To me, the “friend zone” is an easy concept. It basically means someone isn’t attracted to you. They like you—if they didn’t, you wouldn’t be considered friends—but they’ve ruled you out as a prospective romantic partner.
Either you were never attractive to begin with, or you were superficially attractive, and once they got to know you, they changed their mind. I, fr'instance, am attracted to brains. Beauty may get my attention, but intelligence holds my attention. So when I meet a woman, I might be attracted up to the minute she opens her mouth. Then I find out her character, and that determines which category she goes into.
Sometimes she’s a fool, meaning she doesn’t think things through, or invests all her thinking into silly things, like fashion or gossip or popular culture or sports. Sometimes she’s evil: She spends a lot of time manipulating her “friends,” or plotting against her “enemies,” or otherwise trying to transform her life into a bad soap opera. Sometimes she’s spiritually immature: She’s uncommitted to her religion, and lacks balance, self-control, emotional control, generosity, patience, peace, or love—and I don’t see her changing anytime soon, and I certainly don’t want her to change for my sake, but Jesus’s. And sometimes she has other habits and beliefs which I find irritating. I won’t get into a laundry list, but there are certain things which kill my attraction like someone shooting out a lightbulb with a pellet gun.
If she’s family, underage, or married, duh: Friend zone. If she’s really annoying, or evil, I don’t even want to know her. If she’s dense, or immature, or lightly annoying, she’s going into the friend zone, and she’s not coming out. If she’s already in a relationship (’cause I don’t interfere with relationships), or she’s a coworker or student (’cause I won’t date coworkers or students), she’s undateable, but not entirely in the friend zone because there’s a remote chance circumstances may change. (Unless they change badly.) Everybody else is dateable.
As usual, I have analyzed the heck out of how I friend-zone people. Others haven’t. That’s why they don’t understand how it works: They don’t understand how they friend-zone anyone, nor do they understand why they’re in the friend zone when they really, really don’t want to be.
I have a pen-pal (well, more accurately, an email-pal) who has been going out of his mind for the past two years because he’s infatuated by his roommate. His feelings aren’t reciprocated. He’s in the friend zone. He knows no way out of it.
“Assume there isn’t a way out of it, and move on,” I advised him. “Meet someone else. Stop wasting your time trying to get her attention. That’s going nowhere. Accept you’re in the friend zone, go through the five stages of grief, and move on with your life. That, or hit her on the head so hard, she comes down with amnesia and doesn’t remember you, and you can try to convince her you’re really her boyfriend. But actually don’t do that. It only works in movies. Plus it’s a felony.”
He decided to try something just as dumb: He gave an ultimatum. He told her exactly how he felt about her, and demanded she do something to reciprocate, or just end things. She picked ending things: She kicked him out of the house. He moved out last week, and is only now going through the five stages of grief. Right now he’s on anger. He’s not pissed with me (though he might be, once he reads this): He can’t understand why she couldn’t just say, as in the movies, “Why, I’ve loved you all along! Why did you never say anything?” and then jumped his bones.
Infatuation makes a lot of people highly delusional about the friend zone. Men especially—or at least that’s been my experience, ’cause I hear the men’s side of this story far more often than I hear the women’s side. “Why can’t she just realize I’m right here, right in front of her, and fall in love with me instead of those douchebags she’s always falling for?” Simple: She’s not attracted to you. Probably never was. Likely never will be. She is, however, really interested in the sort of guys you consider douchey.
This whole “Why can’t she see me?” mentality presumes she should find you attractive. Why? What is it about you that she should unquestionably find attractive? Because it’s clearly not working on her.
Is it that you’re nice? If nice worked, she wouldn’t date douches. You’re attracted to niceness; not she. I know from experience. I’ve been interested in certain women, and was nice to them (and this was back when I wasn’t nice at all), and got nowhere. It wasn’t ’cause nice guys finish last. It’s ’cause some women aren’t into nice. They like guys who are obnoxiously full of themselves. There’s just something about that personality which they find strong and appealing.
(And women: There are a lot of guys who are attracted to niceness. When you complain, “I wasn’t flirting with him; I was only being nice,” you don’t realize that to a guy who’s attracted to niceness, you were flirting with him. So, heads up.)
Yeah, the woman you’re interested in might claim, after a string of failed relationships with douches, “I wish I could find a nice guy.” And you’ll get your hopes up. But she’s not being honest with herself. She doesn’t want a nice guy. She wants an honest douche. She wants a guy who’s still a jerk, but unlike the previous jerks she’s dated, she wants one who won’t lie to her, who won’t just have sex with whoever will let him, who doesn’t treat her as disposable. This actually counts as “nice” in her book. And that’s still not you.
Nice attracts people who are into niceness. Though you’d assume otherwise, it doesn’t even necessarily attract nice people. Some jerks like nice people. I know; a douchette found me fascinating for the longest time, even though I tried to nudge her away, nicely. But my niceness was why she wouldn’t bug off. I had to get rude. But I digress.
The reason you’re in the friend zone is, plain and simple, she’s not attracted to you. That’s why I put people in the friend zone; that’s why you do it; that’s why everyone does it. It’s likely not anything you can fix. Even if you could change for her, that won’t solve anything: Can you trust someone who’s willing to alter their personality for you? Can you tell whether it’s real change, or just an act? Change for Jesus; change for yourself; but not another person. Don’t bother. Just move on.
“But I’ve known people who started as friends, and then fell in love.” Of course you have. But those people were never friend-zoned. They were always attracted to one another, but couldn’t date for whatever reason. I’ve had “friends” whom I couldn’t date for one reason or another; then circumstances changed and I could date them, and sometimes did. Saying, “Aww, you were friends first,” sounds romantic, but isn’t the entire story. More accurately, there was mutual attraction, but bad timing. But no friend zone.
My email-pal is pretty insistent he doesn’t friend-zone anyone. He claims he finds potential in every woman. He won’t rule out anyone he knows (save, of course, family members. Well, unless they’re really hot cousins. His words, not mine.) While he thinks this sounds magnanimous of him, to me it means he’s not all that discriminating: He’d date a foolish woman, or an evil one. All he cares about is the companionship. Or the nooky.
But I don’t entirely believe him. More than likely there are women he knows whom he’d never date; never even think of dating. He doesn’t find them attractive at all, and unconsciously friend-zones them.
And because my email-pal believes he’s so unprejudiced, everyone else ought to be just as unprejudiced. Especially the object of his infatuation. The fact she won’t let him out of the friend zone is just so stingy, so ungenerous, of her. Why can’t she find him attractive? Why can’t she turn off her repugnance to whatever it is about him she finds unattractive, accept his feelings, conjure up a few feelings of her own, and be with him?
Um… because nobody works that way. He doesn’t either. Unless you’re suffering from some mental disorder, there are just gonna be people in life whom you’re not attracted to. You might love them, but you’re never gonna have romantic feelings for them; you’re never gonna want them. And others will feel the same way about you. Deal with it. Move on and find someone else.
Moving out was the best thing for him.