The Friend Zone

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I suspect the author is speaking more from experience than spirituality. There simply is no Catholic teaching on the subject. As to St. Frances de Sales, one simply cannot apply Sixteenth Century advice on social interaction to the same today. Principles of chastity remain, but that is not the issue here.
 
twf said:
Why, in these discussions, is it always assumed that there WILL be near occasion of sin if a man and a woman spend time together one on one? Certainly there can be… but I think it is the height of insanity to assume (as many seem to on this forum) that ANY man will be sexually drawn to ANY woman and vice versa. As a man, there are millions upon millions of women whom I could never ever be remotely aroused by under any circumstances…that is just objective reality. I am a 30 year old married man. There are women in their 50s and 60s who I would consider “friends”. Yet never in a million years under any circumstances could I ever be in an occasion of sin with these mature ladies who are older than my mother. I have friends of all ages and both genders. One of my closest friends is an 85 year old man - and no he is not a grandfather figure for me, he is a friend. It wouldn’t really be that drastically different if he were an 85 year old woman.
I have several women friends who are around my same age with whom nothing could ever happen romantically - there’s simply no interest there. These are women I’ve known for a decade or longer. These are women my wife is also friends with and with whom we can spend time with together or individually. I know from experience that platonic friendships between men and women are very possible.
You just need to know yourself, the friend, and the context. While I would not hesitate to spend time with my established women friends whom I have known for years, and whom my wife knows, there are other women in my life whom I would never spend time with one on one - women who I realize I would perhaps be interested in if I were single… its not rocket science… you just need to know yourself and the other person.
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Oh, no, it’s kind of like smoking around gasoline. Most of the time, nothing happens, particularly in the cases of friendships when there is a big age gap. My point is that people are rarely offended when you say, “you’re old enough to be my mother, but I can still see you are a woman.” Even your mother does not mind the idea that you realize some man out there somewhere could find her attractive, even if being your mom she knows you naturally never want to go there. (People do marry when they have 20 year age gaps, after all.)

No, my point is that I’ve known more instances than I would have thought when I was younger when something did happen. You’re cultivating a relationship where you do start to take it for granted that you’re “safe.” You feel as if you are around a sibling–because we are talking about real friendships, here, not just acquaintances who really don’t know each other or disclose anything about themselves to one another.

The problem typically comes–and here I’m assuming you’re not actually playing with fire and going out and looking for someone to flatter you sexually with his or her flirty attentions, which is THE most typical time when falls come–when one or both of you are going through something very emotional or a change in life or has too much to drink or something like that. There are times when our brains come un-wired from our typical ways of perceiving the world. We do not see them coming any more than we can predict the night our some mouse-chewed wire in the wall will burst into flames and start our homes on fire.

Like the mouse-chewed wire, it is not healthy to spend our lives obsessed with the chance that this is going to happen. Yes, it can. Yes, sometimes it does. What you do is that you take sensible measures to keep it from happening, and then if it does you have a plan for how everyone is going to get out safely if it does. That doesn’t mean living in a concrete house, in social terms. It means not assuming “that is so rare, we’re never going to have a fire.”

Unplanned sexual infidelity can have devastating effects on a marriage and on a family. It is more common than people think, as well. It is not something to lay awake nights worrying about, but it is something to take as a serious matter and that people ought to see is a risk that can be greatly mitigated through some rather painless precautions.

Oh, and don’t automatically assume a woman twenty years older than you couldn’t be flattered into thinking you have an interest. As the saying goes: There is no fool like an old fool.
 
I really don’t get why mixed sex friendships are such a big deal, both me and my husband have had them without them turning into to sordid love affairs. I get that men have struggles but this type of article just seems whiny and blaming of women. Surely its up to the man to manage his time and social life rather than blaming his female friend from holding him back from pursuing women or male friendships.
 
ConfusedLucy said:
I really don’t get why mixed sex friendships are such a big deal, both me and my husband have had them without ihem turning into to sordid love affairs. I get that men have struggles but this type of article just seems whiny and blaming of women. Surely its up to the man to manage his time and social life rather than blaming his female friend from holding him back from pursuing women or male friendships.
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My husband and I have many friends of the opposite sex, too. Most of the time, it is no problem. I’ve had some “interest” flare up that let me know there needed to be a distance. I’ve also had spouses express a deep discomfort with the friendship. In that case, the friendship goes totally to a “group setting” thing. You have to put the marriage first.

Yes, though, I agree: If you’re being “friend-zoned,” then dude, go get a life if you don’t want to spend all your life with your platonic friends. It is not her job to shoo you away any more than it is the job of the guys in your social sphere to tell you to go find a girlfriend. (They should look out for your marriage. A friend of the married person has to be a friend of the marriage or, if it is toxic, then an adversary of it.)
 
dangerousdyls said:
I think this is well said.

I have women I consider friends, but we keep boundaries. More strict boundaries than that of same-sex friends. I think one should be wary of spending and planning much one-on-one time with someone of the opposite sex that they don’t intend to see about marriage. But to me that doesn’t mean you’re not friends.
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Agreed. I would have always been comfortable with being 1 on 1 chatting in my bedroom with a female friend but never with a guy. They were relegated to the kitchen. Or maybe promoted to the kitchen, depending on the last time I tidied up the bedroom 😉
 
JimG said:
Amazingly enough, this article from Scientific American takes a somewhat similar view:

“The results suggest large gender differences in how men and women experience opposite-sex friendships. Men were much more attracted to their female friends than vice versa. Men were also more likely than women to think that their opposite-sex friends were attracted to them—a clearly misguided belief. In fact, men’s estimates of how attractive they were to their female friends had virtually nothing to do with how these women actually felt, and almost everything to do with how the men themselves felt—basically, males assumed that any romantic attraction they experienced was mutual, and were blind to the actual level of romantic interest felt by their female friends.

Women, too, were blind to the mindset of their opposite-sex friends; because females generally were not attracted to their male friends, they assumed that this lack of attraction was mutual.”
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It is possible to be attracted to someone and still have no interest in anything other than a platonic relationship. I have been in that situation multiple times. The base “pull” of attraction can be mostly ignored if nipped in the bud. For example if a friend was an atheist I would never even consider indulging in romantic feelings but I might still feel that they were attractive.
 
I’m reminded of this oldie-but-goodie article on The Internet “Nice Guy” rears his ugly head once more. WARNING: contains foul language both sacrilegious and scatological!] It endures, though, because it’s so very commonplace.

People have to be reminded that other people have a right not to fall in love with you. Therefore I would suggest that the man-woman problem is a subset of the bigger problem that one or more selfish people cannot be friends.
 
BlueEyedLady said:
Have you considered stepping away from this kind of material, even if only temporarily? It might do you some good.

You have been a member since 2004, and since then, you’ve consistently posted threads and articles about the terrible state of gender relations, masculinity, and marriage. A couple weeks ago I was looking at a VERY old thread in which you had declared modern marriage a failure and thought it necessary to go back to arranged marriages. 12 years of your life has gone to these negative and sometimes hateful musings that prey upon the notion that you can’t have a good life because the whole world is against it. Instead of focusing on finding and sharing these opinion pieces that validate your own life, why not take concrete steps to change things for yourself?

These things you post are not as widespread and inescapable as you seem to think. I have to wonder if you’re extrapolating your experiences to the entire population of the West. Clearly, men and women can be friends, even if it is a bit more complicated. Clearly, happy, lifelong marriages form every day. And clearly, there are still plenty of good, strong men who work hard and have successful lives (yes, even straight, white, Christian men).

If you feel that your own masculinity has failed to develop in a healthy way, work on that. Take a fighting course, join a men’s club, volunteer as a Big Brother. If you feel like you haven’t built healthy relationships with women, set your mind to that. If it’s both, develop your masculinity so you can better form a romantic relationship.
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Well, in this case I was ‘extrapolating’ from BigPulpit.com which tends to link a variety of interesting articles. But it also made me think about several office friendships of people that I have known that in fact turned into infidelities—the sort of infidelities that might have been foreseen and avoided if the parties had not been such good friends, and believed that that’s all it would ever be.
 
pnewton said:
I suspect the author is speaking more from experience than spirituality. There simply is no Catholic teaching on the subject. As to St. Frances de Sales, one simply cannot apply Sixteenth Century advice on social interaction to the same today. Principles of chastity remain, but that is not the issue here.
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Principles of chastity remain, and human nature remains the same.
 
ShrodingersCat said:
Agreed. I would have always been comfortable with being 1 on 1 chatting in my bedroom with a female friend but never with a guy. They were relegated to the kitchen. Or maybe promoted to the kitchen, depending on the last time I tidied up the bedroom 😉
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That’s another difference between men and women. As a man, I wouldn’t be comfortable chatting with other men in my bedroom.
 
This may sound weird but I see a grown ups bedroom as their private space, I have never had friends in my bedroom as an adult, I see it as more of a teenage thing.
 
JimG said:
Well, in this case I was ‘extrapolating’ from BigPulpit.com which tends to link a variety of interesting articles. But it also made me think about several office friendships of people that I have known that in fact turned into infidelities—the sort of infidelities that might have been foreseen and avoided if the parties had not been such good friends, and believed that that’s all it would ever be.
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You can’t say that some people allow friendships to become romantic and extrapolate that to all people. It’s nowhere near as common as men and women just being friends. Also, the friend zone has nothing to do with infidelity.
 
ConfusedLucy said:
This may sound weird but I see a grown ups bedroom as their private space, I have never had friends in my bedroom as an adult, I see it as more of a teenage thing.
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Yeah I probably wouldn’t have done it past my early 20s, not that there is anything inherently wrong with it.

Actually now that I think of it, it was probably more after getting married that I stopped, cos that would be very weird for me since it’s not just my bedroom.
 
JimG said:
Principles of chastity remain, and human nature remains the same.
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Human nature is also not the issue. Dating, friendship, the workplace, are all areas where culture is a significant factor. Societal norms will influence what is appropriate, practical and prudent. For example, in my life, the advice that St. Francis gave four hundred years ago is proven irrelevant. This is okay, he did not ever say it was universal and timeless. Like most great saints, he was a man of his time, helping those in his time.
 
JimG said:
Amazingly enough, this article from Scientific American takes a somewhat similar view:

“The results suggest large gender differences in how men and women experience opposite-sex friendships. Men were much more attracted to their female friends than vice versa. Men were also more likely than women to think that their opposite-sex friends were attracted to them—a clearly misguided belief. In fact, men’s estimates of how attractive they were to their female friends had virtually nothing to do with how these women actually felt, and almost everything to do with how the men themselves felt—basically, males assumed that any romantic attraction they experienced was mutual, and were blind to the actual level of romantic interest felt by their female friends.

Women, too, were blind to the mindset of their opposite-sex friends; because females generally were not attracted to their male friends, they assumed that this lack of attraction was mutual.”
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I haven’t caught up with this thread, so apologies in advance.

I have two main responses to this comment:
  1. It also works the other way around–it is possible for a woman to be smitten with a man who sees her only as a friend. (Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.)
  2. I would interpret the study findings a bit differently. Here’s why:
In my experience, same-sex female friendship has a depth and emotional intimacy that does not generally exist in platonic same-sex male friendships. The emotional coloring of a same sex-female relationship often resembles that of a heterosexual romantic relationship. This has some interesting consequences. First of all, when this sort of relationship between two girls or women cools off or goes sour, it’s a lot like the break-up of a romantic relationship in terms of fallout. Secondly, perhaps because female same-sex friendship tends to be very warm and emotionally intimate, it’s natural for women to bring that same approach to a platonic friendship with a man–leading to very natural misunderstandings and lots of whiny complaining internet articles who don’t know what female friendship looks like or feels like.
 
More thoughts:
  1. The article writer doesn’t seem to know what friendship looks like. It doesn’t mean one party doing all the things for the other–there ought to be more reciprocity. What he’s describing is stealth courtship.
  2. This is unfortunate:
“At this crossroads, the young man should realize that he has missed his target and discontinue the relationship. He has offered something deeper than mere friendship; he has offered his heart, and she has rejected it—or, in the case of her desiring friendship, she wants to use his heart and exploit it.”

I understand saying something like “you’re going to get hurt, so don’t hang around someone who has rebuffed your romantic overtures” but I don’t get the idea that the hypothetical young man is offering something so much deeper than mere friendship, when he doesn’t seem to be capable of friendship at all.
 
Thinking about this I wonder if the men behind articles like this, as well as all that alpha/beta stuff, are men who have been babied by their mothers to the point where they can’t manage their emotions and relationships and see this as the responsibility of women they come into contact with. While their mothers are happy to baby them most women seem to be moving away from the ‘emotional caretaker’ role and we expect to be able to relate to men like adults.
 
Xantippe said:
I haven’t caught up with this thread, so apologies in advance.

I have two main responses to this comment:
  1. It also works the other way around–it is possible for a woman to be smitten with a man who sees her only as a friend. (Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.)
  2. I would interpret the study findings a bit differently. Here’s why:
In my experience, same-sex female friendship has a depth and emotional intimacy that does not generally exist in platonic same-sex male friendships. The emotional coloring of a same sex-female relationship often resembles that of a heterosexual romantic relationship. This has some interesting consequences. First of all, when this sort of relationship between two girls or women cools off or goes sour, it’s a lot like the break-up of a romantic relationship in terms of fallout. Secondly, perhaps because female same-sex friendship tends to be very warm and emotionally intimate, it’s natural for women to bring that same approach to a platonic friendship with a man–leading to very natural misunderstandings and lots of whiny complaining internet articles who don’t know what female friendship looks like or feels like.
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Yes, I never really thought of this, but I think you are right. Same sex friendships between women and between men are different, leading to different expectations and different perceptions of opposite sex friendships.
 
ConfusedLucy said:
Thinking about this I wonder if the men behind articles like this, as well as all that alpha/beta stuff, are men who have been babied by their mothers to the point where they can’t manage their emotions and relationships and see this as the responsibility of women they come into contact with. While their mothers are happy to baby them most women seem to be moving away from the ‘emotional caretaker’ role and we expect to be able to relate to men like adults.
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If you are comparing the Red Pill to the guys complaining about the friendzone, you clearly do not understand the Red Pill. I refer you to my previous post on this thread.

The Red Pill advises detachment, holding your frame and generally being in control. The problem is, the most vocal portion of our community is still working through the anger phase of accepting the Red Pill, myself included.

Our expectations of women have no connection to that malarkey above. The general Red Pill view on women would be labeled misogynistic by the vast majority of this group.
 
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