Didn't we just learn that most women find most men unattractive? The lessons we previously learned--that charm, humor and devotion matter--are available to the man in the friendzone. No, you aren't likely to make yourself physically more attractive, but she doesn't find most men attractive. I found myself relegated to this zone more than most (that's a book in itself), but I found my way out more than once as well, and the answer is in the last post. That isn't to say that one should always keep pursuing, because it's not always the right answer (and when it is the right answer it may be the right answer as part of a larger strategy of finding a mate, including pursuing other alternatives), but there are circumstances where one can reasonably conclude that were a match to happen it would be a very high quality match. I'm more than 3 decades into my version of this story and I couldn't recommend it more highly. Imagine you could be with P1 for the rest of your life. I pulled it off. It was not easy! We built emotional intimacy that was incongruent with a friendship, and most everyone would advise against doing that. But in doing that I was able to confirm that she was not just superficially appealing, not just the most attractive young woman in my social circle, but also someone I could spend my life with. And when we made the move from friendship to a romantic relationship, we had a real connection and were quickly able to build something much different from our other relationships.
I think fifteen years ago, good advice was to stay out of the friendzone.
But I actually think the pendulum has shifted such that making friends and whittling her down little by little is not a bad strategy for a lot of men (this is assuming that you have a real, even-ish friendship with her and not a one-sided exploitative one).
I think this is bad advice if, as I presume, "Dear Friend" is a straight man being friendzoned by a woman. Women are not men! Most women are simply not capable of ranking the men they know on a 1D attractiveness scale, and even if they were, the list would change so frequently that by the time a woman wrote it down, a man's place in it would be different.
Women can be, and very often are, convinced by a man that he is attractive. A man "getting a woman to sleep with him" is a master trope in literature/TV/movies. A very common, possibly even the modal, marriage origin story I hear, is the husband saying he loved her at first sight, while she "took some convincing." In other words, he was in the friendzone.
This doesn't entail staying in the friendzone is the better option, but a man should never make the mistake of thinking that a woman's preferences are as fixed as his.
This was entertaining, but seems like an awful lot of work to reach the conclusion that Brian illustrated in his original piece. “Grandson,” my granddaddy once said, “she ain’t interested. It’s okay to be uninteresting to someone else. But don’t also prove you’re stupid. Move on.” Complexing the simple is a waste of time and resources.
This is all a bit much. Just get out there, be assertive, get some hobbies, stay active, get off the internet, and don’t think you’re above fashion and style.
If a woman I rated as P42 on the attractiveness scale suddenly started making the same kind of arguments that I would make in her place, she would immediately get bumped pretty far up the scale. Hearing such arguments come from her would be new evidence that she thought a lot like I did. That would make her a lot more attractive as a mate.
Amen. I've always hated this friend zone concept. If you're in the friend zone it's because you're not attractive to that person. Go look for someone else, or work on improving yourself. But please stop thinking the other person is doing you a disservice by placing you in the friend zone.
Didn't we just learn that most women find most men unattractive? The lessons we previously learned--that charm, humor and devotion matter--are available to the man in the friendzone. No, you aren't likely to make yourself physically more attractive, but she doesn't find most men attractive. I found myself relegated to this zone more than most (that's a book in itself), but I found my way out more than once as well, and the answer is in the last post. That isn't to say that one should always keep pursuing, because it's not always the right answer (and when it is the right answer it may be the right answer as part of a larger strategy of finding a mate, including pursuing other alternatives), but there are circumstances where one can reasonably conclude that were a match to happen it would be a very high quality match. I'm more than 3 decades into my version of this story and I couldn't recommend it more highly. Imagine you could be with P1 for the rest of your life. I pulled it off. It was not easy! We built emotional intimacy that was incongruent with a friendship, and most everyone would advise against doing that. But in doing that I was able to confirm that she was not just superficially appealing, not just the most attractive young woman in my social circle, but also someone I could spend my life with. And when we made the move from friendship to a romantic relationship, we had a real connection and were quickly able to build something much different from our other relationships.
I think fifteen years ago, good advice was to stay out of the friendzone.
But I actually think the pendulum has shifted such that making friends and whittling her down little by little is not a bad strategy for a lot of men (this is assuming that you have a real, even-ish friendship with her and not a one-sided exploitative one).
I think this is bad advice if, as I presume, "Dear Friend" is a straight man being friendzoned by a woman. Women are not men! Most women are simply not capable of ranking the men they know on a 1D attractiveness scale, and even if they were, the list would change so frequently that by the time a woman wrote it down, a man's place in it would be different.
Women can be, and very often are, convinced by a man that he is attractive. A man "getting a woman to sleep with him" is a master trope in literature/TV/movies. A very common, possibly even the modal, marriage origin story I hear, is the husband saying he loved her at first sight, while she "took some convincing." In other words, he was in the friendzone.
This doesn't entail staying in the friendzone is the better option, but a man should never make the mistake of thinking that a woman's preferences are as fixed as his.
This was entertaining, but seems like an awful lot of work to reach the conclusion that Brian illustrated in his original piece. “Grandson,” my granddaddy once said, “she ain’t interested. It’s okay to be uninteresting to someone else. But don’t also prove you’re stupid. Move on.” Complexing the simple is a waste of time and resources.
It's a thought experiment
I would still aim high on occasion.
This is all a bit much. Just get out there, be assertive, get some hobbies, stay active, get off the internet, and don’t think you’re above fashion and style.
If a woman I rated as P42 on the attractiveness scale suddenly started making the same kind of arguments that I would make in her place, she would immediately get bumped pretty far up the scale. Hearing such arguments come from her would be new evidence that she thought a lot like I did. That would make her a lot more attractive as a mate.
Amen. I've always hated this friend zone concept. If you're in the friend zone it's because you're not attractive to that person. Go look for someone else, or work on improving yourself. But please stop thinking the other person is doing you a disservice by placing you in the friend zone.
“in front of yourself” not “in from of” I think. Great illustration, whether anyone ever does it or not!
Welcome to the Friend Zone. The opposite of the Jungle.
This whole subject is depressing even though I'm now married and not in the dating market. It was a miracle that I found my wife.
I hadn't seen Caplan's pivot to advice columnist for disaffected incels.
At least, it's an honest living and better than his hypocritical position as a university professor.