I Asked Lots of Women Why They Friendzone Men & They Gave Me These 4 Reasons…
Before I get into the meat of what I’m about to say, I wanna clarify precisely what I mean by friendzone because I’ve heard people use the term to describe different things.
When I say friendzone, I don’t mean when a girl dismisses a man who states his intentions clearly and quickly. Like if he asks her out and she says no. Or, if he tries to kiss her on a date and she says:
Let’s just be friends.
To let him down easily, even though she never wants to see him again in any capacity.
I’m not talking about situations where women aren’t interested in guys but still see them as ‘men’ and where they both go their own separate ways after the rejection.
I’m talking about the times when a woman literally cannot for the life of her ever comprehend the possibility of being physical with a man because she just doesn’t look at him in a remotely sexual light even though she really likes him as a person.
When she’s got him lumped in the friend/brother category in her head and just doesn’t think of him as a sexual being.
I’m talking about the times that crush the guys who suffer them. Like when you know a girl well, have loads of fun with her and think you would be awesome together.
However, for some reason, she seems hell-bent on only being friends and never taking things to the next level despite the great connection you think you guys have.
I’ve asked many women why they do this over the years, and they always say the same things. From what they’ve said, there aren’t many reasons why guys get friend-zoned, which is great to hear because it means there isn’t much to fix.
But anyway, if you want to know why it’s happened to you, then read on because I’m gonna give you some insight right now, starting with what I think are the most important reasons.
You ready?
1 – “There just wasn’t a spark”
This is, without a doubt, the single biggest reason the women I spoke to said why they friendzoned guys, and it makes a lot of sense when you think about it.
A girl doesn’t feel that fire of attraction between her and some dude and starts to see him as just a friend over time.
But before I move on, I want to say that from what I’ve seen, once women have decided that you’re just a friend they’re not attracted to, they seem to prefer to keep you in that psychological category.
They’re usually willing to contemplate losing interest in someone they’re currently attracted to but not to gain attraction for someone they don’t currently like.
Loosely put, once they decide you’re just a friend, that’s all they want you to ever be. That’s what makes being in the friendzone so painful; it feels like an emotional prison because it is.
But moving on, though, why exactly is there no spark? Well, for most guys who’ve been friendzoned, it’s because they were so scared of being rejected and looking creepy that they stripped all sexuality out of their interactions with the girls they were into.
They basically made a point of being kind, considerate, courteous, sweet, and respectful to a fault, but while showing no sexuality whatsoever.
Here’s an example of what I mean.
Let’s say that a guy and a girl have three dates, and the guy thinks she’s a good girl he should treat like a princess. He’s nice, pays for drinks and food, and is pleasant but never tries to kiss or touch her. He never flirts and keeps things light-hearted and friendly the whole time; what’s happening here?
That dude is slowly friendzoning himself. I know that from personal experience, testimony from hundreds of my clients, and what female friends have told me.
Yeah, he wants to be a good guy who isn’t remotely creepy and never makes a girl feel sexually threatened in his presence, and that’s exactly what he should be trying to achieve, but here’s the thing.
By removing all sexuality from his interactions with her, she’ll definitely enjoy her time with him if he’s a great guy, and she will want to be around him in some way.
But she won’t consider him someone she could get down with. She’ll just see him the way he’s presenting himself to her. Basically, he’s slowly programming her to not see him as a potential sex partner or boyfriend but as a nice friend.
Being a good man doesn’t inherently make you sexually attractive. You can be both, but you need to embody sexual energy. You can be a good man who treats women well while showing your sexual interest to the ones you like.
Also, what you need to know is that the friendzone is all about sex. It’s the zone to which women banish men they like as people but never want to sleep with. And this isn’t any different for good girls or sluts (a word I really don’t like).
It doesn’t matter how many morals a woman has or how likely she is to jump into bed with someone. If she doesn’t think a man is someone she’d ever have sex with under any circumstances but still likes as a person then off to the friendzone he goes.
Another interesting thing that the women I spoke to said is that they see sex differently from us men.
They don’t like to think of it as something that two people actively choose to do but as something that naturally happens because of a shared connection.
But as lovely as it is for them to want to think that, the truth is that 99 times out of 100, sex, or any kind of intimacy, happens because the man made the first move.
This means that when a guy’s too scared to make any sort of sexual advance (a kiss, a look, a touch, a risqué sexual joke, anything), she feels that lack of passion and often assumes it’s because the underlying spark that two people need to want to rip each other’s clothes off just isn’t there.
Having said that, though, even if she knew he was just scared, that still wouldn’t be good because being terrified of making the first move is a really unattractive trait in most women’s eyes. But that’s a topic for another day.
The friendzone is all about a lack of sexual attraction. If you’re not prepared to do something that can make her see you as a sexual being, she’ll eventually see you as just a friend and nothing more.
Now, I know you’re concerned about being creepy, and rightfully so. With that in mind, I’ll try to be careful with my words now, but here’s something to remember:
Sexuality isn’t inherently creepy. It’s totally normal
Being attracted to a girl and wanting her isn’t weird or wrong. It’s a 100% natural result of your human biology. We’re all sexual beings, and it’s the very reason that we exist on this planet.
Everybody wants it, everyone thinks about it, and being so ashamed of your desires that you suppress them into oblivion just hurts you in the long run.
Are there right and wrong ways to initiate sex? You bet. Are there right and wrong times to make a move? Most certainly. But guess what? You’ll never find the right way by doing nothing for fear of doing it wrong.
Anyway, here’s another reason the women I’ve spoken to have said they’ve friendzoned guys.
2 – “He took too long to make a move, so I assumed he didn’t like me and decided I wouldn’t want him either”
So, something interesting about women is how their attraction triggers are inherently different to ours. No man on the planet will stop being attracted to a girl because he assumes she doesn’t want him.
He might accept it and just deal with the fact that he can’t have her, but he won’t consciously switch that part of his brain off to her.
Sure, it could happen slowly over time as they develop a brother/sister relationship, but that’s rare, and even then, his change of mindset wouldn’t be by choice.
From what women have told me, they often do this when guys take too long to make a move. They decide that you’re either scared (which isn’t attractive) or that you just don’t like them and then recategorise you accordingly.
No woman has ever told me that she’s friendzoned a guy because she didn’t like the way he tried to kiss her or thought his advances were clumsy. In the worst-case scenario, she might have been completely put off by his tactless seduction strategies and decided she wasn’t into him, but that wasn’t really a friendzone.
It’s a case of:
Eurgh. Get away from me and never call me again.
But not a case of:
Aww, you’re such a sweet and lovely guy. I wish I could be with a guy like you even though you’re standing right in front of me right the fuck now and obviously are a guy like you. I hope you meet a girl who makes you happy one day, but alas, that girl will never be me.
Guys are so scared of the first option that they doom themselves to the second one, but for me, I’ll take option number 1 all day long. Option number 1 means you actively manned up, faced your fears and gave it your best shot.
Option number 1 means that you now have a chance to figure out where you went wrong and revise your approach in future. Option 1 means you could and should be proud of yourself for trying. Option number 2 is just pure psychological hell for many of the guys who experience it.
Moving swiftly on.
Please give this post a clap & a comment if you like it. It’s not about vanity, Medium will literally pay me more & forward this post to more people if you do. Also, follow me for daily posts.
3 – “He meant too much to me. I couldn’t bear to lose him”
So here’s another interesting one. Women have told me that they often friendzone guys because they think they’re just too good of a friend to lose, and if that doesn’t make sense to you, then let me explain a critical difference between how they and we look at sex.
Guys approach sex like hunter-gatherers approach looking for food. We know that nothing will come our way unless we hunt, and we generally have a scarcity mentality about it.
Most of us don’t have women showing interest in us, and we know we could easily go the rest of our lives without sleeping with anyone again unless we make shit happen.
Also, it’s pretty damn hard for the average guy to get a girl into bed (which is why it’s called getting lucky). All of this means that the concept of risking a friendship by turning it sexual is a no-brainer for us.
Loosely put, most men would happily risk the friendship to get to the sex because the sex is harder to get.
But for women, it’s the exact opposite. The average girl lives in a world where men come to her offering sex on a pretty regular basis, and she just has to say yes or no.
Having sex isn’t a big deal because she knows all she needs to do is open her legs to get it. She spends her life turning down offers, so she don’t seem easy, rather than making offers herself.
A huge part of why guys who sleep with loads of women are called studs, but women who do the same are called sluts is the level of access that both genders have to sex.
Men generally have little access to sex and are praised for getting it. In contrast, women have 24/7 access to it and are commended for turning it down and not being accessible.
Anyway, what women can’t get easily are great friendships. This means that if a girl has a male friend who gives her the world’s most excellent advice and is always there when she needs him, she probably won’t want to risk it all by getting physical.
Eventually, something could go wrong and cause her to lose him forever. And that’s actually pretty sweet if you think about it.
Really and truly, the odds of any relationship working out long-term are slim, and women know that. They also know that a good friendship is waaay more likely to last, so the idea of putting themselves in a position to lose someone close to them for the chance to get something they know they could easily get elsewhere doesn’t make sense, and I can’t fault the logic.
But here’s the crazy thing. Your average girl might not realise that the guys she rejected because she couldn’t bear to lose them as friends wanted her from the beginning.
They wanted her well before she ever decided they meant much to her at all. They wanted her back when she would have happily contemplated getting involved with them. Still, they were too scared to do anything about it and fucked themselves as a result.
4 – “He just wasn’t my type”
So the last reason isn’t as important as the others, and I’ll explain why. Obviously, it’s hugely important whether or not a woman thinks you’re her type, but that’s not really something you can control.
If she likes skinny Indian dudes and you’re a jacked black guy, then you’re fighting a losing battle.
Take it on the chin and realise there’s plenty more fish in the sea, many of which will think you’re their particular brand of vodka.
Also, this scenario isn’t any reflection of the guy, either. He didn’t lose a girl’s attraction through any fault of his own; it just wasn’t there to start with.
This is basically the first type of friendzoning I mentioned, where a guy acts like a man but isn’t suitable for the woman, rather than the second type, where he turns her off through a lack of action. I wouldn’t call this being friend-zoned, however; I’d call it being rejected.
Main takeaways
So what this all means is that if you think you can win her heart by being a great friend, you’re sadly mistaken.
No matter how much she loves you or how amazing she thinks you are, without a sexual element in your interactions, you’ll only ever be a friend.
It also means that you can’t wait before making a move because the more you do that, the more you’re programming her to see you as just the guy she eats pizza with every other week and nothing more.
It means you should take a chance and risk rejection because you know what? If you try and it doesn’t work, if she’s not interested because you’re not her type, then so what?
You gave it a shot, and being rejected didn’t kill you. You’re still here, still alive and still kicking. And you know something?
There’s every chance she won’t reject you either, and who knows what might happen after that.
Thanks for reading, human. Ciao, tchau, chao, and tschau.
Excelsior!
Like my writing? Buy me a pizza to support me. Also, I’ve started a new publication with Teri Nickels which is all about uncovering the hard and painful truths of modern dating. Get more info here.
