Cool song about getting friendzoned

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QFT.

I made a comment a little while ago in another thread about cognitive empathy/affective empathy and got it backwards--your explanation is much clearer and more accurate. Thank you for this.

I agree completely. FWIW besides Autism I personally might have borderline personality disorder(or some undescribed mood disorder) and I say this because in the past I have overreacted to rejection but more importantly I have a pretty strong(and so-far unexplained) fear of abandonment. These days I respond to rejection with avoidance. But recently someone did indeed say "let's just be friends" and I actually wanted to be her friend(platonic) but she totally ignores me so the hell with her.

Sorry to hear that. It's rude of her to ignore you. She may have her own sh*t she's going through, though. You never know.

Me personally, after reading all the nonsense about the whole friendzone concept along with all the Players' Manual cr@p and movies like The Ugly Truth I'm pretty nearly convinced that the reason platonic friendships cannot exist between men and women in today's Western Culture is that so many men don't see any other reason for knowing and spending time with any woman unless there is potential for romance/dating/sex in the future. That's what I get from reading posts here written from people who claim to represent the men's point of view on it, and from the songs about unrequited love, and from all the friendzone discussions on the web that I've read. I don't see women saying that men that won't date them, sleep with them or propose to them aren't worth the wasted time. So the problem seems to me to be that men see women as worth knowing only if there's a chance to get in a relationship but not if she genuinely wants to be friends. Friends, as in "I've got your back" or "let's hang out next weekend with a group of mutual friends" or "let's talk about stuff" or whatever else you'd do with any other friend you don't want to fck.

Or does it only count as friendzoning if the man in the situation is sexually attracted to the woman? Still my point holds: what he wants matters, what she wants is inconsequential unless it matches what he wants her to want (i.e., him).

I can't tell you how many guys there were in my junior high and high school that I crushed on, but they didn't know I even existed except as an object to avoid running into in the halls and doorways. I lost count around 8th grade. Do I moan and whine about unrequited love because all the men I found attractive ignored me for so long? Do I claim that men aren't worth knowing if they don't know how much you want to them? No, that would be pointless. Unrequited love has not ruined my life; there was always another guy to crush on. And then one day there actually was a guy or two who flirted with me, asked me out, and showed me how much fun it is to go on a date with a polite, confident and attentive guy. And there were still other guys I could talk to about stuff, still guys I could do homework and singing and drama and stuff with without it needing to be a relationship and I didn't just decide they weren't worth my time because they didn't want to me that way. They were worth knowing because they were human beings with feelings and personalities and interests and the ability to converse and hang out and play games other than mind games and brokenheart games.

Guess what? There are women who, while you as a guy might find attractive as a potential romantic interest, are also worth knowing because they have brains and emotions and interests and the ability to do stuff other than hug and kiss and fck and make you all horny. Women are worth being friends with because we are human beings. We have feelings and ideas and desires to relate to people in ways other than . So why is that such a big problem for men who are all wound up with the friendzone whinge? Does having blueballs really short out your brain circuits so badly that you can't talk to a pretty woman without thinking with the little head?

The thing is, in the past this kind of thing has happened many times before. Geekonychus pretty much nailed it: If she ACTUALLY wants to be just friends she'll follow through with it so long as you respect her boundaries.......But don't expect that friendship to last. The safest assumption in those circumstances is that she's just being polite.

My ex remained best friends with her very first bf and talked to him daily. Not-to-mention comparing me to him and telling me "boo hoo! I miss John!" whenever she was mad/disappointed with me(she was borderline and pregnant with her previous bf's baby. 'twas a big fat mess). I did not appreciate this as it made me feel second best.

Well, yah! It would make anyone feel second best. Sheesh.

The reason why platonic relationships between people and members of the sex they're attracted to is difficult at best and sometimes doesn't work is NOT because all men are big ole' heartless meanies, it's because of sexual tension. Sometimes that sexual tension is unconscious! WTF makes you think women don't sexually objectify men?!? I've seen examples IRL of women with lots of platonic guy friends but it turns out that only are friends with guys they find sexually attractive. And there are men like this too. It's called being flawed, imperfect...........And ultimately human. The vast majority of us are sexual creatures who are driven to find sexual release. You act like women are able to suppress their sexual desires more easily then men and not allow these impulses to affect their decision making but there is plenty of evidence to the contrary.

It's possible to have a lot of social/intellectual interests in common with a guy, but be completely uninterested in him physically and vice versa; to take one example, a former (male) housemate of mine had a lot of similar interests - and was literally about half my size. He was just very lightly built for a man, and I'm very strongly built for a woman. We just didn't attract each other at all because we're both heterosexual and were interested in mates who were masculine/feminine relative to our own body types. I was dating a guy from the dojo I trained at; he was dating a petite English major from the local university. We got along great, watched 'The Wire' together, talked about philosophy, played with each other's dogs, and so on... like friends.
That's just one example of how heterosexuals of opposite genders can get along as friends; sometimes there's just no chemistry, and therefore no 'sexual tension,' even when you have a lot of things in common.

Does sexual tension really apply if it is unrequited? Sounds more like sexual interest/frustration.

"Tension" is part of self deception becuase of obsession.

IMO sometimes you just have to force yourself to move on, and stop obsessing. It causes less pain long term.

If you can't be friend with them, then don't be.

QFT

I didn't say men are all big heartless meanies; I see far more guys implying and stating directly that women are mean and heartless than vice-versa.

I'm saying that Men seem to have a harder time blocking out their sexual frustration and sexual tension than women do. That men objectify women more than men do.

q.e.d.

If it were not so threads like this wouldn't exist, because women would be onboard with the friendzone concept. If women felt the same way men do about rejection, there would be no place for this argument because women and men would be on common ground instead of polar opposites on this issue. Clearly women generally don't feel that sexual tension bugaboo as much as men do--or we're better at coping with it.

As an example that females can be confused as to in what way a guy is interested I have a story:

So my second year of college I started seeing this metalhead guy(he wasn't in school)and became his girlfriend. I was also socializing with other male and female acquaintances from the campus and befriending them. So there was this one guy and he was usually friendly with me and I was open to new friends so of course I was friendly and talked to him. I never expressed romantic interest nor did he, so one day when he wanted me to come hang out with him I figured it would be cool. Well we went to hang out and were sitting chatting and then he started sitting closer to me and put his arm around me a bit intimately and then I had to tell him I had a boyfriend. Then he acted offended like I was just saying that to reject him and there was no more friendliness from him after that.

Granted I felt like a total b*tch because I kept re-analizing the situation trying to see where I mislead him...or what I did to make him think I was romantically interested. But I had no context that he liked me like that, or I would have mentioned the boyfriend earlier but I really thought he just wanted to hang out.

But yeah my thinking is I have no problem having guys as friends, even if I have a boyfriend...but I see friends as friends, It doesn't occur to me to befriend someone in a platonic manner in an attempt to have them fall for me and eventually date. And it was confusing when it happened to me because I had no idea the guys intent I thought he was just being friendly.

In respone to Sweetleaf's above post (can't quote, evil captcha):

From my point of view, if the same thing happened to me, I would have at least questioned/wondered about her intentions, even if she at no point expressed or implied any romantic interest of the sort.

Sometimes I've been subtle about it with females without expressing direct interest.

I was getting to know this girl at school, at the time she was helping me with writing my novel by giving me feedback (as she was a published author) and asked her out to coffee and we could further discuss our stories at coffee and even talk about other stuff. I didn't call it a date, but I didn't call it a 'hangout' either.

Asking someone of the opposite sex to coffee, even without any flirting connotations implied, I believe should at least make people question what the other person is after, and usually most N.T.'s do start to.

It took her until the second date to figure out they were supposed to be 'dates' she told me on our third. That's when she rejected me.

In fact, she was a lesbian as well, and I still managed to get three dates with her...

Coincidentally enough, she was an aspie as well.

Without making a generalization and actually making a factual statement in MY LIFE and no one else's, based on the vast majority of people I have met in my own life, I can say this is what I've observed as general patterns that occur in my life and mine only:

- The males I know tend to over-think/over-read their interactions with females in-case a female is interested but being subtle or hinting about it.

I do this and my best friend does as well, as well as my other male friends and many male acquaintances I have known.

Basically from the very start if a girl starts being friendly to us we assume in the back of our minds the possibility that she is attracted to us and using outward friendship as to get to know us or is too shy to truly express how she feels.

For me, this has actually worked, as there was one girl who had a crush on me last year. The moment she first spoke to me/interacted with me I instantly guessed that she had a crush on me. I was just walking back to class and she approached me saying 'X, I'll walk with you.' and she asked me the odd question of why I strangely would run out of the classroom at the end of class every time. Like I said I didn't even assume 'she's just being friendly' I could tell 'She LIKES me'. It was only when I developed feelings back that I started to doubt it because I became shy, nervous and anxious around her just as much as she was around me.

For the females in my life, they don't assume at all any possibility that a male talking to them is attracted to them at all in any situation unless it's obvious, in-your-face flirting and even then many may think the male is just joking, or being super-friendly, or misinterpret his signals in other ways. It is only when males be far more direct that she starts to realize he's interested.

But I'm well-aware it can be the complete opposite with both males and females - plenty of males can be oblivious to a females advances, and plenty females can instantly reject a male who approaches her even if that's 'not what he's after'.

Yeah I had quite a few female friends back in the day when I was an undergrad. But they all vanished once we graduated and moved on with our lives. Most of those people were folks I wasn't attracted to and vice versa. The only real female platonic friend I have is someone I knew way back in elementary school so she's a childhood friend and those are almost always lifelong.

Sometimes sexual tension occurs even when there isn't unrequited interest(mutual lack of interest too) and it's subconscious. I've noticed that gay-straight male friendships are less common than straight woman-gay man friendships. And it isn't purely because of homophobia but also because some gay guys don't feel comfortable being friends with straight guys because of sexual tensions.

Maybe you have a different definition of sexual tension than me.

In my definition the two side have sexual communication/interest.

What I'm saying is don't assume this isn't a delusion. Sometime it is imagined.

Very few men use the term, just some circles.

Also there is more to the phrase than some let on. Basically what they mean is they there is a period before being zoned to act, and after that there is no chance. So it is basically teaching acting quickly is the way to get female interest.