in nature, but were not explicitly stated as romantic. things like hugging me from behind, or getting me little gifts. i couldn’t reject these things without having the horrifically uncomfortable “why are you being paranoid? i’m just being friendly!” confrontation, so i was forced to passively accept them.
this is what “nice guys” do. they manipulate you into a situation where you have two choices: confront them and be told you’re paranoid and vain and reading too much into it or reluctantly allow these vague, inexplicit expressions of attraction and then be told you “led them on” because you didn’t verbally reject them. they choose to interpret your inaction as acceptance, and then make you feel pressured and guilty about it.
why? because they know if they actually just said “i like you”, you’d have the chance to reject them. so they take away the option. it is, essentially, like playing a game of chess where only one person is allowed to move their pieces. they force you to remain static while they work their way up to checkmating you.
As defined by urban dictionary, the friendzone is…
“When you are expected to support a girl you really like while she searches for a smarter, richer, and more handsome boyfriend. There is little you can do without feeling like a dick. All in all, one of the meanest things a girl can do, whether they mean it or not.”
and ”The perennial location of nice guys everywhere.”
Although this hypothetical situation could work both ways, friendzone is almost always applied to a man who is rejected by a woman. Therefore, there is something inherently unequal, something inherently sexist about the term “friendzone”. But what and why?
From my experience, this is what friend zone is. A “nice guy” pursues a woman, but isn’t forward with his intentions from the get-go like, say, a “jerk”. The woman is pleased to see a man who is interested in her not as a sexual object but as a human being and wishes for things to stay that way. The man is not satisfied with seeing the woman as a human being because being “expected to support a girl” is a bad deal if she’s not putting out.
Before I delve into the sociological aspects of this, I just want to point out that ”friendzone” is no more pleasant for a woman than it is a man. First, that is to say unrequited love works both ways, but the person who doesn’t return affections is considered mean only when she’s a woman. And second, what option does the woman have in a traditional “friendzone” situation? Just stop talking to a close friend to avoid “leading him on”? In high school, I found out my best friend of 2 years liked me. Having to tell him I didn’t feel the same way and being immediately ex-communicated via Facebook status (“Thanks for wasting my time”) was one of the worst things that ever happened to me. Were our two years of friendship invalid because I didn’t want anything more? Was all our time together really wasted because there was no hypothetical pay off?
Guys who do this and claim to be “nice guys” are the worst misogynists because of their sense of entitlement toward a woman. They make investments in property and expect their dividends. They are fake friends. They are selfish. And they will jump at the chance to vilify you and victimize themselves when their attempts at manipulation don’t work. Clearly, “friendzone” is the remnant of a phenomenon that has plagued women since the beginning of time: women are not independent creatures. Our love lives exist only in the context of a man’s desire. When we make independent decisions, we are subject to a host of derogatory terms. “Slut” is how we vilify a woman for exercising her right to say “yes”. “Friendzone” is how we vilify a woman for exercising her right to say “no”.
I’ve seen that last line popping around, and it is wonderfully written.
Here is The Way It Works: A Primer by Brian Gefrich
- You are nice to people because people should be nice to each other.
- You are good to people because then everyone’s lives are a bit better.
- If you meet a person you are interested in romantically or sexually, you will already be treating them nicely as per the above.
- If they are in a position where they would be open to a relationship, you make your intentions clear. This is not done through the simple acts of kindness or friendship you would perform for anyone else, make use of the culturally-accepted forms (flowers, ask out on a date, just tell them straight-up, etc)
- If they say ‘no’ in any form, then that’s that, but you do not punish them by treating them as less than a person. Remember above, you are being nice to everyone.
- If they say ‘yes’ in any form, if it’s a relationship or sex once on a whim or anything in-between, you don’t then get to stop being nice to them. They are still a person.
If you use your kindness as a form of pre-payment for sex, you are treating the object of your desire as less than a person, you are demeaning them by thinking that their sexuality can be purchased, and you are prostituting your own humanity.
This may make you a misogynist, yes, but more than that it makes you really terrible at being a person.
