Note: The following two thousand-plus-word story is going to be well worth your time studying, especially if you are struggling with this issue. Readers, please take to drop all 50 claps and engage meaningfully. Thank you for being here.
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“We’re just friends!”
Oh! Don’t these words sting you when your heart can barely contain your feelings about this special “friend”?
Hello my ‘friend’ 🤭. This story is the “Get out of jail free” card that you didn’t get to use in Monopoly as a kid. Congrats! And you’re welcome!
Wait. What? You never played Monopoly? You need to go back! You have no idea what you missed out on if you haven’t played board games.
Alright. Okay. I’m serious. I know being friend-zoned sucks!
I’ve been told these exact words. As well as “Let’s keep in touch.”
Ouch!
We all know what that means.
∘ What is the “friend zone” means and why it’s dreaded
∘ The difference between Being Friends and Being Friend-zoned
∘ What got me friend-zoned 😳
∘ What happens when you don’t have friends of the opposite sex
∘ What happens when we befriend people from the opposite sex
∘ What happens when we don’t have power struggles in a relationship
∘ How my friendship with a man progressed to a relationship
What does getting ‘friend-zoned’ really mean? What does “let’s keep in touch” mean? Let’s dive in, shall we?
What is the “friend zone” means and why it’s dreaded
People friend zone people they don’t necessarily like and don’t want to be friends with. They may just want to see them as acquaintances. Or nothing.
Dating is hard. And not all dates are sucky, but they aren’t the expected Disneyland fireworks either. Out of habit, at the end of such dates people say “Let’s be friends”.
It’s like rejection. Someone doesn’t totally hate you, but they don’t like you either. That someone doesn’t want to reject you directly, they want to be ‘polite’ about it, they say, “Oh, let’s just be friends”. So they’re rejecting you as a potential partner, but they don’t want you to feel the blow of their rejection. Rejection is hard!
Men get rejected more often than women. So more often it’s men finding themselves in the friend zone. But it also happens to women. Exhibit A is the writer of this story you’re reading.
So of course, the term friend-zoned has got a bad rep, especially because if you are going to have a relationship with someone, you should get to know them first as friends. Being friend-zoned cuts you off from that possibility. You see it as rejection from the person you perceive as friend-zoning you.
The difference between Being Friends and Being Friend-zoned
Pay attention!
Friend zone ≠ Friend
Let’s break this down further.
Who are the people in the friend zone? Colleagues, acquaintances, people you bump into at social events, etc. You don’t necessarily want to be close friends with them. Those people don’t want to be close friends with you. You keep things civil and put them in the friend zone.
Who are friends? Friends, best friends, soulmates. Friends are people we like. We want to get to know them, they want to get to know us. The admiration for each other is mutual. What sex they are doesn’t matter because we like them and see them as a person with whom we can relate on many levels. You like meeting them, talking with them and exploring possible things you can do with them. You have many things in common to share, and you care for each other.
Best friends are friends you want to do things with all the time. You don’t even need a reason to see them. You figure that you both like being around each other a lot and know that you’ll both have a good time.
Soulmates are best friends you want to cuddle with forever, maybe make babies with.
Now think about this. Wouldn’t you like to marry someone you like spending a lot of time with? Like a soulmate? And if yes, then isn’t it important that you know each other and like each other as friends?
Who would want to spend a considerable part of their life tolerating someone? Not me.
Do you understand the difference between friend zone and friends now?
So you have to see what level these people you’re meeting are in your life and you in theirs. This will help you considerably in not taking rejection personally.
IMPORTANT NOTE: The toxic element here is not having awareness of these levels. Toxic people are not friends. Too many people have toxic people they call ‘friends’. I was one of them. When we have an unhealthy relationship with ourselves, we allow these so-called friends out of lack of love for ourselves. These people cannot reciprocate or communicate with us in a healthy way.
As for the people you may be meeting on dating apps and sites, well, think of how you can perceive them before you decide that you’ve been rejected by them.
What got me friend-zoned 😳
I’m going to help you understand how you can avoid getting yourself in the friend zone by sharing my own story.
Before I met my husband, I never actually had any male friends. In my culture, it’s not entertained or respected for a female to have male friends. I didn’t know what it would be like to have platonic relationships with men. And so the following was my experience when I was dating. Most men felt physically attracted to me. Then I was either interested in them or not. I had never entertained the possibility of friendship with them until I met my husband.
When we met, we went on a few nice dates of hiking and biking, and then he chose to be with some other woman he was friends with for longer than he had seen me. But he wanted to stay friends with me saying that he couldn’t imagine not being friends with me.
I’ve had other guys say that to me before. I knew what that led to. Of course, that hurt! OMG! How dare he friend zone me! Wow! I got friend-zoned again!
Well, while I was reluctantly exploring the friend zone with him, I was becoming his friend in the truest sense. For the first time ever, I understood how to be friends with a man, and why it’s important.
What happens when you don’t have friends of the opposite sex
I’m not talking about shallow or toxic friendships, neither acquaintances or colleagues. I’m talking about friendships like you would have with the person of the same sex as you — deep, meaningful, caring and honest. I’m talking about friends and best friends.
Not having friends of the opposite sex limits you in many ways.
You don’t understand the opposite sex as a person. You only see them as something you can’t relate with. You see how deep this goes — not being able to ‘relate’ with them in a healthy way!
You’re going to look at the relationship from the “I’m a man” or “I’m a woman” perspective. You have typical behaviors and expectations that stem from those superficial identities if you don’t know yourself or see yourself as a person. Meaning you will unconsciously project the misconceptions you come with. Society has these common ideas that men and women can’t be friends, and if they do, they will turn romantic or sexual in nature.
It’s like saying men can’t handle themselves around a woman, or vice versa. It’s wrong and simply not true. If there is attraction between people of opposite sexes, they are adult enough do something about it and talk it over like friends. Then they can choose to discontinue or pursue the friendship. For instance, my husband has always had female friends since early childhood, both average looking and attractive ones, with whom he had genuine friendships.
If you have wrong ideas or unclear ideas about the opposite sex, the only way to clear them out is to have a healthy open conversation with someone of the opposite sex. This is what gives you a better understanding of where the other person is coming from. Having conversations with my husband while I was “friend-zoned” was what helped me understand the value of friendship with a man.
Had I continued to feel offended being friend-zoned, I wouldn’t have given myself a genuine chance to get to know him as a person. I can tell you now that if I had continued riding high on my ego plane, I’d probably still be single today.
From being friends with a man, I understood that men bring different perspectives to the conversation. When we can see a situation from a new perspective, we can find solutions to our existing problems. Moreover, it also expands your ideas of who your friends could be.
When I understood this, it became less about me and more about us. I started seeing what was possible when the two of us came together. It wasn’t “I’m better than you” just because “I’m a woman, and I don’t need a man.” I wasn’t at war with myself to prove I’m right about something.
This understanding is truly important if you want to be conscious of and avoid power struggles in your relationship.
What happens when we befriend people from the opposite sex
If you understand this and get this to work for you, I guarantee that you won’t have power struggles in your relationships. What we’re doing when we are being friends with people of the opposite sex is becoming inclusive. We’re neither resisting them, nor the idea of friendship with them. When we include someone, it comes from a place of integration within us which leads to our own expansion.
Think about this and how it affects you. When you develop understanding of how the opposite sex perceives a situation which is different to your perception of the same, you have insights. Your view of the world changes because of this openness. You have now included a part of this person in your own world. Something that you were at ‘up against’ in your mind will now change to a more ‘welcoming and inclusive’ attitude toward it. Your belief that “men and women can’t be friends” changes because of your taking the time to have a genuine conversation with the opposite sex.
When you integrate parts that you disown, you become more whole as a person.
In the book The Celestine Prophecy, the chapter on interpersonal ethic explains this as follows:
Let’s look at this less integrated person as the letter C. Now when two C’s come together, they think that they’re whole like the letter O, as a ‘complete’ person. But that’s not what it is in reality, it’s an illusion. Such a relationship turns out to be a co-dependent one. In reality, that is two heads or two egos trying to rule this O — this illusion of a complete person.
Both people want to command the other, as if the other were themselves. This kind of illusion of completeness always breaks down into a power struggle.
When we’re well integrated and complete on our own, we will listen to the other person. We may or may not agree, but we won’t argue over who is right or wrong. Each person in the relationship will try to understand the other in a conversation with them without pulling the other person down. There won’t be a power struggle between them.
What happens when we don’t have power struggles in a relationship
When we overcome our own internal struggles by integrating our shadows, we become more whole as a person. When two whole people come together, they can have a conversation. They are learning to dance with each other as opposed to dancing by themselves. Partner dance involves non-verbal communication between two people. One of them leads and the other is being led.
Among friends, there isn’t such a thing as “I’m right, you’re wrong” (unless you are having some playful, non-insulting debates). We don’t pull or friend down. We lift them up. We fight for them. And we want the best for them as well as for ourselves. We feel happy for them. We feel sad with them. We cheer them up. We share our dreams, goals and desires with them.
We are not afraid to be honest with them.
This is the part that most people jump to without understanding the friendship part. Beware of this trap. You’ll read all sorts of BS advice on being up front about one’s interest in someone and telling them even before getting to know them as a person that you’re not interested in being “friends”. In this context, it clearly means you’re not interested to be put in the “friend zone” and want to proceed toward something that doesn’t exist on solid ground yet.
How my friendship with a man progressed to a relationship
I genuine started appreciating a man’s presence in my life. He became my best friend and I became his. For instance, he helped me when I had issues at work. He helped me rearrange heavy furniture in my apartment. I helped him understand his struggles in his own relationships. We also talked about dating and relationships back then like we do now.
As our friendship grew closer, I noticed myself fall in love with him. I saw him for who he was. I was unafraid of sharing my true feeling with him. I told him I loved him and I saw myself spending the rest of my life with him.
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Thank you for being here. I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences. Free speech is not free after 3 stories. Fortunately it costs only $5 a month. Drop your change here.
© Neha Sonney, Author of the #1 bestselling book WIRED FOR SELF-LOVE
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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 The Lack of Gentle Platonic Touch in Men’s Lives is a Killer |
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Photo credit: Taylor Deas-Melesh on Unsplash
