I stumbled across this on a buddies blog. I give Erik full credit for the write up but I believe it covers a lot of topics for guys/girls to understand. Enjoy!
"I was talking with my friend Mike towards the end of March about one of his prior relationships. He'd moved in with a girl who was one of his best friends, and they began sleeping together. They'd always connected on an emotional level, talking and sharing everything with each other, and I consider having sex three times a day to be connecting on a physical level as well.
Suddenly, though, the girl broke up with him, moved out, and said that she only slept with him to keep the friendship alive. Straining to avoid any Seinfeld references - Jerry and Elaine had to have sex to keep their friendship alive in one episode - oops!… Sorry, back to Mike and this girl: a big fat "Huh?" She told him that they didn't "have any chemistry." She and he haven't talked much since, and their "friendship" is essentially a thing of the past.
It's a long-standing joke in "the guy world" that there exists some mysterious "Friend Zone." Guy gets to know girl, but doesn't sleep with girl within some magical time frame, and becomes trapped in this "Friend Zone" from which guy cannot escape. This time frame varies depending on the type of girl, primarily, but typically guys realize that they've reached the Friend Zone when their girl calls them to talk about her boy troubles. Some might say that this is the exact moment at which the guy should have sex with the girl, but from what I've seen, this simply leads to the girl feeling as if the guy took advantage of her (and she is right).
If the guy hasn't figured out that he's in the Friend Zone, and finally asks the girl out, he'll quickly discover his position in the Zone World after being given this line: "I don't think we should start dating, because I don't want to risk what we have." That's the Friend Zone, my friend.
Most guys never escape the Friend Zone. Things get weird between girl and guy because guy wants more than girl will ever give him (some good lovin', basically, or at least some lip smackin'). The guy is faced with several options
- Deal with it in a mature fashion, appreciating "what we have"
- Keep asking the girl out, hoping that persistence will win him a piece of ass
- Ditch the bitch (latter word used only because it rhymes) entirely and pick a new target
- Act like a jerk, showing girl they weren't very good friends to begin with
- Get girl drunk
Choosing the first, if pulled off, can lead to a great, long-lasting friendship. Sometimes the wondering is better than the knowing. Often, though, it leads to the second, the "perpetual asking/begging."
The third is effective, and may actually lead in some small percentages to the woman realizing what she's missing. This was seen on the TV show Ed this season, when Ed stopped pursuing Carol to date Frankie. You could label this "play the jealousy card" too. The alternative is that the guy moves on and finds a new target for his obsessions, the girl rids herself of a pest. Both lose a friendship, but, so be it. It should be noted, too, that Ed didn't pursue Frankie just to make Carol jealous, and the potential for screwing up another person's week is quite high any time these jealousy games are played.
The fourth one never works, because all the guy has done at that point is to solidify the girl's decision. Even though girls tend to go for jerks1, they don't tend to go for nice guys that betray friendships to show that they too can be jerks.
The last works fairly often, at least for the initial poontang, but often results in severe harm to the guy's nuts when the girl awakens and realizes what the guy has done. The last way to get a girl into a Relationship (with a capital "R") is to make her ashamed of herself.
Of course, any situation which doesn't result in a Relationship seems to fly directly in the face of one key thing: aren't we supposed to marry our best friends? All other things being equal, that's probably true. Unfortunately, it doesn't mean, when we're ready to get married, that we should look around and ask our best friend to marry us. It means the person we're in love with becomes our best friend.
But that in turn begs a new question:: who better to date than someone with whom you already share some chemistry? Someone with whom you're already friends. Someone who still likes you after you've told him of the 37, 14, or 1 guys with which you you've slept/fooled around/made out? Someone who likes you after seeing you without makeup? Someone who likes you even though you watch Married By America? Obviously I'm not saying that every male friend would make an ideal boyfriend - physical attraction is important - but as one of my gal friends says "who better to date than someone you already like?" Unfortunately, she's in the female minority1.
In Mike's case, he succeeded in moving from "we're just friends" to "wanna screw?" Kudos to the Mikester, because he did it without alcohol, and he continued to "get a piece" after the girl's two-week "oh-no-what-have-I-done?" period passed. It lasted a few months. Then the woman freaked. They say men are afraid of commitment?!?! To Mike I say this: you're better off without her. A woman that's compatible with you on both levels (emotionally, physically - I'm ignoring "spiritually" for now) and still ditches you for no good reason after sleeping with you for an apparently even worse reason ("to preserve the friendship")? Buh-Bye!
I know a girl who just married her former best friend and now Official Best Friend™, wedding-band certified. They were friends for a number of years, and she got drunk and made out with him one night (not his doing, thus, relieving him of the aforementioned nut-kicking). They began dating, and it was "weird" at first. After all, you're used to being with someone but not making out, and now you're supposed to make out?
I wonder what's so wrong with that. After all, dating is fairly ridiculous. These days it's not rushing things to be "making out" by the second date - how well do you know the person with whom you're swapping spit by the second date? Not so well. Friends = safe. Strangers = could be an axe murderer. Right? I've had many intimate moments with friends. I've had women cry on my shoulders, hug me, even fall asleep in my arms. Would it be weird to kiss them, if the feeling was mutual and that's where things took us? Not for me.
So what of the "don't want to risk our friendship" bit? Hogwash. Women realize this. I think most of the time they say "I don't want to risk our friendship" they're really saying "I never want to see you naked, ever, and I'd just as soon kiss my brother." In other words, buddy, in the Friend Zone you will remain.
Women - younger women especially - long for a fairy tale romance1. They1 want1 to be swept off of their feet. They1 want1 a whirlwind1 "love at first sight" magical evening with a guy. They1 want1 to be surprised. They1 want1 adventure. They1 want1 intrigue1, mystery1. They1 want1... something new. You? You're old. They know you already. They know what kind of movies you like and where you go out to eat (and what you order). There's little chance you can surprise them. Love at first sight? Sorry, guy. Girl has probably seen you in shirts with chocolate ice cream stains on them.
But guess what? Guys want the same thing. They want adventure, mystery, intrigue, and a girl without chocolate ice cream stains on their shirts. Unfortunately, what we want in life is not always what's most practical or what's best for us. I find myself understanding the "I want something new" point of view, and at the same time personally disagreeing with it. I think comfort is sexy. Connecting with someone on an emotional level is an intimate experience that should be cherished and nurtured. I'm friends with several women whom I'd date, given the right circumstances, and I don't think it'd be terribly awkward at all. After all, what's more exciting than learning something new about someone whom you already care about? To me, that's every bit as exciting as learning something new about someone new, especially if that new girl turns out to be an axe murderer.
Luckily, though, I'm not the type of guy who needs to be in a Relationship. I think that a Relationship (relationship = friends, Relationship = kissy kissy) is going to happen whenever it happens, however it happens. 95% of what I could ever want from a girlfriend I get from my female friends already. I can call any of them at 3am and talk about my feelings. I can go shopping with them. I can talk about what a jerk guys are. I can listen to them talk about things, and basically, I can enjoy their company.
The only things I can't get from my friends (or don't want, as the case may be) is kissing and sex. Sometimes I can even get that (without losing the girl as a friend) if the right things happen. I can cuddle with a friend on the couch while watching a movie, and I can surely hug my female friends, so physical intimacy is possible. Not always at the "naked and sweaty" level, but at a level that meets my needs and wants a vast majority of the time.
What's perhaps quite peculiar about me is that while I love all of my female friends - "friends" are people I love, male or female, after all - I am not in love with them. I've been in love with exactly one person - my ex-girlfriend - but have loved, and do love, many. Kate, Crystal, Crystal, Kelly, Jamie, etc. I love 'em. They know it. But until I've kissed a girl, until we've "dated," and until we've put ourselves in the position to fall in love, I don't really develop those feelings. I may be an anomaly, a freak of nature, but I don't. Am I attracted? Yes. Do I have a gut feeling that a Relationship could work well? Yep. Do I fall in love? No…
So perhaps I'm not in the right position to understand this "ruining the friendship" thing. I started dating my ex-girlfriend immediately after meeting her in Paris, France, condensing the "friendship" phase to three days before we kissed. She and I couldn't remain friends after we broke up, even though I wanted it, because in her words "how can I get over you if we talk every week?"
Going for a Relationship is worth the risk to me. There's always the chance you'll realize early that it's not meant to be, and at that point two people can return to being friends. If it goes on longer, well, then I'll fall back on "'tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all." I'd rather have dated Jessica for five years as I did than have her as a friend for life. Life is a risk-reward trail, and in this case, the reward - the near-perpetual happiness and joy that the right person can bring to your life - is worth nearly any risk.
Of course, I'm not advocating dating every friend. Physical attraction and common sense about your situation are important. I'm friends with several people whom I could never date for either or both of those reasons. But if you're attracted to someone, and they're your friend, and there's no logical reason (i.e. they're a heroin addict, they live too far away to manage a Relationship) not to go for it, then go for it.
The Friend Zone is an excuse. The Friend Zone is "I'm afraid of being hurt" or "you're too ugly to date but telling you we're friends seems like a nicer way to put it." The Friend Zone is the land of excuses and lies. To people who are honest with each other, there is no Friend Zone. You have relationships, and those relationships are deep and run their course. If they involve an attempt at dating and possibly some nookie along the way, well, so be it.
I want to marry my best friend. I want to marry the girl with whom I am the most comfortable. But I've always said that I want "to be happy" when asked "what do you want to be in ten years?" If I'm 95% happy with my female friends, but am otherwise single, then I'd easily count myself among the lucky, among the happy."
1 Vast generalization used here. Deep down I know that everyone is unique… just like everyone else.
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