If you're a human being
living on Planet Earth, you know what the Friend Zone is. It's the
place a woman knocks a guy back to when she says, “Yeah, I really
like you, too...as a friend.”
Men hate this sh*t. They
mill around on the Internet and in the bars b*tching and moaning
about how they've put so much time and effort into some woman
at some point, and then she wouldn't even reciprocate with a single
f*ck. That b*tch, stringing him along like that. They seem to think
it's some kind of cruel joke.
Because women are objects,
right? And you can totally buy us – if not with cash, then with a
less tangible investment of acting like a doormat, right?
 |
| Wrong. |
Once you're in the Friend
Zone, the only thing you can do to get back out again is slay a
freakin' dragon. Since dragons went extinct sometime around the
Merovingian Dynasty, that's no longer an option. The best you can
hope for is to stay out of the Friend Zone altogether.
Most girlies aren't
heartless b*tches who like taking advantage of poor,
can't-get-a-break “nice guys.” We aren't total idiots who keep
dating a**holes because we don't know any better. Well, okay, yeah,
but most of us learn our lesson by the time we reach our late 20s.
That's why Douchebag's girlfriend is always 22, by the way.
I've been reading about evolutionary mating psychology lately, and thinking a lot about my personal
experiences, and I've developed a theory.
 |
| Ta-daaa! |
Women are socially-oriented
creatures. We like to make everyone feel safe, accepted and equal (at
least to their faces).
Women are physically smaller
and weaker than men.
 |
| Well...most women. ~ roonb |
We're also more physically
vulnerable, especially when we're pregnant, giving birth, or looking
after young children. For millions of years, we've relied on strength
in numbers to keep us safe from things like the rapists in the next
tribe and that goldang cave bear we keep telling the chief to just
freaking kill, already.
 |
| Don't come crying to me when it eats you. ~ Sergiodlarosa |
Over the millennia, women
have evolved to value strong social bonds, and many of us seem to
have an inborn understanding of how to form and maintain those bonds.
To make everyone feel safe, accepted and equal, you have to be gentle
with people's feelings, and refrain from pissing anyone off.
|
| This is why I don't have many friends. |
Often, when
a woman says, “I really like you, too...as a friend,” what she
really means is, “Please. Just. Go. Away.”
But she won't say that,
because the tag-team of evolution and social conditioning have
squeezed those impulses right out of her.
Over the past few decades,
modern men have learned that modern women want kind, sensitive,
supportive guys who will stick around to help them raise the babies.
Actually, women have always wanted men who will stick around, and we
managed, over thousands of years, to erect societal monoliths geared toward forcing men to provide for their spawn. We call these institutions
“marriage” and “family” and they have probably been with us
since around the time we started wearing clothes.
Then some chemist invented
LSD, the Sexual Revolution happened, people decided that marriage was
obsolete and it all went to sh*t.
 |
| Very colorful sh*t. |
Don't get me wrong, I'm not
complaining. I'm glad I can have casual, drunken sex, without getting
burned at the stake. I'm glad I can wear trousers and pursue a career
(without getting burned at the stake). I'm glad I don't have to
depend on a man, or men, for my very survival (vis à
vis not getting burned at the stake). I'm glad that I, and women all over the Western world, are pursuing long-term relationships
based on mutual happiness, rather than politics or economics or not
getting burned at the stake.
 |
| Not cool, dude, not cool. |
Until about 40 or 50 years
ago, Western men didn't have to worry too much about having feelings
and changing diapers. That was the woman's job, and if she wanted to
eat, she'd do it.
Today's men seem to be
struggling a little with the “kind and sensitive” part. You can't
blame them, because fifty years won't erase millions of years of
breeding. Besides, a fella could easily get confused. He hears us say
we want kind, sensitive men, but he sees us hooking up with a**holes
left and right.
Women, he might eventually
conclude, are either lying, or they're fickle, brainless creatures
who really don't know what they want. For the most part, neither of
these conclusions is the correct one. There are, I think, at least
three elements to this:
1) Douche-y guys are
virile and provide strong, healthy offspring with good genes. If
they didn't, there wouldn't be so many of them around. Back in the
Stone Age, if not today, it was in a woman's best interests, for
her own survival and that of her children, to find a man who would
protect her from the cavebear. There weren't any who's-your-daddy
tests back then, though, so the men who fathered the most children
by the most women passed their philandering genes on down for the
rest of us to b*tch about.
 |
| Thanks but no thanks, a**hole. |
2) Douche-y guys are
confident. I don't know if that's the result of genetics, or the result
of thinking you're the hottest thing on feet, but if I had to
guess, I'd say it was the latter.
We ladies like
confidence. A confident man doesn't grovel endlessly. He doesn't need to be peeled off of us every time we leave the house. He doesn't weigh
us down with needy, clingy,
you-make-all-the-decisions-because-I-am-utterly-helpless bullshit. He takes some responsibility for himself and his own happiness.
3) As usually happens when men
attempt to understand women or vice versa, there's been a
misunderstanding. When a woman says she's looking for a kind,
sensitive man, there's a part of that statement that goes
unspoken. We are looking for kind, sensitive (attractive, well-groomed) men who are secure
in themselves and not afraid to show their interest from the
start.
That
part is vital. When you pass yourself off as a friend, that's exactly
what we take you for – a friend. Many women don't understand the
“Men are always interested” rule, so we think your friendly
overtures are, you know, friendly. You guys, on the other hand, seem
to take female friendliness for flirtatiousness. What it is, in
fact, is friendliness.
Establishing
a friendship with ulterior motives is therefore a form of betrayal.
Not
only that, but it makes you look like a spineless ninny who's not
even brave enough to ask a girl out. If you can't do that, what are
you going to do when the Zombie Apocalypse comes?
 |
| Sorry, this spot's taken. ~ Dennis Matheson |
We're
not in middle school anymore. Try doing something radical and
unheard-of, like asking her out when you first realize you like her.
Hanging around for two months of Grey's Anatomy
and shopping trips with the girls is not the way to make yourself look manly.
 |
| In other words, grow a pair. |
