The Art of Being a Woman in the Friend Zone

Can anybody see me?

Me: “I like you.”

Him: “I like you too!”

Me: “No. I mean, I really like you.”

We’re on Facebook messenger, and he takes five minutes to respond.

Him: “Oh, wow. I don’t see you like that. Telling me took guts though!”

To recap, I, as an adult woman, told my friend I had romantic feelings for him, and he said, “No, thanks.” Then he called me brave.

It’s not that I believe my friend should have reciprocated my feelings; I wasn’t entitled to them. But I wish I’d had someone to reassure me this experience was okay. Hollywood only shows men being friend-zoned. What was wrong with me as a woman if it was happening to me?

Is the friend zone still a thing?

There’s been some great writing on Medium about whether the friend zone exists. To me, it does, and I use this definition.

Google’s examples of friend-zoning don’t include the heterosexual woman. The myth that women can fuck the men we want, when we want, persists. We friend-zoned women are invisible which lets shame grow like mold.

Let’s quit that shit. We don’t have anything to be ashamed of. If you’re a lady who has ever declared unrequited romantic feelings, this is for you. Keep reading to learn how to dominate the friend zone. Build a fucking castle there and change your address.

Lesson 1: Be funny, but it won’t make them love you.

Do you remember the magazine YM? They stopped publishing in 2004, but by that time, they’d already informed all my opinions on what makes a woman attractive. I’ll never forget this one quote from the interview they did with teenage boys on what made a girl sexy.

“A sense of humor can make even an okay-looking girl seem hot.”

A boy named Drew said that. Drew had a skateboard in his picture and was probably a douche. I wanted him to love me.

At 13, I frowned in the mirror. I didn’t think I qualified as an okay-looking girl. I had fat cheeks scarred with acne, crooked teeth no one was paying to fix, and hair with enough static electricity to power our small town. My friend had once told me I could probably be a 5 if I tried harder. I figured if a sense of humor could make an okay-girl hot, maybe it would make an ugly girl okay-looking.

I was already funny — when you grow up in a household with parents who fight like Punch and Judy, you learn to use humor to diffuse situations at an early age. I didn’t change anything except my expectations: I would be funny around boys and then they’d fall in love with me.

Right. Instead, I ended up as one of those girls the guys talk to about the girls they actually like. I was one of the guys with inside knowledge of other girls’ minds. I was useful, but I wasn’t loved.

Here’s what I wish someone had told me back then: Be funny, but don’t do it for them. Do it because you love being funny. Those boys aren’t worth your time or your jokes, so save your material for your Netflix special.

Lesson 2: No one is sending you secret messages.

“That man’s looking at you,” Mom said. “He’s staring at your new pretty hair!”

I was fifteen, and I’d just been to Mom’s salon. They’d teased my thick, frizzy, blond hair into a tall box of curls that surrounded my head like an ’80s glamour portrait.

On the way home, a man drove past us on a motorcycle. He’s looking at you. That meant he liked me, Mom said. I hoped she was right. What if he didn’t like what he saw? What if he wasn’t looking at me at all? What if no man would ever look at me like Mom thought they should?

I grew up unable to tell the difference between when a boy is looking at me and when he’s making romantic advances. The friend I declared my feelings for via Facebook had been nice to me. He talked to me about stuff besides other girls. I thought that meant he loved me.

But he wasn’t saying that he loved me.

He must have left secret clues in our texts. He was too cowardly to tell me outright — Mom had also taught me that boys were cowardly. It was my responsibility to find the secret hints he’d dropped.

This was insane, but at the time, it just felt exciting. I wish someone had taken me by the shoulders and said, “No one is sending you secret messages. You don’t have to suss out love. When it’s there, you won’t be able to miss it.”

When my current boyfriend told me he liked me, he used those words. I didn’t have to guess, and you don’t either. You deserve more, and when you stop wasting your efforts on other people, you might find it.

Lesson 3: Do you even love this person?

When you’re scouring the sky for smoke signals that you’re loved, you’re wasting energy you could be spending doing really cool shit, like making art and healing your trauma.

If you’re in the friend zone, consider the possibility that you aren’t really in love with your friend. Maybe they’re a distraction for something else in your life you aren’t willing to deal with.

When I told my crush via Facebook messenger I liked him, I was engaged to another guy. As if that wasn’t bad enough, this crush/friend was a coworker. Besides work and the hobbies I’d lied about, we didn’t have much in common.

I couldn’t see any of these problems. They were eclipsed by the giant hole in myself. To fill it, I’d dumped in an engagement ring, truckloads of Mac & Cheese, and daydreams of my cowardly crush finally confessing his love for me. The hole stayed deep.

At the bottom was years of unhealed trauma.

At the bottom was a relationship with a man who was kind and funny and handsome, and whom I couldn’t connect with. He was so much better than me. He’d grown up middle class. His parents were well-adjusted scientists.

At the bottom of the hole was resentment; why’d he have it so easy?

I needed a different life where I had room to heal, but I didn’t know that, let alone how to tell my fiance. Instead, I got a crush. It was more fun.

Take a look at the person on the other side of your friend zone. Sometimes you’ll find out you don’t even like them that much — you just really don’t like yourself.

Don’t friend-zone yourself.

When we keep chasing the people who friend-zone us, it’s like we’re waving them down and trying to get them to see past whatever it is we think is keeping them from loving us.

In my case, I thought I was too fat. Our culture taught me that if I lost weight and got braces, then all the boys I was such great friends with would suddenly want me.

It would be like when that girl in She’s All That took off her glasses and Freddie Prinze Jr. swooned, thus convincing a generation of girls that cosmetic changes such as contact lenses were all that stood between us and unconditional love from the jocks.

Bullshit. First of all, I’ve lost and gained enough weight to know that the shallow Freddie Prinze stand-in would be very surprised one year later when I’d gone back to my normal size. Second, you can’t chase love.

If you have to chase it, you aren’t feeling what you’ve already got inside. To do that, sit still instead. Stay with yourself. Learn how to make the voices in your head love you.

Make a list of what makes you extraordinary — where have you lived? What have you lived through? What qualities in yourself do you seek out in other people? What parts of you do people miss out on when they misjudge you? Get real vulnerable with yourself — get naked with yourself. Keep breathing — they’re just feelings.

At the end, and maybe over the course of months, you might find relief. You did nothing wrong. It means nothing that those friends didn’t feel the same way as you, except that you were looking for love in the wrong place. Now you’re learning to look inside.