Friendzone

I've seen a recent increase in posts about the friend zone. Probably due to Valentine's Day pending. Sometimes the woman gets blamed because she gripes about how she can't find good guys when there's one right there that she refuses to date. Sometimes the guy gets blamed because he should have let her know up front that he wants her. Less often the guy gets yelled at for only being a nice guy in order to get her to sleep with him and then stopping when she won't date him.

I want to address one of the unmentioned scenarios. Some guys don't fall for someone right away. Some guys need time to get to know the person first. One night stands are out of the question because that guy needs months, not minutes to connect with a woman. So by the time he's thinking of her romantically she's got him locked away in the friend zone. I know I can't work in the current dating climate where the woman assumes you're not interested in her if you haven't had sex by the third date.

Why does it take so long to make that connection? Sometimes it's because his heart dominates his hormones. That is unless she's actually naked and rubbing on him. I had a woman pin me to the wall with her hips and read my homework in a dirty manner and I still missed the clue. She was such a flirt with everyone that I didn't take her seriously when she flirted with me. When she told me she was actually interested she was already with someone else.

Sometimes it takes months to bring the emotional walls down. Years of humiliation and rejection have left an otherwise confident man a quivering mass of psychological goo when there's a woman of interest. And it may not even be humiliation of the guy. Even the rumor that I was interested in a girl between 6th and 12th grades brought down such teasing and abuse down on her that the best way to show my affection for a girl was to stay well away from her. Mind you, getting that kind of reaction even when you're not interested is humiliation by itself.

It can take the guy months of hanging out with a woman to view her romantically. Sometimes there's emotional damage to overcome before he can trust her enough to look at her that way. Sometimes he's looking for love and a connection instead of just lust. But the first reaction isn't "dude, I'd totally bang you" which is, apparently, the appropriate reaction for any woman that you may, someday, possibly want to date.

Then, when the guy discovers he likes her, works up the nerve to ask her out, and gets rejected he may turn hostile. It doesn't mean he was only being nice to get on her good side. It means he's been hurt. Again. He's lashing out. And she knows she hurt him. She gets upset that he's upset at her. She wasn't leading him on or anything. Don't be mad at her for not returning your feelings. She's yelling at him for only pretending to be nice because she feels he's blaming her. The reactions on both sides are out of line, but understandable.



Luckily, I'm dating someone now and don't have to worry about it anymore.