Zone of the Frienders (excuse the bad and obscure pun)

 

 

So, what is on the menu today? I thought perhaps we’d start with some pontification on the concept of, “the friends zone”. I doubt this needs to be said, but just in case, the friends zone is typically another name for unrequited affection. Typically it is referring to men, but it does happen to women as well, that are friends with someone that they really wish they could be more than friends with.  However, the other person has no such inclinations. They don’t see the other person as anything other than a friend, and will never be able to do so. When this occurs you have landed in the friends zone. Much hay has been made over the concept for a long time. It has been the subject of much humor and the cause of much pain.

 

Often, when people try to talk about it on a level beyond making jokes or expressing dissatisfaction they think of it in terms like the men who cry about the friends zone are just entitled jackasses that think they deserve to get laid because they are a “nice guy”. Common enough, the man that complains about feeling friends zoned is mocked or looked upon with contempt. Perhaps I’m biased being a man, and having been in the friends zone myself, but I don’t think this is exactly fair. This prevalent mindset just assumes that the feelings of frustration and discontentment are all about sex, or the lack of it. I can’t speak for all people that have ever felt the sting of the friends zone in their life, but I can speak for myself.

 

Personally, it didn’t manifest from some unfulfilled desire for sex. For me, and I suspect for the vast majority of others, it wasn’t something we just fell into. It wasn’t a moment where everything was normal and fine, and then suddenly BAM, I found I had been exiled to this strange new world full of feelings I wasn’t fully prepared to handle. I’d assume typically what happens is two people become friends, at least one of them is attracted to the other, at least a little, and it may very well be mutual. Over time as the friendship grows and blossoms that attraction mature into an infatuation as you learn more and more about this person you were already attracted to. As it continues, more and more you just realize, this person is basically my best friend. This person is basically the love of my life.

 

The problem is, somewhere along the way for whatever reason, or perhaps even for no particular reason, the other person just decided, maybe even subconsciously, that romance was never going to be a thing between you two. This creates tension and dissonance and places at least one, if not both people, into a very awkward space once everything is laid bare upon the table and everybody knows the score. So far all of this is just the messiness of life and so far we have no good guys or bad guys.  But, the moment the zoned person expresses any displeasure about the situation to their best friend, the person that zoned them, then in the eyes of much of society that person has crossed a line and become a jerk or whatever for daring to deem to express their feelings.

 

This is where I get a bit miffed by society’s take on the subject. People can be cruel and harsh about it because they seem to think it is born just of wanting to sleep with their friend. I will concede that sexual frustration may in fact play a small part of the whole dynamic, but it isn’t the whole of it, it isn’t even a significant factor from my perspective because if it was just about not gettin’ any, well most of us deal with this from time to time, and most of us just rub one out and move on. No, this has much more to do with the feelings of confusion (you thought you were on the same level, the same wavelength) and rejection, which is never easy to take from anyone, but it is especially hard to take from someone you’ve developed such a close bond with. Somebody you thought was your best friend and that you understood and in turn who understood you.

 

The way I see it, IF there is a villain in this situation, it is the zoner, not the zonee. To be fair, the zoner has no fault in any of this developing.  The zoner can’t control how the other person feels, and has limited control over their own feelings. Before everybody knows the game, there are no bad guys whatsoever in this situation. However, when everything becomes apparent, the way I see it, the zoner does bare some blame and responsibility. Once you realize, either though deduction or by being plainly told, that your friend whom you have no romantic feelings for harbors such feelings for you. The ball is now in your court. You’ve just been handed all the power in this dynamic, and if you don’t cut that person off, at that point you are just knowingly stringing them along. You are knowingly inflicting more pain upon them.

 

It has been said to me; well once a guy realizes he has been zoned doesn’t he also have a responsibility to either realign his thinking, or to walk away? That isn’t totally unfair, I will grant you. However, society tells us that people are attracted to confidence & persistence. If one gives up at every failure, then one never succeeds. On the flipside, sometimes it is better to just cut your losses and move on.  In terms of dating, I don’t know where that line is, do you?  No, you do not know, because it is a subjective line, every individual has their own making it impossible to know when to give up and when not to give up. There is another factor at play here.

 

I don’t care who you are, all of us like to be appreciated. Keeping someone around that is fawning over you feels nice. It boosts your confidence. I suspect most of the time, people are fully aware of what is going on, but choose to pretend like they don’t because they don’t want to lose. They don’t want to lose the attention. They don’t want to lose the favors. They don’t want to lose that feeling they get from knowing they are wanted by someone. And perhaps, they don’t want to lose their friend. I really have no final summation; there really was no point to all of this. I just wanted to share my thoughts. See if perhaps other feel the same way, might gain some clarity from it, or even offer me insight on it I am lacking.