...what about gaining attraction? It's happened before that I start out not being attracted to a friend, and then become attracted. If they had feelings for me, but didn't want to just be friends, it would plausibly be the right bet to tough out a friendship for a while in hopes of me becoming attracted.
"for a while" is pretty vague there and can leave somebody wasting a lot of time.
Based on what I have observed with other people, for males, the smart approach is that it's fine to be "friends in the same friend group" but to not waste time being friends in a one on one basis and to not let the other person become the focus for you when you're in a group. And ideally rebuff any attempts by her to make it that way. Definitely a group of 6 or 8 is better than a group of 4. One on one time isn't generally going to change the female's opinion. The more time in a group setting, the more opportunity for her to observe the male in ways that raise or lowers the male's status in her mind. And of course the general advice of get (or stay) in shape and fit and do things to make yourself higher status to other women applies.
For female's, it's less clear. One on one attention may work depending on whether the lack of attraction is "lack of any attraction" versus "not enough attraction to want to date." But the problem there is it might be short term success. Hard for a female in that situation to know whether she has actually won him over or he has decided that attractive and readily available is good enough, at least for right now. I still think the safer route is probably the same, with probably more emphasis on making sure one is doing what they can to be attractive. I think the chances of being in great shape versus ok shape are probably much more likely to move the needle for men than women, although of course then the woman has to decide how she feels about that being the difference.
34 years ago my wife and I faced this problem, but such was our relationship then that neither of us put the stop seeing the other option second, it was last for both of us. 32 years ago we stopped having this problem, and we've been married almost 27 years now. I'd say that the closer a couple becomes the harder the problem becomes, except that quite often the stop seeing the other option becomes even harder to accept.
This approach lacks the requisite recursion it also implies. Applying the same approach for all cases collapses all relationships into the friend zone, which is obviously untrue in reality. Thus, the approach fails in practice and theory.
...what about gaining attraction? It's happened before that I start out not being attracted to a friend, and then become attracted. If they had feelings for me, but didn't want to just be friends, it would plausibly be the right bet to tough out a friendship for a while in hopes of me becoming attracted.
"for a while" is pretty vague there and can leave somebody wasting a lot of time.
Based on what I have observed with other people, for males, the smart approach is that it's fine to be "friends in the same friend group" but to not waste time being friends in a one on one basis and to not let the other person become the focus for you when you're in a group. And ideally rebuff any attempts by her to make it that way. Definitely a group of 6 or 8 is better than a group of 4. One on one time isn't generally going to change the female's opinion. The more time in a group setting, the more opportunity for her to observe the male in ways that raise or lowers the male's status in her mind. And of course the general advice of get (or stay) in shape and fit and do things to make yourself higher status to other women applies.
For female's, it's less clear. One on one attention may work depending on whether the lack of attraction is "lack of any attraction" versus "not enough attraction to want to date." But the problem there is it might be short term success. Hard for a female in that situation to know whether she has actually won him over or he has decided that attractive and readily available is good enough, at least for right now. I still think the safer route is probably the same, with probably more emphasis on making sure one is doing what they can to be attractive. I think the chances of being in great shape versus ok shape are probably much more likely to move the needle for men than women, although of course then the woman has to decide how she feels about that being the difference.
34 years ago my wife and I faced this problem, but such was our relationship then that neither of us put the stop seeing the other option second, it was last for both of us. 32 years ago we stopped having this problem, and we've been married almost 27 years now. I'd say that the closer a couple becomes the harder the problem becomes, except that quite often the stop seeing the other option becomes even harder to accept.
This approach lacks the requisite recursion it also implies. Applying the same approach for all cases collapses all relationships into the friend zone, which is obviously untrue in reality. Thus, the approach fails in practice and theory.
This is why I DON'T HAVE ANY FRIENDS.