Tuesday, 29 November 2011

• Friendzoned Females

  

  Men in our lives fall into different relationship categories: boyfriends, sex partners, just friends, mentors, etc. But one category I seem to be encountering a lot lately is the almost-boyfriend friend category, and I hate it! While guys think they are always the ones being friendzoned, it is a common fate for the female population as well.

  It usually begins with all the good signs of a relationship. A man asks you to hang out with him - perhaps dinner, perhaps drinks. You guys have amazing conversational chemistry and you feel comfortable with him. He sometimes pays for these drinks or dinner and sometimes he escorts you home. He's good at texting and setting up the next hangout, and you start to hope maybe he's the one!! That is, until the above steps repeat over and over and over for as long as a year with no progress, and you finally give up and move to another country or find another man.

  When I encounter this sort of situation, I find myself developing characteristics of the male species. I try to be charming. I try to steer the conversation to risque topics. I try to get them drunk and rid them of their inhibitions (don't worry, I have yet to date rape anyone). I try to get them back to my place. Of course these strategies all fail, as I suppose guys don't fall for these.

  Take the example of my friend we'll call Rick from some years ago (though in our 20s, so this is not just us being innocent!). We were always together - catching lunch together, cooking together, passing notes to each other in class, sharing all our secrets and feelings about our classmates. He was a handsome and popular boy and all the girls in school wanted him, but he picked me to hang out with! However, things didn't always work so well.

  When I asked him out for dinner, hoping to make a move, he brought his friend. I could also never get him in a setting with alcohol. Maybe we were just good friends, but I felt like he treated me differently from his guy friends. The final turning point came half a year into our friendship when he decided to crash at my place after a concert and the trains were all stopped. At first, I was on my twin bed and he was in a sleeping bag on the floor. As the night progressed and both of us were not falling asleep, he suddenly moved up to my bed next to me.

  We just laid there, neither of us able to sleep until morning the next day. The whole night my heart was beating rapidly and I was so conscious of my breathing, my swallowing, the way I was lying. But to my disappointment, nothing happened, and I decided after that night to give up on him. In the next couple of months, I ended up having sex with his less interesting best male friend, while he ended up having sex with my less interesting best female friend, both lackluster flings that went nowhere.

  I am now stuck in this rut again and dreading it. I have been going out with a guy from my department for dinner or drinks about each week for three months, and recently we went out to the movies together. He equally reciprocates our hanging out and text messaging, and he buys me drinks, is attentive to what I say, and sometimes makes physical contact (a touch on the hand here, a pat on the shoulder there). But we never bring up the subject of our romantic lives, he never makes a move, he never tries to go up to my room, and there is a tenseness that prevents us from going past the friendzone.

  I have tried to be inviting or steer the conversation in the right direction, but it always fails. And each time I relax into satisfaction with just his friendship, I suddenly get re-romanticized from a potential sign of his interest, which eventually fades until another sign later appears.

  What does it mean when a guy friendzones a girl? Is that his intention, or could there be something else that prevents him from making the next move? And what can a girl do to either understand his feelings or bring them out? I just hope I can get out of the zone alive this time around.

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