[Medium: Failure] — "The friend-zone" is the single worst place any wöman could dare to put you in. It's where you're sent when — for some unknown, female reason — she doesn't value you as a potential mate. That she values someone with better mate qualities than you. That's what the friend-zone is; it's wöman's way of saying "fuck you".

— It's really that bad?

— Of course, bröther. The gynocentrists want you to think it's fine. Break your conditioning. Keep pushing. Your persistence will prove how much you deserve her.

On the converse, I tried to take a relationship with a close friend to the next level.

It did not go well and we do not talk anymore

Bit idea.

1. Find people who think “the friend zone” is incel-speak for “when femoids won’t fuck me”.
2. Find people who think “the friend zone” is just an emotionally ambiguous attraction.
3. Put them in a thread and let them fight.

It would be so funny

I don't buy the misogyny arguments here. I remember being a teenager, and that shit feels desperate. Everybody else is hooked up and they seem so happy, and you've found someone you feel like you can really connect with, but they don't feel the same. So you've made a big deal of it in your mind and when they say "I think of you more as a friend", it feels like a full-on breakup.

Of course, you still have to get over it, just like a breakup. Learning to deal with that stuff is part of growing up.

Even as an adult, couples tend to hang out with other couples, and it can be challenging to be the single person in a group.

I know some people go too far, wallowing in self-pity over being friendzoned, and it can poison a person. Maybe it seems silly from the outside, and you think they should just get over it, but I think people deserve empathy and support as much as possible. Ideally we can help people work through their shit and not let this little blip in their lives come to define them.

Okay I'm done rambling. Thanks for reading.

I mean, having romantic feelings for someone who doesn’t feel the same is a bummer. Like, you should get over it because obsessing over that is teenager shit. But it’s still a bummer.

I grow to dislike the concept. Notice how it focuses only on the one who wants to pursue a sexual/romantic relationship, as if platonic relationship is somehow lesser. Why don't we ever hear about the "sexual zone" or "romantic zone" about people who desire a deep platonic relationship with someone but who are placed in the "sexual/romantic zone" by that someone? It hurts to be previously friends with someone who gives you the cold shoulder once they find out you don't want to fuck them. Why should the sexual zoned person's feelings perspective and feelings be cast aside for the friend zoned person's feelings and perspective?

Socialism is when you take an archetypical trope, (unrequited love), common to every time and culture, and dismiss it w/ performative, incredibly hamfisted, body-and-spaces discourse (whiteness, toxic masculinity).

This feels contrarian for the sake of it. Being in a limbo with someone you have feelings for is understandably uncomfortable for anyone. I honestly think dunking on someone for this just kind of shows emotional immaturity

It's because they hate women and see them only as something to boost their social status. Like a house or car.

If they are friends with a woman with no prospect of fucking, in their minds that makes them of lesser status.

It's all misogynist pop psychology bullshit.

extreme horniness + emotional immaturity + unaddressed misogyny + a feeling of entitlement to sex + romantic rejection = upset about being "friendzoned"

it happens to a lot of folks, and no doubt it hurts like hell, but once they see the ingredients, they realize the problem and they can choose to grow... or get worse.

I mean, if I'm romantically interested in someone and they say that they're not romantically interested in me, that sucks.

Emotions are not rational. I can cognitively know "I am not entitled to this person's romantic interest and having them in my life as a friend is just as valuable as being in a romantic relationship with them" but my emotions will still feel disappointed and saddened because my romantic feelings aren't being reciprocated. Confessing your feelings to someone is also a huge moment of emotional vulnerability, and being rejected in that situation can make one feel powerless and inadequate.

Are you gonna tell me that if you confess your feelings to someone and they give you the whole "Let's just be friends" response, your reaction is "Oh yay, I made a friend"?

For me the way I see it as a guy, being friends with someone, while secretly or not so secretly holding out for something more romantically and/or sexually, is just disingenuous. It also comes across as really needy, desperate behaviour. Which, in my personal experience, is the biggest turn off for women. So you're not going to change their mind this way. The true motivations behind the "friendship" are extremely transparent and plain for everyone else to see. People can tell what's going on, you know what you're doing, the woman knows, all your mutual friends know on some level. There's a reason "orbiters" get made fun of constantly for orbiting a specific woman.

If you still want to be friends with the person you have a crush on after being rejected or realising that it can't happen for whatever reason, you're going to have to fully accept that they don't see you in that way. Then the friendship is longer based off of the idea that you can have a relationship. Failure to accept that will doom any future friendship for the reasons I've listed above. If you cant accept that, it's probably better to have less contact with the person or even stop seeing them, instead of going though the motions in some "friendship" which is built off of the idea/fantasy that you'll eventually date them.

It's kind of alien to me too, the idea of being someone's friend being taken as a social rejection (which more often than not means no longer talking to that person) because no le sexy sex will occur.

Yes, it's disappointing when someone doesn't reciprocate romantic/sexual attraction. For me the alien part is "therefore cut that person entirely out." If it wasn't intended to be a hook-up all along, it makes the entire social bond seem sus in hindsight to me.

In my experience, actually accepting a non-romantic friendship often results in additional friendships with that friend's friends if that friend actually likes you non-romantically, and sometimes those can bloom into romance anyway, often at the first friend's encouragement/recommendation. Don't do it for that reason (transactional thinking is a fuck) but my point is that fatalistically seeing "the friend zone" as some evil bad thing is self-fulfilling prophecy.

What the fuck man, is this a real concern average people have that I’m way too fucking alienated to understand

Yes it is a real concern. And honestly, I think leftists are terrible at giving dating advice, especially when it comes to men. There are some considerate leftists that actually give concrete advice (like start exercising, find clothes that fit better, maybe trim the beard so it looks nice, get a good haircut or shave it completely if balding, try to look people in the eye instead of looking down all the time, learn small talk, learn banter, learn how to express romantic interest, find that difference between confident and creepy and know when you've crossed it, etc.) Most of the "advice" I see is just "don't be a r!pist!" and "don't harass women!" Like bro that's obvious, but to the guy that's constantly getting rejected, especially when apps like Tinder make it so the a few super good looking guys pretty much clean house (and this dynamic absolutely spills over into offline interactions), there needs to be better advice.

When this advice is lacking, or people dismiss these young men because "there are so many other problems why would I care about MEN!", this can lead to alienated young men finding their way into reactionary spaces. In this case a little prevention is worth ten tons of cure.

And lastly, I'll say this, it's completely disingenuous to remain "friends" with someone after you've been friendzoned if you initially had romantic feelings for them and those romantic feelings still persist. Unless your feelings magically also changed to platonic ones, then there's a relational imbalance that will always linger. It's better to just say "hey I like you in a more romantic way and even though you want to be friends, perhaps it's better that we don't hang out."

Name a single "zone" you'd ever want to be in. Ozone. Aphotic zone. Demilitarized zone. Dead zone. Twilight zone. I will not enter the Friend Zone.

I prefer friends, some people spend way too much time thinking having sex with eachother anyways. miss me with that shit

PSA: if you are orbiting a person in "the friend zone" hoping to wear them down for a chance then i can promise you everyone is aware of it and everyone laughs at you for being a creep. Grow and change as a person.

I've come to understand the "friend zone" as a place where a person puts himself by being too spineless to either ask out the person in question and make their feelings clear, or resolve them internally on their own time and make peace with not pursuing them and keeping them as a friend. It's a painful cognitive dissonance that is brought entirely upon oneself. The proper way out is growth, but many just rage at it and refuse to change themselves.

couplehood is the modern religion and by that awesomely glib take i mean: there is tremendous socialization to find purpose and meaning (and absolution) in "the special someone", which has only seemed to heighten in the parts of society that want to stay on program while our institutions fail and the climate crisis looms. all that to say, i understand the desperation especially among the young. so much mass culture (TV, movies, music) tells them that the only thing they will ever do that matters is find someone who completes them (because of course they're incomplete as they are!).... it's a very efficient way to get everyone (single and not) out there consuming.

but of course, i agree completely with you, especially as i've gotten older. i value my friends and treasure making new ones in whatever context or however long it works out. i would rather have a new limited scope work friend to joke around with than a new ex- from a fraught relationship where at least one of us was not paying attention to the warnings of a bad match.

is this a real concern average people have

No, it is a concern that incels have. The actual truth is that the people who complain about this shit have never even been friends with a girl and this "fRiEnD zOnEd" shit is just incels making up a scenario and getting mad about. In reality they would be over-joyed to have the privilege of being considered a friend by their crush or whatever.

im a pathetic loser unhealthily obsessed with their nearly unbroken lifelong loneliness and i dont really use the friend zone as a mental archetype or schema or trope, i just kinda emit jealousy waves at every happy person in line of sight/thought. even aside from romantic or sexual partners, it sucks to see other people that have the things i always wanted but never had, like social acceptance, physical fitness, opportunities and experiences during youth, and financial success. having non-romantic/sexual friends usually helps deal with these kinds of negative thoughts by forcing me to adopt a more socially acceptable persona, which gives me something else to focus on besides my own endless self deprecating internal monologue. but still i never seem to have friends irl that have the same intellectual/aesthetic interests/hobbies as me, as nice as they are otherwise.

if youre friends with me you are invited to the cuddle zone

I can't answer that because I've never been rejected by anyone. when you see my bodycount, you'll be like, what is that? the username of the guy who makes the news megathreads?

It's men who feel women are obligated to be their gf and or provide them with sex so they get pissed off when someone rightfully wants to just be a friend.

I'm afraid of the friend zone. By that I mean I'm afraid of making friends and have severe social anxiety

Anyone who complains about the friendzone is an incel that doesn't see women as anything other than objects to fuck