Cherchez Les Femmes

Or stuck in the friend zone

For many men when we are young, we have all made the mistake of trying to pursue relationships with young women with whom we are enamored but who do not reciprocate the intensity of our feelings. However, we get along with them well enough to have an extended relationship of the kind which these days is described as the ‘friend zone’.

When I was 18 years old, I spent a large part of the summer having heartfelt discussions on any number of matters with the daughter of one of my father’s colleagues. We would often be up until 4 in the morning smoking cigarettes to the extent that when we ran out, we would rummage through the ashtray to smoke the ones that still had a bit of tobacco left in them.

The intensity of these encounters of course produced a number of feelings in me but being young and inexperienced I attempted nothing beyond talk. In the Fall, Frances decided to attend a small Women’s College in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, Wilson College.

As I was still pursuing a deluded hope of enjoying a sexual relationship with her, I went up to see her one weekend. I took my grandmother’s car. The first problem occurred when part of the end of the cam shaft or crankshaft sheared off, sending metal shards through the engine and immobilizing it. I had to abandon the car somewhere just south of the Pennsylvania border and then hitchhiked the rest of the way to Chambersburg.

I found her at her dorm and on the way up to her room discovered something about women I didn’t know existed. The rules in the dorm were that if one of the occupants brought a man in, she was supposed to shout ‘Man on the Hall’ to let the other girls know. Presumably this was to protect their modesty. Or maybe it was the opposite, an offer to share the man? One can always dream…

In any case, two doors down from her room one of the girls had taped a Playgirl centerfold of a full-frontal very, very naked man to her door. She had also put up a little sign, to amuse her classmates no doubt, that said ‘Don’t stand out there knocking; ‘Come on in.’

I was pretty surprised. I didn’t know that girls did this sort of thing. I had been brought up with a fairly Victorian view of the fair sex, and certainly thought that fornication was one of the last things on women’s minds.

That night, after more heartfelt talks I finally asked Frances if she wanted to have sex. She said, ‘No, but I’m glad you asked the question.’

I can’t say I was glad of the answer, but I had sort of asked for it by pursuing this relationship. As I know now from experience it is women who invariably initiate sex and if the signs aren’t there a man should not assume that it may be otherwise, irrespective of how much we may desire it.

As I was going to sleep on the hard cold floor instead of in the soft, warm embraces of my ‘friend’, I wondered what reception I would get if I took all my clothes off and went and knocked on the door of the girl who had put up the centerfold. The picture, by the way, had come down shortly after the ‘Man on the Hall’ warning had been called.

The next day I indulged Frances by hitchhiking to Philadelphia as she wanted to see a Rodin exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. An excellent museum by the way, although I admired it more before they moved the statue of ‘Rocky’.

The next day, I got back to College Park and, after making rather lame and implausible excuses to my father about how the car ended up in Northern Maryland, I wrote a novella about my weekend to try to work off my frustration.

I actually turned the manuscript in to my creative writing class at the University. The teacher had the effrontery to criticize the main character, i.e. me, on the grounds that no-one thought the way my character did. Excuse me, I did — and I still do.

In this case I was not crushed by the rejection, nor did she make me feel undesirable but later on I felt used and jerked around, particularly after one of her classmates that I randomly met a few years later told me that she had been pretty promiscuous at the time I tried knocking on that door.

Frances herself told me a couple of years later that she preferred running two boyfriends simultaneously. I can’t say that I was either impressed or titillated. It felt like a slap in the face by someone who clearly felt that she was entitled. That was the last time that I saw her, and I had to conclude that she was not actually a friend and never had been.

In the following Spring, not having learned my lesson, I had an intense personal relationship with a young woman who was also involved in student politics and whom I had known in High School. That’s her self-portrait above that she gave me at the time things came to an impasse in our relationship. Yvonne and I spent a lot of time together having fervent discussions about various things. We also spent a lot of time with another member of the Student Government Association cabinet, named Dave.

So, here I was in another ‘friend zone’ relationship — intense, emotional, and asexual. Once again, I think I was just being used. I was providing intellectual and/or emotional stimulation — that was filling a need of hers, but I was not getting the kind of reciprocation that I was looking for from her. Now, before any of you jump down my throat and accuse me of thinking that as a man, I believe that I’m entitled to sex, I don’t. There is a difference between wanting affection, intimacy and yes sex and deserving or expecting it.

We all have physical desires, and our biochemistry drives these. We often lie to ourselves and delude ourselves that there is a higher-minded drive that informs our choices. However, from a lifetime of observation, I would say that the sex drive in both men and women is actually pretty impersonal, and the brutal truth is that much as we all want to be uniquely loved and desired, when it comes to sex, we are all pretty much fungible.

It should have been clear to me that this relationship wasn’t going to work out either but when men are attracted to a woman, they all too often lose their judgment and can’t think straight.

In this particular case it eventually came out that Yvonne was sleeping with David and had been for some time and that I had been clueless. They certainly never gave any indication to me that they were involved in an intimate relationship when we are all together, which was frequently.

Yvonne’s reaction to my hurt was to show some empathy unlike Frances. Realizing that my feelings were hurt she then offered to sleep with me as well and asserted that she could make both David and me happy in that regard.

I turned her down, but I was in such a distraught emotional state that I sold everything that I owned and bought a one-way ticket to England which set in motion a chain of events that got me into Oxford University. So, in retrospect, I have to thank her for that. I heard that she eventually did David’s head in to the extent that he moved to California.

She was beautiful but emotionally unstable. I saw her a few times after I returned from England about four years later, but it was more of the same and we never did enter into an intimate relationship despite all of the intense emotional interactions that we had.

The major life lesson I learned from these relationships was: Do not chase women! It’s a waste of time. If a woman wants you, she’ll let you know. She will find a way to telegraph her desires and her intent. If she doesn’t, you’re invariably wasting your time trying to get her to change her mind. Just step back, relax and go about your business. At some point someone will make it clear that she wants you and is open to a relationship.

When this happens, don’t be a fool and reject her out of hand either. See what is there. There are many down to earth, decent, affectionate, responsible women out there. And for God’s sake guys drop the immature attitude that keeps you hung up on looks. One thing most males do not seem to have realized is that there is absolutely no correlation between a woman’s looks and what she is going to be like in bed or in all the other manifest ways that makes intimate personal relationships worthwhile and mutually rewarding.

So just give up chasing women. It will only leave you frustrated, and you’ll only develop a misplaced and immature anger at the entire sex if you don’t get what you want. Just chill out. It will happen when you least expect it. And stay off those ridiculous dating apps.