It’s a running joke that women put perfectly good guys in the “friend zone” — and guys are constantly blaming us for the fact that they have romantic feelings for us that we don’t return. It’s not our fault that we only see you as a friend, and it’s also not a bad thing — who doesn’t need good friends? Maybe the real problem isn’t that we’ve friendzoned you, but that you put us in the girlfriend zone, and we have no desire to be there.
- You knew where you stood and overstepped. As soon as we drop the friend label, all hell breaks loose. Suddenly we’re bitches or heartbreakers, when really we’re just being honest about our feelings and what the relationship means to us. Why is it always our fault that we don’t feel the same way you do?
- We try to be clear, but you keep trying. When we’re super clear that we only see you as a friend, it gets awkward AF when you keep trying for more. We get it — you like us in a romantic way. But when we can’t return the feelings, we’re made to feel guilty about it and that’s just plain wrong. Stop asking us for more than we can (or want to) give you.
- If you can’t be just friends, you need to walk away. If it’s really so hard for you to remain friends with us because you see it as torture when you want more, you need to walk away. We’ll be sad to see you go, because we really do like you as a friend, but we won’t put up with being made into a villain.
- It’s not us; it’s you. If you see unrequited love as us trying to “friendzone” you, it’s only because you’re seeing it completely wrong. Again, the problem is you saw us as something more and we didn’t feel the same. It’s as if you feel you deserve more from us because you were a nice guy and offered us support like any friend would… only you had a different motivation, and it backfired.
- Women get friendzoned, too. Women go through this too, so we get it — it’s not a great feeling to like someone who doesn’t like you back. The difference is, we don’t call it being “friendzoned” — we call it “he’s just not into you.“
- There’s someone else for you that wants more. We’re genuinely sorry that we don’t see you the same way you see us, but take this for what it’s worth. If we only see you as a friend, it’s because we do see some good in you. You should focus your energy onto someone who wants to return those feelings, because there’s someone out there for you, for sure.
- We don’t enjoy rejecting you. Rejection is actually hard for women to dish out. We don’t enjoy letting you down, but we also need to be honest about what we feel. We appreciate you — that’s why we’d like to be friends. Sorry if you had another idea in mind. Was our entire friendship a lie to try and get us into bed?
- We’re rooting for you to be happy… with someone else. Sooner or later, you’ll girlfriend zone the right one. You won’t get it right every time, but in the meantime, stop using the friend zone to absolve yourself of the truth. You put someone in the girlfriend zone who didn’t want to be there. Eventually, someone will feel the same, so hang in there — and maybe let the idea of us go.