5 Relationship Zones Worse than 'the Friend Zone'
The_Face_of_Boo
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Age: 43
Gender: Non-binary
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Location: Beirut, Lebanon.
He described a scenario where someone was attempting to psychologically manipulate a person into sleeping with them without letting them know that's their intent. That's creeper behavior regardless of gender or whether it's done for limerence or sex.
If it's simply done for a one night stand so you can get another notch on your bedpost or to fulfill a relationship/marriage/kid fantasy scenario in your head........it doesn't matter. In fact, I'm willing to bet that many people find the latter even creepier than the former.
He wasn't describing some poor innocent love-shy dude. I find it funny that every time this "Nice Guy(TM)/Friendzone" thing comes up, there's always someone who derails it with a semantics argument. If the person described doesn't sound like you, then nobodies referring to you. However if you constantly feel the need to call yourself "Nice" and your romantic rivals jerks and/or using terms like "friendzone" un-ironically, some introspection may be in order because being "Love-shy" ain't the real problem.
Except that if you read that paragraph again, he has not even mentioned the possibility someone may for some reason not be able to bring himself admit his feelings to the person. According to what he wrote, if you have fallen in love with a friend, then there are only three possibility, either you are honest about your feelings to them, attempt to wait for the feeling to pass, or manipulate them into falling in love with you (or sleep with you, one of the two), there is no mention of a fourth possibility that you may be suffering from anxiety issues, lacking in social skills or even suffering from social phobia that may prevent you from admitting your feelings openly. Therefore, he is lumping all those people into the category of the guy manipulating the person simply due to the fact that those possibilities are not specifically mentions and they don't fall into the other two categories. So, the "innocent love-shy dude" is actually included in the category of the guy who's trying to psychologically manipulate the other person.
I am therefore not playing with semantics, I'm reacting to what was written. He didn't specifically say that he was only referring to guys who call their romantic rivals "jerks" etc.
Which is the most common scenario in the unrequited love cases.
Jono is right in his criticism.
He described a scenario where someone was attempting to psychologically manipulate a person into sleeping with them without letting them know that's their intent. That's creeper behavior regardless of gender or whether it's done for limerence or sex.
If it's simply done for a one night stand so you can get another notch on your bedpost or to fulfill a relationship/marriage/kid fantasy scenario in your head........it doesn't matter. In fact, I'm willing to bet that many people find the latter even creepier than the former.
He wasn't describing some poor innocent love-shy dude. I find it funny that every time this "Nice Guy(TM)/Friendzone" thing comes up, there's always someone who derails it with a semantics argument. If the person described doesn't sound like you, then nobodies referring to you. However if you constantly feel the need to call yourself "Nice" and your romantic rivals jerks and/or using terms like "friendzone" un-ironically, some introspection may be in order because being "Love-shy" ain't the real problem.
Except that if you read that paragraph again, he has not even mentioned the possibility someone may for some reason not be able to bring himself admit his feelings to the person. According to what he wrote, if you have fallen in love with a friend, then there are only three possibility, either you are honest about your feelings to them, attempt to wait for the feeling to pass, or manipulate them into falling in love with you (or sleep with you, one of the two), there is no mention of a fourth possibility that you may be suffering from anxiety issues, lacking in social skills or even suffering from social phobia that may prevent you from admitting your feelings openly. Therefore, he is lumping all those people into the category of the guy manipulating the person simply due to the fact that those possibilities are not specifically mentions and they don't fall into the other two categories. So, the "innocent love-shy dude" is actually included in the category of the guy who's trying to psychologically manipulate the other person.
I am therefore not playing with semantics, I'm reacting to what was written. He didn't specifically say that he was only referring to guys who call their romantic rivals "jerks" etc.
Which is the most common scenario in the unrequited love cases.
Jono is right in his criticism.
Why is it that so many react with anger to unrequited love?
I'm guessing that in some cases it may be that anger is an easier emotion to deal with than heartbreak; does that make sense?
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Authentic cadence: V-I
Plagal cadence: IV-I
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Alot of these things are essential useless. The friends zone is about extracting yourself out of a relationship you are getting used in. Your giving all the time while the other party has no intention of ever giving back. The reason you feel bad in a "friends zone" is because your getting used. You feel bad for being treated badly, just stop it.
One that is worse is a narcissist, they are also a user but with no limits. That means there are no limits to all forms of criminality. The friends zone has limits based on perceived social conventions.
KWifler
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Joined: 11 Aug 2011
Age: 38
Gender: Male
Posts: 236
Location: Bellingham, WA, USA, Earth
I'm in the "I don't have enough energy to have friends" zone.
Also I am often put into the "preemptively rejected before showing interest" zone.
Can two people "friend zone" each other? Or does one person have to have feelings for the other?
Otherwise they are both just friends and not in a zone.
Great article by the way.
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Still alive...
Curious, because my definition of friend zoned (and worse) is precisely what happens AFTER you tell her your feeling for her.
You can't claim that you were friends with a girl and she went out with another guy thus you're 'friend zoned'.
He described a scenario where someone was attempting to psychologically manipulate a person into sleeping with them without letting them know that's their intent. That's creeper behavior regardless of gender or whether it's done for limerence or sex.
If it's simply done for a one night stand so you can get another notch on your bedpost or to fulfill a relationship/marriage/kid fantasy scenario in your head........it doesn't matter. In fact, I'm willing to bet that many people find the latter even creepier than the former.
He wasn't describing some poor innocent love-shy dude. I find it funny that every time this "Nice Guy(TM)/Friendzone" thing comes up, there's always someone who derails it with a semantics argument. If the person described doesn't sound like you, then nobodies referring to you. However if you constantly feel the need to call yourself "Nice" and your romantic rivals jerks and/or using terms like "friendzone" un-ironically, some introspection may be in order because being "Love-shy" ain't the real problem.
Except that if you read that paragraph again, he has not even mentioned the possibility someone may for some reason not be able to bring himself admit his feelings to the person. According to what he wrote, if you have fallen in love with a friend, then there are only three possibility, either you are honest about your feelings to them, attempt to wait for the feeling to pass, or manipulate them into falling in love with you (or sleep with you, one of the two), there is no mention of a fourth possibility that you may be suffering from anxiety issues, lacking in social skills or even suffering from social phobia that may prevent you from admitting your feelings openly. Therefore, he is lumping all those people into the category of the guy manipulating the person simply due to the fact that those possibilities are not specifically mentions and they don't fall into the other two categories. So, the "innocent love-shy dude" is actually included in the category of the guy who's trying to psychologically manipulate the other person.
I am therefore not playing with semantics, I'm reacting to what was written. He didn't specifically say that he was only referring to guys who call their romantic rivals "jerks" etc.
Which is the most common scenario in the unrequited love cases.
Jono is right in his criticism.
A social phobia is on potential cause of the issue, it's certainly not some mutually exclusive fourth possibility. A love shy person can engage in all 3 behaviors as a result of his love shyness.
You may have really high empathy, but you lose the contest on sympathy completely.
You're an adult. When you say something that's out of line, I'm not going to coddle you like your some kind of child who doesn't know any better. You won't learn s**t that way.
He described a scenario where someone was attempting to psychologically manipulate a person into sleeping with them without letting them know that's their intent. That's creeper behavior regardless of gender or whether it's done for limerence or sex.
If it's simply done for a one night stand so you can get another notch on your bedpost or to fulfill a relationship/marriage/kid fantasy scenario in your head........it doesn't matter. In fact, I'm willing to bet that many people find the latter even creepier than the former.
He wasn't describing some poor innocent love-shy dude. I find it funny that every time this "Nice Guy(TM)/Friendzone" thing comes up, there's always someone who derails it with a semantics argument. If the person described doesn't sound like you, then nobodies referring to you. However if you constantly feel the need to call yourself "Nice" and your romantic rivals jerks and/or using terms like "friendzone" un-ironically, some introspection may be in order because being "Love-shy" ain't the real problem.
Except that if you read that paragraph again, he has not even mentioned the possibility someone may for some reason not be able to bring himself admit his feelings to the person. According to what he wrote, if you have fallen in love with a friend, then there are only three possibility, either you are honest about your feelings to them, attempt to wait for the feeling to pass, or manipulate them into falling in love with you (or sleep with you, one of the two), there is no mention of a fourth possibility that you may be suffering from anxiety issues, lacking in social skills or even suffering from social phobia that may prevent you from admitting your feelings openly. Therefore, he is lumping all those people into the category of the guy manipulating the person simply due to the fact that those possibilities are not specifically mentions and they don't fall into the other two categories. So, the "innocent love-shy dude" is actually included in the category of the guy who's trying to psychologically manipulate the other person.
I am therefore not playing with semantics, I'm reacting to what was written. He didn't specifically say that he was only referring to guys who call their romantic rivals "jerks" etc.
Which is the most common scenario in the unrequited love cases.
Jono is right in his criticism.
A social phobia is on potential cause of the issue, it's certainly not some mutually exclusive fourth possibility. A love shy person can engage in all 3 behaviors as a result of his love shyness.
That is if you fall in to the "All men know how to manipulate women!/All women know how to manipulate men!" dichotomy.
There are men who spoil the whole bunch by having a natural desire to manipulate women. Yes.
There are men who seem to be able to but the fact is he is irresistible is the case, and is misinterpreted as being manipulative. Yes.
All men know how to manipulate women to some degree, or will try to figure out how. No.
Some men just fall in love and ask the girl on a date and it works. No manipulation.
There are women who spoil the whole bunch by having the natural desire to manipulate men. Yes.
There are women who seem to be able to but just like to men a lot and are irresistible, this misinterpreted as being manipulative. Yes.
All women know how manipulate men to some degree, or will figure out how. No.
Some women just are able to find the right guy and there is mutual attraction. No manipulation.
Yes a man can be love shy, but why would he manipulate women to love him if he is love shy?
There are probably tons of cases I will never understand, but manipulating women to love you usually means
you want to use them. If you genuinely wanted what was best for them, you would tolerate being a friend.
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If dudes would come in and say "I have romantic feelings for a friend, friendship isn't enough for me but I don't know how (or am too scared) to make my feelings known, does anyone have any advice?" rather than "Why do women ignore me and go for guys I disapprove of? What is wrong with them?" then I promise that people's reactions would be much more sympathetic.
I'm not disagreeing that being in that position sucks. Having strong feelings for a woman that you can't just shut off, knowing she doesn't feel the same, having to see her go off with other guys. I've been there, and it hurts. Really bad.
But the issue, the reason people react so poorly when the "friendzone" comes up, is that the guy bringing it up pretty much always tries to focus on how the woman is doing him wrong by not reciprocating his feelings (or how all women are doing him wrong, because the same thing seems to keep happening over and over again to these guys) when what he should be focused on is how to get out of that situation (if it is really making him that unhappy, then cutting contact may be the best option) and how to avoid ending up there again (mostly by being more straightforward about what he wants).
This just about sums it up perfectly.........
If you're constantly finding yourself in the same situation, then it's something you're doing not something other people are doing to you. You're making yourself the victim.
Some of you guys might think I'm insensitive but it's actually quite the opposite. My advice comes from a place of high affective empathy. I've been there. Lonely, depressed and on a cognitive feedback loop that only reinforced my insecurities. I took positive steps to get myself out of it. It took trial, error, heartbreak and a ton of painful introspection along the way but I emerged a far more balanced and likable person. The kind of person girls would like to date and/or be actual friends with. I also made plenty of guy friends along the way because i didn't just try to limit my personal social improvement to dating.
I am willing to bet that the problems you had was because of the social ineptness that forms part of Asperger syndrome, not because you were a jerk. Many aspires fail to have romantic relationships not because of "love-shyness" per say but because they don't know how to interact with other people, which is the same reason why they sometimes fail to even have friendships. This undue difficulty in social interaction forms part of the diagnosis in Asperger syndrome. If you managed to learn those social skills, thats great but it still seems counterproductive to imply that others are jerks for not yet having learnt them. Yes, it's still possible to learn them but it's still nonetheless part of the disorder.
People aren't jerks for not having social skills. I feel like you're deliberately twisting my words now.
They are jerks if they blame others for there inability/`unwillingness to learn. They become unbearable to be around (i.e. undateable) when they let their social problems make them bitter and miserable. Pity will not get you dates or friends.
99% of the time, a person who keep ending up in the exact same situation does so because he hasn't actually done anything fundamentally different to change the outcome. I suggest reading the post I was responding to again.
You may have really high empathy, but you lose the contest on sympathy completely.
You're an adult. When you say something that's out of line, I'm not going to coddle you like your some kind of child who doesn't know any better. You won't learn sh** that way.
Sympathy doesn't mean you need to coddle me. I was talking about your demeanor.
Being sympathetic, is caring about that person and what they are going through.
Being empathetic just means you know how it feels to be them.
You sound nice till someone thinks they don't need to listen to you.
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comedic burp
He described a scenario where someone was attempting to psychologically manipulate a person into sleeping with them without letting them know that's their intent. That's creeper behavior regardless of gender or whether it's done for limerence or sex.
If it's simply done for a one night stand so you can get another notch on your bedpost or to fulfill a relationship/marriage/kid fantasy scenario in your head........it doesn't matter. In fact, I'm willing to bet that many people find the latter even creepier than the former.
He wasn't describing some poor innocent love-shy dude. I find it funny that every time this "Nice Guy(TM)/Friendzone" thing comes up, there's always someone who derails it with a semantics argument. If the person described doesn't sound like you, then nobodies referring to you. However if you constantly feel the need to call yourself "Nice" and your romantic rivals jerks and/or using terms like "friendzone" un-ironically, some introspection may be in order because being "Love-shy" ain't the real problem.
Except that if you read that paragraph again, he has not even mentioned the possibility someone may for some reason not be able to bring himself admit his feelings to the person. According to what he wrote, if you have fallen in love with a friend, then there are only three possibility, either you are honest about your feelings to them, attempt to wait for the feeling to pass, or manipulate them into falling in love with you (or sleep with you, one of the two), there is no mention of a fourth possibility that you may be suffering from anxiety issues, lacking in social skills or even suffering from social phobia that may prevent you from admitting your feelings openly. Therefore, he is lumping all those people into the category of the guy manipulating the person simply due to the fact that those possibilities are not specifically mentions and they don't fall into the other two categories. So, the "innocent love-shy dude" is actually included in the category of the guy who's trying to psychologically manipulate the other person.
I am therefore not playing with semantics, I'm reacting to what was written. He didn't specifically say that he was only referring to guys who call their romantic rivals "jerks" etc.
Which is the most common scenario in the unrequited love cases.
Jono is right in his criticism.
A social phobia is on potential cause of the issue, it's certainly not some mutually exclusive fourth possibility. A love shy person can engage in all 3 behaviors as a result of his love shyness.
That doesn't make any sense. One is not going to be open with their feelings if something is preventing them from doing so, that's what a social phobia is. On the other hand, "waiting it out", implies that one has made conscious decision not to act on ones feelings, so anyone who is "love shy" or has a social phobia is not likely to do that either. So, are people automatically manipulators simply for being head over heels for someone and having a social phobia? Because that's what this is implying.
If dudes would come in and say "I have romantic feelings for a friend, friendship isn't enough for me but I don't know how (or am too scared) to make my feelings known, does anyone have any advice?" rather than "Why do women ignore me and go for guys I disapprove of? What is wrong with them?" then I promise that people's reactions would be much more sympathetic.
I'm not disagreeing that being in that position sucks. Having strong feelings for a woman that you can't just shut off, knowing she doesn't feel the same, having to see her go off with other guys. I've been there, and it hurts. Really bad.
But the issue, the reason people react so poorly when the "friendzone" comes up, is that the guy bringing it up pretty much always tries to focus on how the woman is doing him wrong by not reciprocating his feelings (or how all women are doing him wrong, because the same thing seems to keep happening over and over again to these guys) when what he should be focused on is how to get out of that situation (if it is really making him that unhappy, then cutting contact may be the best option) and how to avoid ending up there again (mostly by being more straightforward about what he wants).
This just about sums it up perfectly.........
If you're constantly finding yourself in the same situation, then it's something you're doing not something other people are doing to you. You're making yourself the victim.
Some of you guys might think I'm insensitive but it's actually quite the opposite. My advice comes from a place of high affective empathy. I've been there. Lonely, depressed and on a cognitive feedback loop that only reinforced my insecurities. I took positive steps to get myself out of it. It took trial, error, heartbreak and a ton of painful introspection along the way but I emerged a far more balanced and likable person. The kind of person girls would like to date and/or be actual friends with. I also made plenty of guy friends along the way because i didn't just try to limit my personal social improvement to dating.
I am willing to bet that the problems you had was because of the social ineptness that forms part of Asperger syndrome, not because you were a jerk. Many aspires fail to have romantic relationships not because of "love-shyness" per say but because they don't know how to interact with other people, which is the same reason why they sometimes fail to even have friendships. This undue difficulty in social interaction forms part of the diagnosis in Asperger syndrome. If you managed to learn those social skills, thats great but it still seems counterproductive to imply that others are jerks for not yet having learnt them. Yes, it's still possible to learn them but it's still nonetheless part of the disorder.
People aren't jerks for not having social skills. I feel like you're deliberately twisting my words now.
They are jerks if they blame others for there inability/`unwillingness to learn. They become unbearable to be around (i.e. undateable) when they let their social problems make them bitter and miserable. Pity will not get you dates or friends.
99% of the time, a person who keep ending up in the exact same situation does so because he hasn't actually done anything fundamentally different to change the outcome. I suggest reading the post I was responding to again.
I did read it because he was replying in response to me and the part in bold (my emphasis) is not my experience but whatever. I also took into account your other reply to me when I posted this response.
The_Face_of_Boo
Veteran

Joined: 16 Jun 2010
Age: 43
Gender: Non-binary
Posts: 33,451
Location: Beirut, Lebanon.
Geeko, love-shy's are certainly not automatically manipulators and are NOT more likely to be manipulators.
Players are always expert manipulators and they're the opposite of love shy's when it comes to social skills, courage with women and confidence.
Manipulators are manipulators.
Couplezone: They're seen together so often that they may as well have the same name.
Datingzone: He/she thinks that someone else is interesting enough to spend time in private with.
Friendzone: "He's a nice guy" / "She has a great personality" (but that's all they have going for them).
Loserzone: Not much going for them at all. Mostly harmless.
Creepzone: eHarmony defines this as a social stratum for people who are "disturbingly eccentric, painfully introverted, or obnoxious."
Freakzone: The stratum for people who, for whatever reason, are generally repulsive to people of the higher social strata.
Psychozone: Realm of schizophrenics, psychopaths, sociopaths, mass-murderers, rapists, child-molesters, wife-beaters, and others displaying behavior that is both violent and antisocial.
Deathzone: This is the strata for people who are useless to anyone, even themselves. Otherwise self-explanatory.
Never been friend-zoned but I have had chicks not like me back. So I'm somewhere behind the friend-zone
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"Ignorance Is Bliss"
It's emotional masochism.
Damn right, also never keep an Ex-girlfriend around as a friend. That's like saying the dog is dead, but we can still keep it.
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