Making Friends with Guys Without Having Them Fall for Me

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Ask yourself this question: "If I wasn't attractive, would these guys try to become my friends"

Personally, I do not believe in inter-gender friendships that occurs during adulthood (only in guy/girl friendships that start since childhood , and even those may turn into something else).

Many, and I say ...many guys try to approach girls via friendship. This is the usual friendship:
"I like that girl , but she doesn't seem sexually/romantically interested in me....hmmm i'll try to become a friend of her at first, maybe she'll start liking me!"

or even worse:

"I like those girls , but none of them seem sexually/romantically interested in me....hmmm i'll try to become a friend of them at first, maybe one of them will start liking me!"


In short , many (MANY) guys start friendship with girls based on these intentions - a big mistake that guys never learn: IF a girl doesn't sexually like a guy in the first place , even a hundreds of friendship years won't change this , attraction is either there or not , unless if the guy was unattractive fat boy and transformed later into a confident sexy athletic pornstar-like , but such changes are rare to occur in men.

In general , I have very little faith in guys-girls true friendships and I usually prefer to avoid them.

^Ummm...wrong I've had some really good guy friends.

Maybe you don't believe in guy-girl friendships but not everyone does. Not all guys becomes friends with girls based on looks and I've had some good friendships with guys.

You need to quit generalizing people and projecting yourself onto other people. Just because that's you doesn't mean that's everyone else.

I feel for you. I have pretty much the same question going in the 'Desire and the Destruction of Friendships' thread.

^^ That's why I said many and not 'all'.



I have never used such approach to approach girls but many do.So how I am projecting myself onto other about something that I never did/do? Weird how you interpret things.

^^ That's why I said many and not 'all'.



I have never used such approach to approach girls but many do.So how I am projecting myself onto other about something that I never did/do? Weird how you interpret things.

Your original statement was that you do not believe adults can form relationships based on friendship. Your generalisation was actually that most men use "friendship" as a ploy to get into people's pants. MissContrue appeared to be arguing with your statement (which was all-encompassing and unilateral) as opposed to your generalisation.

I would agree that you are projecting yourself onto others. You can not form relationships based on friendships as an adult, so you assume nobody else can.

^^ That's why I said many and not 'all'.



I have never used such approach to approach girls but many do.So how I am projecting myself onto other about something that I never did/do? Weird how you interpret things.

Clearly you have issues if you define friendships based on gender and not character.

Maybe using the phrase projecting yourself wasn't the best way to word your post...I apologize.

I also agree that yes there are guys that look for friends with benefits but I also think it's a little more complicated than that aspect alone.

You can't. Since the onus is on men to make the first move, many make friends with you because they're interested in you to begin with. And if you are the one who initiates conversation/friendship, many men will read that as a sign of sexual interest because that's precisely why they would initiate conversation/friendship with the opposite sex. The only way I can think of to decrease the chances of having men fall for you is to make yourself less attractive, which I don't recommend.

You'll have to live with the "frustration" of letting men down who fall for you and may very well have been in it for a relationship to begin with, and maybe having nothing more to do with them. I don't think you should take it all that personally either, in case you are. After all it's not necessarily because they aren't otherwise interested in you as a person, but your rejection may make a future friendship too awkward for them. Telling interested men that you're asexual when the issue arises may put many of them off, so by all means keep that up, but as you know it won't keep all of them away.

I've often heard older women claim that since their mid-thirties or so, they have become invisible to many men who would once have showed an interest in them. If this holds for you, then your issues may well be temporary.

Everyone has issues, and friendship must be based on many things but sexual attraction that's why gender is sometimes an issue.

You got it all wrong, I was not talking about guys seeking for FWBs (aka sex-buddies) but about guys who fall in love with a specific girl and start friendship with her in hoping that she'll love him one day.


Anyways , continuing this debate is pointless.

But how should I mention this? It's not like I usually talk about relationships with my guy friends. Our topic of conversation is usually very far from that. When do I bring it up?

Well it's hard to give specific answers, because i don't know how your social group interacts or what you do actually talk about. Generally, you can direct the conversation towards what you wish to share. Conversations can only be directed so much in any direction in a specific amount of time, so you have to wait for a conversation that is close enough. Small-talk and socialising in a group is actually ideal, because it's a lot easier to direct. Of course, it's much better to have a topic in mind (a goal) to direct towards, in which you can share information about yourself.

One such topic would be when guys are talking about who they like or who they find hot. This would be an ideal situation to say that you are not attracted to any men. You will more likely be questioned for having such a veiw, so you can elaborate as much as you wish.

You need to comment on stuff, that reveals information about yourself. When you talk about what genre's of movies you like, you could state you dislike romances, because you do not understand why two people would want to live with each other, let alone share a bed.

Men are perfectly capable of having a relationship that is based around friendship with someone. If they know someone is beyond their reach in a romantic way, then they will not even consider it. If they think someone is within reach however, they might be considering the idea for months before acting on it. When this happens you will definately lose a friend if you do not return thier feelings.

I'm going to flip your argument.

A woman approaches me about starting a romantic relationship and I tell her I'm only interested in platonic relationships at this point. She says she's not interested in dumping more emotional energy into a relationship that's not progressing in the direction she expected. She also emotionally distances herself because it's painful to be rejected, and she wants to focus on finding someone else interested in developing a one-on-one relationship.

So what do I do? I get upset that she can't understand how rejecting her benefits me. I complain that I can't understand why she won't just "get over it, flick some switch, and stop feeling the need to connect on a sexual level. I'm not losing any sleep over it, so why should she. Can't she just understand that I'm not really that into her, and as a girlfriend, she'd be a huge burden and distraction from all the other things I want to do. Can't she just understand her place in my life and stop trying to change things!

Then I complain about women, and spew out a bunch of stereotypical nonsense like them being all "mushy" and thinking with their "biological clocks". Of course, I still want to be friends with them because I find I have more interests in common with women then with men. But I'm upset because every time I tell these women that I don't see them as anything more than just a buddy, they decide to take a break to sort out their feelings. I mean, I told them straight up that I'm not interested in them as anything more than someone to hang out with when I need a friend. Why can't their behavior just conform to my needs?

TLDR version. They distance themselves because the relationship isn't progressing in a way that fulfills their needs, and I'm upset because their reaction isn't fulfilling my needs. Our biological wiring creates an occupational hazard in developing friends that have the potential for sexually attracted to each other. Let them leave; it separates the real friends from the guys looking for love in all the wrong places.

Okay.


In your example, i'm not getting impression you told this woman you were only interested in platonic relationships before she considered you as a possible partner, it sounds like you told her when she brought the issue up.


A true friend would understand why she needed the distance, a true friend would be more concerned with thier friends emotional state than their own. A friend would understand why someone could no longer continue a platonic relationship and how ending said relationship would be better for them in the long-run. When you have friends, you accept that they will distract you from "all the other things you want to do".


Most of your post is screaming ME ME ME ME ME ME ME! In each paragraph you are only concerned with how things affect yourself. I would suggest this might have more to do with you losing friends.


Relationships will not usually progress past a certain point if you let people know that you do not wish things to progress past said point. You can usually make sure via your actions that relationships do not go past a certain point as well. You cannot however, let a relationship form past a specific point and then expect people to backtrack.

I understand why the topic comes up a lot on this forum. But i can assure you that in most cases, it's because the aspie is not putting enough "maintenance" into a relationship. Not because they are lazy, but because they don't seem to understand they need to. If you want a relationship to go in a certain direction, you need to make it go in that direction.

I havn't always initiated a friendship with a girl simply because I've been labouring under the assumption that "eventually she may like me" - although I have done this many MANY times.. which I've had to learn the hard way, will NEVER happen if they're not interested in me sexually to begin with.

Sometimes it has been a genuine friendship and I've then started to find them attractive. What makes things even more confusing is that, a few times, I've not actually began to find them sexually attractive, it's simply that I've interpreted intense adoration of their personality as physical attraction... but I think that might be an aspie thing ie. not being able to make sense of my own emotions.

I've ruined so many friendships with girls and caused myself so much low self-esteem by constantly questioning myself due to their not finding me attractive. I think it's actually only as I've started to mature a bit more that I've just learn to deal with the fact that the girls I'm friends with aren't interested in me in THAT way and that I should just accept it. There will be plenty of girls who WILL find me attractive.

I'd say, with some confidence, that if the guys who DO fall for you, or have been harbouring ulterior motives the entire time, AREN'T very mature, or show signs that they probably won't accept you only being interested in being friends with them - it would be doing yourself and them a favour by simply being firm.. or maybe even "showing them the door".

As for preventing it from happening, that's never going to happen. There are always going to be men who find you attractive and a great deal of them will most likely try to become your friend first. That might just be the inevitable downside of beauty I'm afraid!

Be happy with the fact that there are people in this world who find you attractive and don't mourn the loss of friends who didn't value you enough as a person to stick around once you'd told them you wern't attracted to them. That's the best advice I can give...

Maybe you're not meeting the right guys.