Question about the 'friendzone'

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Really? No wonder Im unattractive lol.

I like women who are assertive.

She should tell him to stop
I think its highly inappropriate to let someone other then your SO Spoil you

I agree.

I don't really regard a SO off-limits unless she's married. There's a manipulation trick where a guy talking to a girl in a relationship asks "Why isn't your bf here right now?" There's this weird honor system that says hands off if someone is involved, but not every bf/gf is really good for someone in a relationship with them. Like it or not, a partner can leave for ANY reason at any time. So would I pursue a woman in a relationship under certain circumstances? You bet!

If the situation were reversed, say someone was isolating my SO, I'd put a stop to it if I could. Giving her gifts I couldn't afford, spoiling her, and she accepte it? You can KEEP her, dude! Take her, because she'll dump you as soon as another guy does it. A counter-tactic would be invite the guy to dinner with the two of you and lavish him with a gift of equal/greater value to pay back the "debt." Things will get WEIRD and he'll eventually go away. Giving extravagant gifts to someone already in a relationship is an insult to the bf who isn't able to do that himself. So repay the idiot in kind and make him go away.

Oh, and this works for all your mutual frenemies. My SO has a female friend who is trying to isolate her by giving her expensive gifts (expensive luggage as a start). It's meant to insult me, it's obvious, and tricky to fight since I don't make much money. People (usually men) make the mistake of trying to outspend a rival to keep the SO's interest. It always fails. Make like a Lannister and always pay your debts!

This is weirdly paranoid, possessive, and materialistic. Maybe your SO's girlfriend just likes to buy nice things for her friends because she has the means to do so and why not share the wealth with people you care about? How is that "isolating" her? Taking a gift between girlfriends as a personal insult to you is weird.

I understand how you might see it that way. The short answer is past history. She came from an abusive relationship, is dissatisfied with her current marriage, views all men as enemies/necessary evil, and is resentful of couples who appear to have it together. I can't really hold all of it against her. Not entirely. But I can't ignore that it's made her an abuser. She buys expensive things for my SO to make her feel obligated to spend time away from her other friends and family.

The insult thing isn't weird at all. People try to upstage each other all the time. I've learned not to get emotionally involved when it happens. That doesn't bother me. Attacks on the integrity of my family and relationship do demand my attention, though.

She's not the first girl friend that tried to split us up, either. You just have to take time to assess your enemies and how best to completely destroy them. My SO had gone to bed while I spent the next hour or so just listening to her friend talk. When I finally told her "good night," she thought I was flirting with her (which was what she told my SO). I wasn't flirting, but SHE thought I was. That was all that mattered. That RADICALLY changed the dynamic of our relationship. She has since remarried. So not long ago I needed a place to crash for the night while out of town. I brought along a nice bottle of wine as a gift, and the 4 of us spent most of the night drinking and talking. It was like she wasn't even the same person. And she hasn't tried to interfere since.

Current situation is not different. She's placing my SO in emotional debt. All I have to do is figure out how to either balance the budget or turn the tables. Always pay your debts.

A lot of this comes through experience, and I'm not alone. Check out the 48 Laws of Power, particularly #1, #10, #13, #15, and #40. That, and Matthew 7:11-12 from the Bible. Jesus Himself pointed out that evil, self-centered people know how to do good for themselves and their own children. So if you're looking for the benefits of reciprocity, you have to invest in others without the expectation of anything in return. Play off of the greed of others, be generous, and you will own them. There is no substitute for the Golden Rule.

You say she's "placing your SO in emotional debt"--but how do you know that is her motivation for giving gifts to her friend? Has she told you or your SO this? Because it's pretty common for friends to exchange gifts, or for friends who know they have more financial resources than their friends to give extravagant gifts without expecting the same in return. This is not unheard of and yeah it IS weird that you are taking that personally and making it about you rather than about your SO's friend's generosity. I myself am rather poor and have had friends in the past (and have a friend to this day) who is/are better off financially than me, and they spend money on me sometimes in ways that they know I can't repay and they are cool with that. It doesn't create any expectations because they do it because it makes them feel good to give to their friends, not because they expect something in return. If I won the lottery one day and suddenly had lots of money to spare, it would make me really happy to be able to share that with friends and buy them nice things. Generosity feels good, that's why most people give things. It's self-serving in a way, but not in the way you are saying. Most people don't give gifts to emotionally manipulate the people they care about, they give gifts to see the smile on the face of the person that they care about when they see the nice gift they just received.

I really don't understand where you're coming from at all, being so suspicious of gift-giving between friends.

The friend zone doesn't exist. It was created by people who think they are entitled to more than friends.

It exists in a sense that the person you admire can't find you attractive and never will no matter how much deep the friendsip grows and no matter how much time you send with this person.

It's something pre-determined almost from the first time you meet the person. Who sees you ugly, will always see you ugly.

It also exist then it means that a person is aware of your feelings and they take advantage of it. It's one of the definitions, at least.

So with what's been discussed friends give gifts. So if a guy who is more wealthy than a girl spoils her. Should she till tell him to stop? What if he is doing it out of friendship?

My posts are long enough without going into ALL the details. Suffice it to say I know what she's trying to do and I don't appreciate it. Something about her always creeped me out. Was I jealous? Something else wrong in my thinking? Law 1 from 48 Laws says "Never outshine the master." It's natural to feel threatened when you're one-upped. Read up on Nicolas Fouquet: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Fouquet So it's not unusual to feel that way. The question for me is do I have a good reason to feel we're being abused?

Law 40 is "despise the free lunch." In other words, anything of value is worth paying for in full. Free stuff makes people uncomfortable because it comes with the expectation of something in return. Gifts put people in emotional debt. If you can't pay the giver in cold hard cash, you pay in time. The greater the value, the more time is expected, and that can lead to the giver isolating the "friend" from other friends and family. That's not being a friend. That's being an abuser.

Dating operates on that principle, hopefully without the abusive element. A man asks a woman out. He wants her company and a chance to get to know each other. Where you go on a date and what you do balances out with how much one values the company of the other. The exchange is completed when they part ways and nothing more is expected. Men who don't really value a woman's worth simply in terms of spending time with her will put her in emotional debt and demand sex as repayment. In REALITY, she owes him nothing, because he's being presumptuous by hitting her with the old bait-and-switch. There will be no sex and no second date. Beware the free lunch!

It depends on the situation. There's nothing wrong with gifts, and wealth/generosity has nothing to do with it. It's the intentions of the giver that are in question. She should tell him to stop if she wants to stay with her bf, and send stuff back if he persists. Nothing wrong with friendship, but if the friend is taking the role of the bf in buying special gifts, then it has to stop. If she likes the gifts so much and doesn't care enough about her bf to consider his feelings, she should end the relationship.

There are always exceptions. We accept nice gifts from people all the time that are beyond our means, and that's all, like, just saying thanks for all the nice things people think we do. Perhaps people have been emotionally indebted to us when we just thought we were being nice or just doing our jobs, but nevertheless we just try not to disappoint people who are nice to us. Maybe you have a rich uncle or your dad's best friend or someone who has always lavished you with nice things. Or a best friend who helped you through some tough stuff when you were kids or in college. I don't begrudge anyone that. I just think it's wrong to let someone try to buy you if you're not really up for sale.

Oh my goodness, I haven't seen you in a while.

Welcome back, HB! How have you been?

This.

Giving gifts is a known courtship thing.

These "Laws" you keep quoting may be the way you see the world and the way you operate, but I assure you it is not the way that most other people operate--unless they are extremely emotionally manipulative, and thankfully those types of people are in the minority. I give gifts because it feels good to make the people I care about happy giving them things they want/need/find useful--and that is for the most part why most other people do it (there are other factors like culture, but mostly it's that generosity feels good to most people so they give things to feel good). Just because your thinking is rather Machiavellian, it is a (common) logical fallacy to assume that is how most other people operate. It's a common mistake that most humans make, thinking other people think and feel exactly how we do in similar situations--which works in the favour of NTs, being the majority, but not in the favour of people like us--but it is a fallacy nonetheless.

Also, in regards to dating, this is a false assumption: "Where you go on a date and what you do balances out with how much one values the company of the other." Where people choose to go on a date depends not on how much they "value" the company of the other, but usually on what activities they enjoy doing and wish to share with others. For example, my preferred activities on dates are trail-walking/hiking or going for coffee/tea, both because I enjoy walking and tea and want to be with someone who shares those likes, and also because they provide the opportunity to talk quite a bit and thereby get to know the person better. The choice of venue has absolutely nothing to do with how much I "value" the guy's company. I won't know how much I value his company until I get to know him, and that takes time and lots of conversation.

You seem to be doing a whole lot of mistakenly projecting your own ideas and values onto other people. Not everyone functions the same way you do, and until you realise that you're going to keep making social mistakes.