If I hear one more person tell me they’ve been “friend-zoned” as if they’ve been shipped off to a remote city in Northern Ireland to live alone for a decade, I might tear my hair out.
Friendship isn’t a bargaining chip for your relationship or your hook-up desires. It’s not a default connection you have to endure in order to get what you really want. And it certainly isn’t a “zone” you don’t want to be in.
You’re either friends with someone or you aren’t. If you are friends with them, but you also want to touch their hands and stick your tongue down their throat, that’s cool. We all want to do that with someone at some point.
But the thing is, if you want to get naked with your wonderful friend but they don’t want to get naked with you, as much as that really sucks, you have to face it. You don’t get to use the term “friend zone” as an excuse for their disinterest. Maybe they just don’t like you that way, or maybe they like a different friend.
But if you are their friend and you like them, but they don’t like you back, you can still be their friend! In contrast, if you like someone who doesn’t reciprocate your feelings, and you complain that you’ve been “friend-zoned” until the moon turns green, you were never really friends. Friendship isn’t conditional and you can’t use the “friend zone” as an excuse for why someone wasn’t interested in you. That’s not friendship.
A 2013 article in Psychology Today listed ways out of this mythical “friend zone.”
“One of the reasons people end up being ‘just friends’ is that they are simply not attractive to the other person they desire. Fortunately, people can learn to be more attractive physically,” the article said.
Not only do I take offence to this article because the author implied it’s only women who friend-zone men, but it’s simply not true. This statement implies that someone chooses their significant other based on looks. Thanks, Psychology Today, but I prefer a funny guy to one with a six-pack, and I think many would say the same.
The “friend zone” is often used to make females feel bad for not wanting to date or have sex with their male friends.
Recently, Lauren Curry wrote in a puckermob.com article: “Citizens of the world, now that it’s officially 2015, can we collectively stop using the term ‘friend zone’ to categorize the men who, after shamefully objectifying their female friends, are still demanding social vindication?”
I’m not sure about referring to men as the only gender that uses the term, but I agree that social vindication is the only reason this term still exists.
If you go to the bar and walk up to someone and they turn you down, you walk away with your head held high. You certainly don’t complain they’re bar-zoning you. That would be ridiculous, right?
You can’t become friends with someone because you like them or want to have a pants-off-dance-off with them, then get upset when they don’t reciprocate and claim you have been shoved in a metaphorical corner. That’s deceitful. Maybe that person truly thought you were their friend? Maybe they truly liked you as a person, just not as a significant other. You don’t get to socially shame them for not wanting to kiss you.
We need to drop this phrase. If you like someone, tell them. Or don’t. Do what you want, but if you plan to call them your friend, actually be their friend. Friends are awesome. Sometimes they bring you coffee or hugs. It’s totally worth it.
