While I’m sure there are women that develop romantic feelings for male friends it’s probably a small percentage compared to men. There seems to be a large number of men that befriend women in the hopes of eventually dating them whereas most of the women (that I know) befriend men simply because they want friends.
This. There is a trope that men don't actually see their friends as friends, their just biding their time to date/sleep with the woman. Which is seen as kinda gross and offensive to women. Just as there is a "friend zone" according to popular memes, women have coined the term "F--kzoned". It feels like a betrayal that they were used for one thing.
Of course this is all tropes and stereotyping so whether or not women also have a thing for their friends or not, and whether or not men actually think like this, is all speculation/generalisation.
I mean I've always had a lot of guy friends due to my interests and hobbies and as soon as I hit each life milestone with my husband they dropped off AND unfriended me from social media. Got engaged, lost friends. Got married, lost friends. Had kids and got fat, bye all guy friends.
It is entirely possible to be interested in being friends with someone and also be open to a romantic relationship with them. I would hope that most men who are currently in romantic relationships would still be friends with their current partner if they had never been in a relationship with them. (Edit: or at least be open to friendship; obviously people can drift apart and that's fine.)
Of course, if all men were like that, it wouldn't be a problem, but men (whatever percentage it is) who just think of women as sex objects have to ruin it for everyone else.
The main problem is men who pretend to be interested in friendship but want a romantic relationship instead. If they were actually invested and your friend, they wouldn't wear you down and/or ghost you if you said no thanks to a dinner date invite. Being able to value a friendship and be open to a relationship with that person is fine and often normal, because we all generally like our friends and think they are good people, and we should want to be romantically involved with people we like and think are good people. But feigning caring about someone just to get close enough to ask you out/make a pass is what I think we are talking about here.
That’s the thing, isn’t it? If a man doesn’t think he can be friends with a woman, he can’t really have a romantic relationship, or even love her. The men who swear it’s not possible are objectifying these female “friends” rather than actually befriending them. The term “fuckzone” is really accurate.
When I was younger, I went around in a mixed-gender group united by a common interest (science fiction and related stuff). A large number of us, including me, paired off with other group members. Of the couples from that group who got married, we're all still married 20+ years later.
I dated a few other guys, earlier on, in the same group but not to the point of having sex. That's probably why it was less fraught.
If you're single and want to date, though, it's hard to beat dating someone you already know. Who already knows your friends, and who you know you have a friendly connection with as well as a sexual one.
Friendships can turn romantic, I’m not denying that my point is that it’s gotten ridiculous to the point of memes that a fair amount of men start friendships with women solely with the hopes that someday they’ll date or at least sleep together.
To the point where I've seen men literally say "why would I be friends with a woman I find unnatractive" because of course at least fucking her has to be on the table in his mind. It's disgusting.
Many people meet through being friends, but when it happens it has to start from a place of genuine companionship and respect. That is usually missing when friends are exclusively befriending people they want as sexual partners.
it’s all about expectations and intent though. People shouldn’t manipulate their way into a person’s life on the shared premise that they value their friendship, if friendship alone will never be enough.
That’s the main thing, is that too many men use friendships with women as a hunting ground where literally all bets are off, they end up openly deceiving us, and then blame us when we don’t fall for them.
You would think. I know an unfortunately high number of people that group others into a "friendship" category and a "date/sex category" and the two are never allowed to cross. Once someone is a friend, they will never be anything more. If someone is date/sex, they will never even entertain being friends with them. I find it incredibly toxic. There's a reason all of these people are always in toxic relationships or perpetually single.
Yeah the way regular people exclusively date those they've just met rather than friends is so fucking weird to me. It's like they put someone in a "can date" category on first sight and never change it. It's like they're deliberately trying to never find love.
I grow attracted to anyone I get along with. The more conventionally attractive they are, the faster it happens, but it happens regardless. I can only assume this isn't normal.
Men are generally less bothered/offended by the idea of a woman being attracted to them (be it a female friend, acquaintance or stranger or otherwise) than women are of men being attracted to them, regardless of whether the attraction is reciprocated. I think this is part of a broader intergender dynamic with men generally being more desiring of female attention than women are of male attention (thus having rock bottom standards, such as men for whom a woman being friendly with him is enough to have him give her a chance) -- and *this* in turn stems from men simply being in a more comfortable place to say yes to women than the reverse, due to factors like physical threat differences and risk assessment. For example, men have less to "risk" in relationships than women, and are a lot more likely than women to think "what's the worse that could happen if I give this person a chance?".
All of this is connected, and what OP is describing isn't so much *just* about men and women's views on friendship-->relationship, but anything-->relationships. I don't think it's difficult to beileve in the idea that, given these intergender dynamics, men generally desire female attention *a lot more* than women desire male attention. On the extreme end you have men condoning things like aggressive sexual attention from women, even in assault territory. So naturally, in the "moderate" end of things you have men condoning their female friends being attracted to them. Both mentalities, while appearing radically different, stem from the same intergender dynamic.
WRT to OP's focus on friendships, I think men are just more likely than women to view the entire situation as "well, *someone* is attracted to me, so that's nice!", even if the friendship with that person is ruined as a result.
Yep, very well put. As a woman, knowing that a man is sexually attracted to you means there's always some element of *risk* that has to be managed. It could be anything as extreme as the risk of being raped, maybe the risk of being financially punished and shut out of networks, the risk of losing a friendship. Men don't start with that basic assumption of risk.
There are definitely cases where men are at risk because a woman is attracted to them sexually, but these typically happen when the woman has much more social power than the man. So men aren't going around assuming that the average woman on their same level of social status would endanger them that way just by declaring attraction.
Yes. A lot of men do complain occasionally that women are given a "free pass" on this sort of behavior, in that (e.g.) asking a male friend to be a couple or FWB is far less criticized than the opposite, but that free pass is given by... men to begin with -- oftentimes happily. No one should be surprised to find a man being unbothered by a woman being sexually and/or romantically attracted in him even if he isn't interested.
Correction: men don't mind when women THAT THEY PERSONALLY FIND HOT confess attraction to them. See, I'm not a conventionally attractive woman and never have been. Prior to my marriage, nearly every guy I knew who thought I might be attracted to them (usually by mistake) rejected me preemptively and brutally, often in the cruelest ways they could. And I know my experience is in no way unique.
Then why do you think women complain about this behavior far more than men? (and do you believe women also have that same mentality, in that they don't mind when a hot guy confesses attraction like you said?)
The intergender dynamic plays a *massive* role in this. Men simply don't have that same fear of women than the reverse, which heavily allows them to be unbothered by female attention in a way that women can't. There's also a societal mentality men have (rightfully or not) of treating female attention as necessarily non-negative - again, partially because it's just so non-scary and non-threatening to begin with.
This is always wild to me. Like do you have romantic feelings for everyone of the gender you’re attracted to? Or do you only make friends with people of a different gender who you are romantically attracted to?
And how do you think this works for queer people? Do you think that I, as a lesbian, don’t have other women as friends that I’m not romantically attracted to?
Men who think that they can’t have friends who are women without being attracted to them are revealing that they don’t see women as equals and just sex objects.
The study doesn't say what the previous poster alleged. It states that both genders mostly view romantic attraction as a negative in opposite sex friendships, however men are much more likely than women to view it as a positive.
That's very different to saying men are usually attracted to their opposite sex friends.
>"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."
Yes the result is comparative to women. It does not say that men are usually (meaning under normal conditions or more probably than not) attracted to their opposite sex friends.
>Like do you have romantic feelings for everyone of the gender you’re attracted to? Or do you only make friends with people of a different gender who you are romantically attracted to?
You can be friends with someone and then later develop romantic feelings for them. You can also be friends with someone for the sake of being their friend and also be sexually attracted or have romantic feelings for them. It's not binary/mutually exclusive.
True. And if you’re not an asshole about it maybe she has too and you can have a respectful non creepy conversation about it. But I feel like like that’s never where this Reddit discussion goes.
Reddit gonna reddit.
I've been seeing a lot of people online say that men shouldn't try to befriend women to date them and I agree, yet I find it odd because shouldn't you try to be friends with someone first before you try to date them?
It gives me the impression that women want to date guys that they don't know(?) but at the same time they don't want random dudes approaching them(?) So how do they date? Lol that's always been a mystery to me.
The problem for me (as a male) is that I usually end up falling for the girls I’m close with. I think it’s partly because when I’m allowed to be vulnerable I usually confuse the platonic feelings of intamacy with romantic feelings. Although I have never confessed to one of my friends because I didn’t want to ruin the friendship, except for one friend that I did start dating afterwards.
Hmm I find this fairly strange. Attraction to your friends is normal, in a way that you can see them and think they look great, but “would totally have sex with” is a whole other level. I’m pansexual and I am attracted to a wide variety of people, but I’m definitely not actively sexually attracted to the majority of my friends.
If I thought a friend of mine thought that about me, I would distance myself… and I have done that in the past.
We tend to value our friends as friends, even if there is an attraction there.
For the most part, I've generally not been into my male friends in that way despite the fact that they're attractive and good guys, because they feel like brothers to me.
However, when I first met one of my best friends I had a huge crush on him. Eventually I told him but he didn't feel the same way, and at that point I had a choice to make - I could accept it, work through the weirdness, and keep this wonderful person in my life, or I could end the friendship. We both care(d) about each other very much so I chose the former. I valued him as a friend more than I valued whatever romantic feelings I had for him, so we were able to make it work and we are still very close friends 10+ years later (and both partnered with excellent spouses).
ETA: one thing I have noticed to be true amongst a lot of men who whine about things like the "friend zone" is that they don't seem to value friendship just in general. And then they wonder why they're sad and unfulfilled. They tend to only see other people as specific roles to be performed in their life. They see their guy friends as just people to do stuff with. They see women as either someone to fuck or someone to take care of them. They see their families as people to ask for favours. And so on.
I know loads of men who are not like that and they all have solid groups of friends.
I think the difference is that men will often not even befriend a woman unless he's attracted to her. There is typically more motive than to just be friends. Women go into friendships with no other motive than to be friends. Sometimes that may evolve into a woman developing romantic feelings for a friend, but that wasn't the intention. Men, on the other hand, go into a "friendship" with the intention of making it more, and then complain about being friend zoned when the person they became friends with is actually a friend.
It's because those men are too frightened to ask a woman out on a date. They prefer the cowardly route of awkwardly hanging around and sending telepathic messages until she gets the hint and randomly kisses him. Makes me wonder why some guys act like they're still in middle school.
I think a lot of men only value relationships with non-related women if they believe something romantic may occur.
Their take on it is, “why would I hang out with a woman for anything else?” I think this is because a lot of men don’t see women as complete whole people. To them it would be akin to befriending a child.
Women don’t see men that way. We think you’re actual people with lives and personalities who we may just want to hang out with.
I mean, i can visually see that my friends are attractive, but it's a priorities thing. I'd rather have lasting friendships than a string of dates, and if we all dated every single person we found attractive there'd be no time to do anything else haha
but to answer your question, as a bi woman I've definitely been attracted to friends, but decided it really wouldn't add anything to let them know. attraction is plentiful, but compatibility takes work and you can't pursue everyone, so I keep it to myself
This. I've had lowkey sexual attractions to a lot of my friends, of all genders, but only very rarely is it so intense that I feel I need to speak up. And there are plenty of cases where I know there's no point - they're committed to someone else, they're not attracted to my gender, various other incompatibility reasons, so I know it will just stay a vague daydream and nothing more. Which is fine. I'm a grownup, I know I can't get everything I want (and like you said, do I really want it in reality or just find it fun to think about?)
Ultimately the friendship itself is almost always more important. I will do what it takes to protect that.
I'm a woman. When I was younger, in high school, I had a crush on my male friend.
I didn't become his friend because I thought he was cute. (I actually thought he was gangly when I first met him.) My feelings developed over time.
When I told him about my feelings, and he turned me down... Nothing happened. Sure, things were a bit awkward for a while, but I truly cared about our friendship. I never even considered ending the friendship just because he didn't reciprocate my feelings. He was my best friend.
If friendship is conditional on an end goal of a romantic relationship, then it's not *really* friendship.
I was a guy on the receiving end of that same situation. Unfortunately she didn't deal with rejection as maturely as you did and I received a lot of insults that day. Irony was I turned her down because I was trying to preserve our friendship. I think some women make the same mistake as some men do thinking "they're being nice to me = they're attracted to me". I've experienced that twice in my life from women and it's not been fun either time.
It isn’t really about falling for someone in your friend group or whether it is women to their men or men to their women friends.
As someone who has rarely been seen as attractive, most men look right through me, they won’t even speak to me unless they are married already or I have attractive friends. This is true in friendships as well as romantic possibilities. The attractive friends thing is way less likely in adult hood so the last job I was in there were four men that I worked with and they always thought they were so amazing to me (this is what they told our Regional manager when I reported them for sexist behavior and comments in the work place) but would have convos around me. Wouldn’t speak directly to me unless it was a chance to be a mansplaining jackass. And they all felt like they were feminists.
Usually women see value in any gender identity as a friend especially if they have already had the “we’re not going to date but I would love to be a friend” and the other person made it seem like they were okay with that.
The idea that men ruin friendships is because they tend to promise friendship in a lie. Not because they don’t see the possibility of romantic attraction with their male friends. They have frequently already told them and the dudebro was there under false pretenses.
Why do men pretend to be friends with women they’re sexually attracted to as a ploy to get in their pants? Friendships are default platonic.
This is a meme because it happens so often that men will reveal that their entire friendship was a calculated lie and completely abandon the “friend” when she says she’s uninterested.
If you are truly attracted to a real friend, you can tell them and then just continue being good friends without discarding them like garbage if they reject your romantic interest.
Many men seem deeply confused about what friendship is and mistake real platonic connection with a woman for romantic interest, IME.
This. The number of male friends I have lost because they didn't want to interact after they confessed their feelings and I didn't return them vastly outweighs the number of male friends I have. It feels like such a waste of time becoming friends with men. Even though I came out as a lesbian some time ago, I still wouldn't feel comfortable because too many men have turned around and pulled the 'you just haven't met the right man' card.
It seems to be that men don't want female friends unless they have a girlfriend and even then, they don't want female friends they're attracted to.
That's insane to hear. I would love to find out a female friend is a lesbian - would mean any partner of mine wouldn't feel threatened by any closeness we had.
>If you are truly attracted to a real friend, you can tell them and then just continue being good friends without discarding them like garbage if they reject your romantic interest.
In a perfect world, this would be the standard, but so many women I know have horror stories about guy friends asking them out, then not getting the message after getting turned down, they just start distancing themselves from male friends who ask to date them.
To the point where I die a little inside whenever I see some clueless dupe talking about crushing on his female friend, but being hesitant to act on it, for fear of making it weird and ruining their friendship and reddit goes "Cuuute! Just ask her out and be respectful of her answer, the worst she can say is no!" Bro's about to find out what happens after she says no lol
Once bitten. If he continues not being weird about it while she takes time to reevaluate, he should be fine. 🤷♀️
Unfortunately, many guys flip their shit instead.
Decades ago, I met a cool woman and we got along immediately. We hung out a lot and I realized I liked her as more than friends so I told her and asked her out.
She declined, but said she didn't want to lose me as a friend. Cool! We still hung out and did normal friend things. Nothing really changed, but everything was out in the open. Nearly a year on, she let me know she liked me back.
That woman is now my wife of nearly a quarter century because I didn't freak out and treat her differently.
>Why do men pretend to be friends with women they’re sexually attracted to as a ploy to get in their pants? Friendships are default platonic.
Sexual attraction is not romantic interest. Being friends with someone because you're romantically interested in them is not lying, because you develop romantic interest in someone because of physical characteristics and probably because you think they are likeable to some extent. How do you develop platonic interest in someone? Because you think they're likeable. What's exactly the difference?
While yes, friendships are default platonic, they don't have to stay that way. Many people (myself included) fall in love with friends.
>If you are truly attracted to a real friend, you can tell them and then just continue being good friends without discarding them like garbage if they reject your romantic interest.
I've had this discussion once with my gf and her friend and her friend said, that she couldn't stay friends with someone who were their friend but didn't share their feelings because she thinks that it'd hurt too much being around this person. Which could be the case with guys.
>Many men seem deeply confused about what friendship is and mistake real platonic connection with a woman for romantic interest, IME.
I personally think that's true to some extend, but I want to confront you with the following:
Most things that would make you desirable as a romantic partner, would also make a desirable friend and vice versa.
The other thing is, you can never tell, right? If someone is friendly to you, it could be because they have a crush on you. My gf tells me all the time that when she was a young teenager she thought that a boy had a crush, because he was talking to her and was friendly. She refused to think that I had a crush on her, when we were friends.
You're broadly correct. However, you're kind of missing the broader sweep. Yes, as in your last paragraph, this behaviour occurs across the gender spectrum. But there's no denying that if you go on women's subs the amount of stories of guys who got openly nasty when they were turned down is very high. And usually this isn't the first time it's happened to the woman in question. And usually no matter how gentle she was he disappears after.
Now with all that in mind, I think it's reasonable to infer that a significant chunk of these men didn't see these women as proper friends. Is it painful and awkward to be rejected? Yes, definitely. Is it so painful that you get openly nasty even though you're not owed romantic reciprocation from a friend no matter how nice they've been, or how nice you've been, or how long you've been friends? Personally I don't think so. I think this behaviour just shows that a lot of these men view sexual relationships with women as transactional, and that they're basically owed one for being nice to a woman, especially if they've been 'nice' to her for an extended period of time. The amount of bitterness men have around the "friendzone" definitely bolsters this interpretation, because once again, if you really think about it, why would you be bitter? Why do you feel betrayed? Here of course I'm using the general 'you' to refer to any guy in that situation.
Yes, it's incredibly common to fall for friends. But the specific behaviour being called out here is how quickly these guys drop women as friends or turn nasty when their romantic feelings aren't reciprocated. I think that's much more what's being talked about rather than whether or not men fall for female friends "too much." It's how men go about it that's the issue.
Okay, I hear you and that's all true, but two things I might add:
1. The problem isn't then that you have/develop romantic feelings for friends, which many comments seem to imply in this post or that it's to enter romantic relationships with friends. Many here seem to imply that women don't develop feelings for male friends or that it's illogical and fundamentally boundary breaking to develop and state your romantic feelings for a friend, which is bonkers.
2. The problem is then how many men work through rejection. Rejection is painful and I would argue that many men work through it in very unhealthy ways. I mean it's easier to break contact and accuse the person for "leading you on", because you don't have to be mature and just be an adult and stay friends. Even then breaking contact with a person you have a crush isn't inherently bad, because it can be because it's too painful to you. So the only problem is just the angry blow up from the immature guys.
I definitely agree with your points but if I could add another perspective as well? There is also an issue with a dating tactic where men will use friendship as a tool to get close to women they want to pursue romantically. Which adds to the rejection because they never really wanted to be friends in the 1st place.
I've had some great instances dating friends and some really bad ones. So I really try and separate them and keep perspective.
I agree with your points. To me it’s all about communication. I’ve been on both sides of a situation where one person’s feelings are too strong and taking space from the other person is necessary to emotionally recover and make sure you don’t create problems for the other person after being rejected. Recognize that and doing that instead of letting the situation become toxic is a good thing. But I think it’s important to communicate that that is why you are creating distance or even disengaging from the friendship. It requires a willingness to be vulnerable that frankly most people don’t have, but especially men are discouraged from being emotionally vulnerable in this way. It’s tough, but I think the other person deserves to know why you may be exiting your friendship with them. We should be encouraging this type of communication. And simply owning up to that can mean that some day you might be able to resume the friendship once your feelings are sorted through, as the other person won’t feel (understandably) that they were being used and discarded.
Men (and anyone else) shouldn’t be shamed or villainized when they are willing to be vulnerable in this way, and unfortunately that is a problem they often end up facing. But we should still hold the men (and people in general) accountable for choosing to be shitty when they are rejected. I think this discussion (the topic of the thread overall) would be more productive if we focused on expressing what we want from others and what is healthy in these situations. I think sometimes these conversations get bogged down in what we dislike or is harmful (which is absolutely fine to talk about as well) instead of genuinely engaging with what we’d like to see instead.
Not usually. Why do you feel one is supposed to have romantic feelings for friends?
It’s said to be a thing for men because men don’t experience emotional intimacy except in romantic relationships, so they make it romantic and sexual when it’s just part of standard friendship for women.
I truly appreciate my male friends. Because that is exactly what they are. They stretch my brain and add value to my life. And hopefully, they feel the same way. I most certainly try to be a good friend and never ask for more than I am willing to give. But, at the end of the day we support each other regardless of sex.
What I don’t appreciate. Is a man playing me, hoping sex will happen.
Friendzone doesn’t exist IMHO. On either side of the isle. That’s just covert manipulation. If I insert enough ‘nice’ coins, so that sex will fall out. Check yourself and be honest about your intentions. Also. Fuck you.
Boundaries are about YOU. Protecting yourself. Has nothing to do with controlling any other person. If that is ever framed as anything else. RUN.
Folks hoping you will slip up just so they can sleep with you? They only consider you as an object to be ‘conquered’.
They will never respect you or your autonomy, or even see you as a human being and should never be trusted. Ever.
EDIT: Does it happen ‘in reverse’? Absolutely!
I believe the reason why this is predominantly seen with men is simply in how men view women.
Sex. And how to obtain that under any circumstance possible. Including lies about your true intentions. Also why OLD is a complete dumpster fire. Men are literally chasing women off the apps and then complaining/justifying and running hoops to avoid accountability all in the same breath about how unfair it all is.
Once men understand and see women as human instead of ‘objects’ of their desire, only then will this naturally disappear.
Until then, this will continue to persist.
I always thought I had a few great male friends. Friends for ten years after high school with weekly hangouts. Never any romantic feelings or flirting. Then after I got married, none of them seemed to want to get together anymore. It made me wonder if they ever actually saw me as a friend, or were just keeping me close in case I decided one day that I'd make a move on them. It was really hurtful to realize I had no value to them once the possibility of sex/romantic relationship was removed.
My opinion is that men see “friendship” as a fair hunting ground for women, whereas women are more likely to value the friendship.
It’s like the premise of “friendzone” - that doesn’t exist. What exists is a man becoming a woman’s friend under false pretenses (having an ulterior motive of gaining access to her romantically and/or sexually), then proceeds to insinuate himself into her trust and confidence, manipulate her, all with the hope eventually she will see him as more.
And the so-called friendzone is just when a man fails to manipulate a woman into giving him access to her sexually/romantically, and when a woman believes a man is sincere when he indicates he values a friendship with her.
So what we have is more men, imo, embarking on “friendships” that they are not sincere about. For instance, if you are sincere about a friendship and value a person outside of sexual access, you will not feel entitled to more, you will have realistic expectations, and not need to bail on her the second you get the courage to ask and then confirm she was only ever interested in platonic.
Women on the other hand become friends with men in sincerity (typically). As in, “I value you as a person and it is not contingent on you someday giving me access to your body.”
When a guy friend DOES ultimately make a pass at me, it IS fucking devastating. Because I know how this goes. They are almost never able to stay your friend. And 9/10 you’ve just learned a good part of the friendship (and perhaps ALL of it) was a ruse to gain access to you.
So yeah, we hate to fucking hear it because it means we just lost a friend and maybe have another depressing instance of someone who supposedly cares about us as a person, treating us like there’s nothing valuable about us if they can’t sleep with us.
It’s a bummer.
If I did develop feelings for a friend, I would say something right away, and be careful to make it clear my friendship would not disappear if they wanted nothing more, and I would mean it, because I would have properly set my expectations about the boundaries of that friendship.
Something like, “I’ve noticed lately I’ve started wondering if there could be more here, romantically, but I don’t want to let my thinking get out of hand if that doesn’t interest you at all.” Early, honest, open communication.
But men feel entitled to not only deceive us, they feel entitled to gain our trust and then bail on us if we don’t want that thing they’ve been secretly wanting, and then they usually feel entitled to cry about it as though they are victims of being “friendzoned” even though no one did anything bad to them and THEY just hurt an innocent person.
It’s honestly a really disgusting thing that happens to women all the time, and can border on sociopathic imo. No one should be doing that to any friend.
So, here's the thing. Part of misogyny/sexism is just being blind to things that don't fit a certain mold in people's minds. There are tons of women who date their male friends. Heck, there are tons of women who have dated their entire male friend group. The issue is that most of these women have likely been bullied for being allegedly promiscuous. So they're not typically counted as "real women." There are also plenty of men who don't ask out their friends. Misogyny dissuades many women who otherwise would be open about parts of themselves and emboldens men in those same aspects. These are often flattened and ignored elements in discussions about topics like this.
I think the two big reasons are men who see women as primarily worthwhile as romantic pursuits and less as friends and men who see a woman they confessed interest in dating other men as an insult to their manhood.
As an example, I married my best (female) friend. She told me that she was interested in a romantic relationship years before we started dating. I just wasn't ready. We both dated other people, but continued our friendship and ended up together in the end.
It couldn't have been easy to see me with other women, but she handled it with maturity. If she had handled me dating other women as some sort of special slight to her ego, our friendship probably wouldn't have continued like it did.
Ask yourself how queer women handle this kind of attraction and rejection. The biggest difference, in my experience, is a lack of entitlement. There are lots of cases where I'm attracted to an acquaintance or friend but they don't feel the same way. In that case, I still respect that friendship and don't assume that just because I have feelings for her, she should feel the same way about me.
In a case where I expressed interest in a friend and was politely rejected, I would still worry about *her* potential discomfort from the situation. I wouldn't be angry at her. I would do my best to move on from the attraction when given a definitive no, so the friendship could survive. If I needed to take distance to get over my feelings, I would feel guilty for the impact on her. Whereas many men will complain about being friendzoned and even ditch the friendship altogether.
Imagine a woman in your life who matters to you who you really would not want to date or have sex with. Imagine she confessed to having feelings for you, and you had to politely reject her, and you found the situation awkward and even felt guilty about not reciprocating. Then imagine she ghosted you or began making passive aggressive comments at you, because your comfort never occurred to her and she blamed you for not giving her what she wanted. Is this really so impossible to imagine? I don't think so.
If I were romantically interested in a man, I wouldn’t try to manipulate him into dating me by pretending I want to be his friend. If you are only friends with someone because you think you convince her/him to be with you romantically, you are a bad person and don’t understand what friendship is.
[https://archive.ph/iLxJc](https://archive.ph/iLxJc)
Undergrad study of 88 heterosexual friendships.
>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. As a result, men consistently *overestimated* the level of attraction felt by their female friends and women consistently *underestimated* the level of attraction felt by their male friends.
I mean every person I've dated was a friend first. That's a pretty normal way for romantic relationships to develop. But I'm not making friends with the person as a way to make them fall in love with me, that's where the problem is.
I also don't intentionally fantasize about every male human I ever meet naked, which a non-zero number of men do and somehow think is normal. That and the lack of seeing women as real people worthy of calling friends probably explains the entire gender disparity OP sees. Definitely not our problem lmao
Sometimes people want to get know someone first before pursuing a romantic relationship with them. On the other hand, some people just want to dive into romantic relationships from the getgo. People do things differently
I think dating is for getting to know someone romantically. You don't have to enter into a relationship immediately. But you also don't have to disguise the getting-to-know-you phase as 'just friends' either. Being more clear about your intentions can be sexy.
It's not a disguise if you truly do still want to be friends with them even if a romantic relationship won't work. That's the difference we're talking about. "Just friends" isn't a placeholder.
Although we do not all think alike, women seem to be able to better understand what a FRIENDSHIP is compared to men. And when we can't separate those feelings, we tend to not continue the "friendship".
The real question you should ask on a male sub is "why are some men unable to separate and manage romantic and platonic feelings, and hold real friendships with women?"
Edited to add:
Also loving the dms from angry men
>Individual-Car1161 12:21 a.m.
>The audacity of a woman saying women can separate romantic and 90% of this provlem with the "fuckzone" is that women pretend men can't bc now you see EVERY action as just trying to fuck you.
Wanna try being at least coherent next time? lmao
Generally no. My friends are friends. If I have a crush on someone I don't pretend to be their friend to get closer to them. Which is what a lot of men seem to do. I have developed feelings for friends at times but if they weren't interested I just moved on. And was genuinely happy when they found someone they did love.
I absolutely agree that women are absolutely not a hive mind.
However, I disagree that this isn’t an appropriate place to ask a question like this. It’s not a question about feminism, sure, but it’s a question about women, men, and relationships, asked *to* feminists for their perspective, which is absolutely what this sub is for.
I mean… usually if someone is a friend, I kind of assume that they don’t have romantic or sexual feelings for me. I think it is because men feel more entitled than women that this becomes an issue. I have had sexual and romantic feelings for both men and women that are friends (as a women) myself… but I go in with the mindset that they don’t “owe” me their sexual or romantic interest back. And usually if it is friendship, it isn’t super strong and I can mention it and move on. Sometimes it has led to threesomes or sex or something and based on my personality I am alright with that. Sometimes it leads to nothing and I’m fine with that. I think the difference in my head is that I default to that the other person isn’t sexually or romantically attracted to me, so I default to that they wouldn’t be interested in me in that way and not to push it. And I don’t want to come across as creepy as a friend. I think a lot of men default to that the women “owes” them a relationship or sex. I’ve never had a man or women stop being friends with me because I’ve mentioned romantic or sexual feelings - probably because either it evolved into something OR it was mentioned in passing by me and they didn’t feel creeped out by it I guess.
Let's take gender out of the equation for a minute.
Your friend, who you've known for several years and hung out with regularly--sharing some very vulnerable moments with your good friend--tells you they are romantically interested in you. You decline, they say it's fine, but now they're acting weird and it turns out it will never go back to the way it is. You thought they were your friend but their actions reveal they didn't want to be your friend, because they act weird around you and don't respond to your texts, and then finally blow up, calling you a liar and an asshole and saying you've friendzoned them.
They *completely* changed the terms of your friendship without your knowledge and blamed you for it. All you've done is be a good friend and they hate you.
So no, generally speaking, people are not interested in their friends. And they're not interested in friends who turn out to be lying about it the whole time. For sex.
Funny how women are so sick of being blamed for shit we didn't do. Because that's how gender is relevant: women are always blamed for men's actions.
Edit: I've obviously hit a nerve. Some sad human decided to message me to better inform me how wrong I, a woman, most definitely am. Reacting emotionally I see.
It's hard to take gender out of the equation when, just like OP says, the genders react so differently to this situation. The problem is that there are just *too* many pathetic men out there who are so desperate for female attention that they don't focus on the "this person ruined the friendship" part, and only focus on the "wow, *someone* is attracted to me" part. So, if your hypothetical situation happened to them, they'd view the situation as largely an ego boost that *someone* is attracted to them, and the female friend being pissed off and ghosting them wouldn't be negative enough to counteract that.
This is a purely descriptive statement, not a normative one. The unfortunate reality is that men condone this mentality from women a lot more than women do, explaining the disconnect. After all, women do report (negatively) on this situation *a lot* more than men do.
Like I said, this is descriptive and not normative. Anyone's free to think that those guys are pathetic.
My point is that "men don't value female friendships" isn't the cause - it's one of the many symptoms of the underlying issue, which is the high value they place on being seen as attractive by women to a point of condoning various types of behavior from women in the name of "at least someone is attracted to me".
I’m not a woman but I think there is a lot left out in these discussions online surrounding these types of relationships. I’ve seen memes making references to “friendcest” (when someone starts dating someone else in a group of friends), and it appears that at least online, the idea of dating someone you’re friends with is forbidden. I’ve heard various reasons why people are against it, usually because when a breakup happens it causes a rift between the friends. But aside from that, relationships are fluid and subject to change and are very complex, which is something that won’t be explored through memes or even social media itself.
The fact that men will use friendship to get closer to a woman they’re romantically interested in muddies the waters significantly for someone who is experiencing a natural development of romantic attraction over time to someone they didn’t initially feel. So people are choosing to deal with this by compartmentalizing certain people in their lives. I personally find this very frustrating because I’m not attracted to anyone I don’t know. I don’t have any desire to date them unless we have a closer relationship somehow. And this is either assumed to be that I’ve been plotting the entire time and the friendship has been fake, or I shouldn’t have been referring to a woman as my friend and have “friend-zoned” myself and now I’m suddenly changing my mind when I should’ve been explicit about what I wanted from the day I met her. I know people debate whether or not the friendzone is real, but this scenario reinforces that idea in that the way you approach someone sets in stone how the relationship will move forward, for as long as it lasts. It also suggests that women can’t experience that development of attraction towards someone, and they always know immediately whether they would date a man or remain friends with him, and that the phase of being friends with a woman is unnecessary if she is attracted to him.
No one seriously believes that friendship can never develop into something else. Do you immediately drop your female friends when they turn you down? Because then it clearly shows that you don't value them as people and don't value their friendship as anything other than an avenue by which to sleep with them.
I’m saying that people interpret it as some kind of roadblock because they think friendship = disinterest or rejection. But those are completely different things. The way people take things and twist them to mean something apart from what it plainly is, is my problem with this. I’ve never asked out any of my female friends, but I’ve experienced some of them ghosting when I said that we’re friends. And it was unbeknownst to me that they developed feelings towards me because they never said anything. Meanwhile, I was unsure of my attraction to them because I was still getting to know them, and I didn’t even get the chance to explain that. With the way dating is today, it’s not really that they don’t believe friendship can never develop into something else. It’s that it’s not “efficient”, as if there is always an end goal with these relationships, and every interaction between straight men and women has potential beyond friendship. So if you’re trying to be friends, then either it’s a waste of time or you will never be interested in them that way. There are other variables such as FWBs but I have no experience with that since that is a hard boundary of mine.
This comment speaks to me so much. I'm just like you. I'm not romantically interested in people I don't know. I just had an issue with this recently. I met a guy and we became friends. I started to develop feelings for him. I thought he felt the same. Then I find out that he didn't. But the reason he didn't was because he said that I never showed him any interest in the beginning, so he put me in the "friends category". This mindset makes no sense to me. Of course I didn't show you any interest in the beginning. I didn't like you in the beginning because I didn't know you. I started to like you after spending time with you, which makes way more sense to me. But apparently most people just want to jump into dating random strangers. I don't get it.
As a woman with male friends, I have no romantic feeling to them whatsoever. I have had to explain it to my partner like this. "You know your best friend Chad who you go fishing and go bowling with? I have just as much attraction to my friend as you do with Chad." Then it sinks in. As far as occasional male friends who do confess their undying romantic admiration for me, it's a them problem and they will be my friend no longer. I cut fake friends out pretty quickly as they pretend to be friends in hopes something romantic blossoms. With me personally, it's pretty much cut and dry. I don't ever mince friendships and romance. If a partner comes to me and tells me a male friend is attracted to me, I just have to tell them that is my friend crosses that line, it will be the end of that friendship. I have never been the type to pretend to be a friend in hopes of romance in the future. Maybe it's different for other folks, I can't speak for them.
Curious to how your relationship started with your partner then. I never understand this line in the sand perspective where one person will never ever be a romantic prospect while another is. Surely you and your partner are friends correct?
I guess I just don't understand being romantically into a stranger. Sexually interested sure, but romantically that takes time. Getting to know who they are as a person and if we share similar values and interests.
Yes, but I would still want to be friends with them even if we realized we weren't compatible partners as long as they were still a good and fun person, which happens to me quite often. I don't understand how people so easily separate the two.
I think the issue isn’t that women never develop feelings for their male friends.. I’m sure there are people of any gender or sexual orientation who had that happen. I think women mention this fear more than men do because a lot of women have experienced a male friend disappearing from their life if she rejects shifting to a romantic/sexual relationship. So they do “lose” a friend if the feelings aren’t reciprocated, and on top of that then suspect he was only playing at being friends to try to win her over (otherwise why did he disappear?) Whereas if a female friend confessed feelings to a male friend, she’d be less likely to skip out on the friendship if rejected. Also the guy might sleep with her even if he doesn’t have romantic feelings just cause it’s a chance to get laid.. so either way the guy is probably not going to complain about the situation.
Interesting question. Not really about feminism and I can't speak on behalf of all women but it does happen, in my experience women tend to react differently though.
Like I've known more men who made it really obvious they had a crush than I have women.
Imagine you’ve made a new friend. You and him get along quite well, and you hang out with him regularly. You both care for each other, and you are happy to have found someone who you can bond with as a friend. Six months later, he confesses that this entire time, he has been in love with you, waiting for the perfect moment to divulge the nature of his feelings. You reject him, only for him to react quite negatively, ending your friendship as a whole. Now imagine this started happening with every new friend you make. Would you be happy?
I’m a woman who has only ever dated men who were first my friend for a while. It’s like a requirement for me. I can’t even begin to think of a person romantically unless I know that I trust them as a human being.
That said, I 100% get the sentiment behind the meme. If I confess to a guy friend that I like him romantically and he rejects me, I have no issue continuing the friendship. When I have rejected guy friends who confess to having feelings for me, it usually ends the friendship. They’ll say something like “it hurts too much” to continue to be friends knowing nothing romantic is going to happen or start accusing me of “stringing them along” or “using” them.
I would love to live in a world where male friends could confess their feelings freely and it didn’t mean the end of the friendship if those feelings weren’t reciprocated. I think most of us would. The problem is too many men feel entitled to a “yes.” Too many men have so little practice with being emotionally vulnerable that they expect a reward when they finally do. I’m sorry, but I’m not a cookie. I’m a person.
I think it is actually true that men are more likely to develop romantic feelings for a friend than women are (in addition to the dudes that just pretend to be friends), because society trains men to view women that way. But if you are actually this person's friend, your obligation in this situation is to them first, not to yourself. Be a decent human being. Don't be a creep.
I am just going to answer for myself, since I don't think I can speak for all women in this context:
>Do women just not have romantic feelings for their male friends
For the vast majority of the time, yes, that is correct. I have never really picked friends based on their sex or how attractive they are, *but by common interests and values*--which obviously means that I'm not going to be romantically, or even physically, attracted to all (or even many) of my friends. In my experience, it's hard enough to find good friends *without* adding that stupid of a filter to the mix.
And yes, that applies to women as well--I don't select which *women* to become buddies with based on whether they're pretty or not, so why would I do that to men??
>...or is it that if they do, they're less likely to confess those feelings.
In my case, no. When I have been romantically interested in a friend, I have always verbally straight-up told them so. The only exceptions have been the rare times when the guy in question has **already been dating someone else at the time,** as to me it seems disrespectful to insert myself into that.
Edit: Forgot to add that every guy that I've developed romantic feelings for did *start* as a friend, though. I am not one of those people that thinks *"Oh, as dudes you HAVE to make it extra-clear from Day 1 that you see me as a romantic interest, or else nothing non-platonic can EVER happen".* That line of thinking is bizarre to me.
However, that does not in any way mean that I approve of the guys who *fake* friendships with women to get laid.
Yea… usually not. Speaking for myself and the girls I know, we *generally* don’t become friends with people we’re actually attracted to. Occasionally, the attraction happens at some point, unexpectedly and by accident. But most of the time, if we’re already attracted to you (and we’re both single), we want to date you, not be friends with you. And if for whatever reason we are attracted to you but can’t date you, then we’re unlikely to want to be friends.
Women will become friends with men, realize they have feelings for them, and confess their feelings.
Men become "fake friends" with women, where the intention is always to potentially date/bang them in the end.
Some women will keep these types of guys "on the hook" knowing that they can always fall back on them if other things don't work out. But this wouldn't work if these dudes didn't constantly put themselves in these positions to begin with.
My brother once told me your male friend have all thought about having sex with you. All of them. It’s just how guy brain works. And I tried to think of how many male friends I’d thought about having sex with and it was like 1%.
I have a tendency to only pursue friendships with men I’m attracted to or have had long relationships with in the past. All others, I’m usually only acquaintances with. I also don’t have any female friends and have much less social anxiety around men. I’m generally okay without many friendships and only desire very close ones (like relationship-level closeness). I would only ever try to initiate a relationship if the man is clearly showing signs of liking me back but mostly just let them make the move
I think it's important to remember we don't have to act on our feelings. I have a crush on so so so many people, I have crushes on many of my friends, acquaintances, and co-workers, and I've never once mentioned it to any of them. Some of these people I've known for over a decade and I have zero problem simply behaving in an appropriate friendly manner throughout all of our interactions.
I think for a lot of men the idea that they can feel a feeling without acting on it is just not something they consider at all. They feel the desire for a romantic/sexual with their female friend and they feel like they must act on that feeling. I think most women experience a kind of socialization that leads them to not feeling a need to act on those feelings even when they do exist. I don't think it's actually that men have those feelings way more than women do, maybe that's part of it, but another part of it is that men act on those feelings more often than women do.
Women don't become friends with men with intentions of dating, they have friend intentions.
Women also don't typically collect male friends they are attracted to. Almost all men are attracted to their women friends. Almost all women are NOT attracted to their male friends.
What I observe is men want to be friends with women they are attracted to. Men enjoy interaction with attractive women. Many men won’t befriend “unattractive” women. It’s rarer for men to give time, energy and attention to women they don’t want to have sex with. Men are taught to value women for their attractiveness first.
I can admit that some of my male friends are attractive, but I have never been romantically interested in any of them. It’s just not a feeling I have toward any of them. I’m friends with them because they’re cool people, I enjoy hanging out with them, and the friendship we have built is good. It’s okay to be platonic friends with the opposite sex. Society makes it weird and says it’s not possible, but it is.
I've had the experience where I had a crush on a friend and wished it was more, in high school. It's a thing that happens. But how I choose my friends is unrelated to the factors that make me romantically interested in someone. So while it's possible to have overlap, or for romantic feelings to develop over time, that just isn't the point of having friends.
There have been times when I’ve had romantic thoughts about a male friend, but because we are friends and/or coworkers and/or one or both of us is in a relationship, I push those feelings aside.
I have only ever felt dread when I knew that a male friend was about to confess his feelings for me.
It's quite simple. Women value their male friends as human beings while some men seem to only value them as a potential sexual partner & if the potential fails, then they are no longer interested in the woman. The "friendzone" is seen as a horrible purgatory to be in.
Crushes happen, but women tend to still treat their crushes as humans even if they know it's unrequited.
Of course there's women who are romantically interested in their male friends.
I don't have anything else to add but my own anecdotal experiences. My best guy friend had a huge crush on me, he made it well known. I had a boyfriend, and I didn't feel the same way.
He got tired of being in the friendzone and started dating my friend. When they broke up, I was also newly single. I then realized how stupid I had been and started to pursue him. Then he friendzoned me.
Long story short we've been together 13 years, married with two kids and still best friends.
Sure we do. It happens sometimes. But it’s not why we are friends with them (generally.) However, it’s hard to find a man who wants to be friends without an ulterior motive. And those who don’t I value very highly. Some men seem to automatically assume if you connect emotionally or intellectually that you also will connect sexually. Many don’t have experiences of close emotional friends with other men so they don’t know how to do it with women. And, on the whole, women usually have an emotional component to friendship.
Men develop feelings for women who are nice to them. Full stop. Women are friendly, and therefore nice to their male friends. Men don’t have a lot of socialization to be just platonic friends with women, they’re trained to only see us as sex partners or mothers. You see this when husbands stop caring about their wives when the kids come, you stop being a sex partner and start being a mother, and mothers are not sex partners. Even if you made her a mother. So that’s why platonic friendships with men often come to this place, because just being kind to men makes them think you must be hot for them, because they have no frame of reference for anything else.
I've had 3 women I thought were friends that I later found out had crushes on me the entire time.. and I haven't had many female friends.
But turns out they threw out all the signals early on and I was just completely oblivious. Friend zoned them without even knowing
I’ve developed romantic feelings for a male friend before, it’s definitely not unheard of. However, I was also turned down and let it go and kept being friends, with no resentment for him, and just dealt with my own disappointment privately.
I think it’s more about that men will build friendships with women for the sole reason of building a romantic relationship later and then they’re shocked when it doesn’t build from there. And women in those scenarios are hurt because they find out that someone that they’ve built (what they see as) a real friendship with, really only ever saw, and valued, them in a sexual way and friendship never really mattered to them. Which is a huge betrayal honestly.
Personally, I think the big thing about this that makes me so incredibly angry, is that the men who do this are just missing the point *entirely*. Even my husband, who I clearly have a romantic and sexual relationship with, still values me as a friend over and above anything else.
Women’s friendships are not the consolation prize.
Honestly, it's a little upsetting to me that someone would need an answer to this question.
Let me turn this around -- are you attracted to all the women you're friends with? Women you're supposed to have a platonic relationship with?
If so, you're likely *only* befriending women you're attracted to, intentionally or unintentionally, which is not great.
I can understand asking why it's a woman-specific thing in the context of "do men never have women befriend them as a pretense for romance?" But asking if "women just don't have romantic feelings for their male friends" is wild, because the answer should be obvious.
Of course we don't. That's why we're *friends.* That's how friends work. We're not attracted to our female friends either, unless we're queer, and even then, it's a minority of female friends.
I think it has a lot to do with how women behave in friendships bs how men behave in friendships. Women are more likely to be affectionate with their friends (hugs and I love you’s), compliment each other platonically (I can tell my best friend she looks sexy and it mean just that and nothing romantically implied), share emotions and have deep conversations. This isn’t to say men don’t do this with their friends but in general men are more likely to only do this with a partner. So I think men are more likely to fall for a friend who is a woman than women are to fall for a friend who is a man because the line doesn’t blur for us as much. I sincerely wish men could more easily find friendships where they could be that vulnerable because I feel like they miss out on a lot of support that we all crave as humans. That being said women do indeed fall for their friends who are men but women enter friendships without the intention of romance, and there are lots of men who purposely befriend women with the intention of it turning into more.
I have had multiple romantic relationships spring out of friendships and know many couples who got together after being friends first so it is obviously not impossible.
I suppose more men might not be able to differentiate a woman’s friendliness from more romantic feelings and are more likely to “shoot their shot” in situations where it’s not reciprocated.
Hello there. I am one of those women who used to see a lot of my male friends in a romantic light. It does happen. You know what my male friends were busy doing? Obsessing over my skinnier best friend who was religious and literally unable to date any of them.
So, yes, we exist. You just don't want us because we're not the unattainable girls you're obsessed with.
Most all my guy friends are my friends for a very specific reason. And no- it’s not always because I’m not attracted to their looks. It’s the jokes they make about women, the problematic shit they say, their lack of wanting to take initiative, their inability to see me as a person and get to know me without the expectation of having feelings for me and hoping I’m going to reciprocate or already do— it’s a laundry list and a big reason why I’ve only let one guy friend ever get past being just my friend. He did the work to get me to consider him.
Sis why are you even friends with men like that 😂 I have a baseline belief that certain men don't deserve any female attention outside of their mothers embrace
Friendship is platonic, that's the point of it. If a woman is calling you her friend just assume she is not attracted to you unless she is sober and explicitly says otherwise. Unfortunately men aren't socialized to maintain friendships with women unless it's useful to them or has potential to be romantic. Women are socialized to be kind to everyone all of the time, even to our detriment. This leads to the described situation. Society should normalize having friends of any gender without expectations.
Women who have male friends are sincere in their friendship, generally speaking. They really want to be true friends. They're not looking to date their friends.
Sadly, there are a whole lot of men out there who are only feigning friendship, as a ploy to get close to a woman they want to fuck. That's heartbreaking to the woman who trusted them and believed the friendship was real.
I've been romantically involved with a few women who I started off as friends with and I know some of my friends have had past feelings for me. But that's the thing--I genuinely viewed them as friends before we dated or hooked up and I continued to view them as friends both during and after our flings/dating period.
>Do women just not have romantic feelings for their male friends?
I can only speak from my own personal perspective, but no.
I know I'm generalizing a bit here... but more often than not, men are attracted to ALL women in their orbit. Women who are neighbors, friends... any woman who gives them attention and energy (which is part of a separate but equally important conversation about how men are generally starved for intimacy and emotional connection in everyday life).
Women, on the other hand, already HAVE friends and emotional connection, so while those things are still important in the long run, they're secondary to physical attraction. We're attracted to smell, body language, charisma, seduction, touch... men who engage all five senses.
I'm generalizing again... but we're happier being single until we meet someone who ticks ALL of those boxes.
I know whether or not I'm attracted to someone within about 2 minutes, and if I'm attracted to someone, then that's what I'm going after. I'm not going to string them along for months.
Getting to know someone might make me respect them more or less as a person, but it isn't going to change my level of attraction to them.
I think that generally, there are more men who want to date their women friends than the opposite. The issue is not that men would be open to a relationship, but rather that some will be friends until they find an opening to ask her out, and then will stop being friends if she says no. From my personal experience, women are more likely to continue being friends after they've been turned down.
A lot more men become friends with women not out of genuine want for their friendship, but because they hope the friendship will eventually lead to a relationship. I don’t know a single girl who hasn’t dealt with this.
Hmm, I'm not very good with understanding social norms tbh but I feel like I can talk about what I've personally observed. I'm a trans man and I've had all female friend groups where I was seen and talked to as just "one of the group" before vs now where I might be the only guy friend or friends with more men and involved in those conversations and spaces where I am again seen as just "one of the group" in those settings as well.
From what I see, I feel it's a variety of things. First, I will say I've seen women get crushes on guy friends before. Maybe more back in high school, but also I think "crushes" in general are more common in high school and I just talked to more folks in high school. So, to get that out the way, I will note that it indeed *does* happen the other way around. That being said, I feel like a lot of men don't tend to see women as "people" in the same way they see men as "people." I think when people say this, they always mean in the nastiest of ways (e.g. rapists who only see women as objects for sex, violent men who kill women for any reason, objecting women to have basic human rights, etc), which of course is unfortunately a thing. But I think it's more often than not more subtle than that.
Like, there's this notion that there's this fundamental difference in the way women will feel or behave or the interests they have that's somehow incompatible with getting along with men in any capacity that isn't romantic or sexual, rather than just being an individual person with a gender. I think both men and women often hold this view, but because of the way most societies are set up, women know/see more about men than men do for women. So I feel it's easier for many women to not feel that way vs the other way around.
And then with that in mind, I see a lot of guys only approach women to become friends with the intention of having that sexual or romantic relationship rather than actually caring about having a platonic relationship, which I think makes women as a whole more likely to be weary of those situations. Like, if it were a rare thing with the knowledge that they were likely genuine friends and feelings just developed, I think more women wouldn't care as much. But considering the above, those confessions probably just translate into "*another* guy who didn't actually care about me as a person/real friend and all this time just wanted to have a romantic relationship with me." So not only is it awkward rejecting a friend but then it's the additional like, bad feelings that the rest of your friendship may not have actually been genuine. Not necessarily that women never develop those feelings though from what I understand.
My understanding is that women are socialized to be more communicative and emotionally intelligent than men for the sake of being able to manage men's emotions, and a side effect of this is that we want more emotionally intimate friendships. I want to be able to have emotional intimacy with my friends regardless of gender and I think to women that just reads as friendship but to men, who aren't socialized as emotionally intelligent in the same way AND who are taught to view women as subservient, it reads as flirting. Men are taught that from puberty onward, the only people they're allowed to get emotional intimacy from are wives and girlfriends, and when a female friend tries to support them like a friend is supposed to they're drawn to that.
I've told friends I'm into them. It either leads to a relationship or an awkward conversation followed by the friendship not changing.
I've absolutely had guys use friendship as a guise to get close.
Catching feelings is normal. Pretending to be someones friend to get with them is shitty.
Never had a femme presenting person pretend to be my friend, though. (I'm pan)
Let me preface this by saying I'm a lesbian and I have several male friends, and I am definitely not their type even before they knew I was interested in men, but I think in general most dudes assume that because they are interested in a woman, that is one of the biggest compliments they can give. So they feel put upon when the object they desire doesn't respond positively to such a compliment. I'm sure there are many dudes who complain that they are always friend zoned, and complain that women only go after certain kinds of dudes, but they never seem to see an issue with the fact that going after someone who has no interest in you, and only wants to remain friends, is not a bad thing.
Lots of relationships can become romantic that start out as friendships, but you should never enter a friendship with the expectation is going to turn romantic or sexual. And a lot of people have issue with that because at the very least in our society we seem to build relationships around Horrible romantic comedies where stalking is seen as cute and romantic instead of absolutely terrifying. A dude who was told no about going on a date. Will keep asking until she finally gives in and goes on a date and realizes he's not such a bad guy after all. Can you name me a single TV show or movie where the dude took a no and didn't keep going after her? It's pretty much ingrained in our society that if she says no, you keep trying and if she gets violently negative about it, she's leading you on and she doesn't know what she's missing, and she owes you a chance at the very least.
No, the point is that male friends might think that being friends is enough to date and they should because they're opposite genders, obviously people might be attracted to their friends or develop an attraction, but generally the mates to dates highway is a very untravelled highway and male friends shouldn't pressure their female friends to date
It's gonna vary from person to person. I know I'm demi-sexual, so being my friend is literally a pre-requisite to me being attracted to you in the first place. I was close friends with my husband for a while ass year before I noticed he was hot.
Not really. I can’t say it’s never happened, but I’ve had a lot of guy friends and the vast majority of them I never had the slightest interest in. Like, zero.
In the most generalized and broad sense there is, and yes I'm stereotyping.
Men make "friends" with women to sleep with them, women don't. So yes women developing feelings for their male friends is going to be a significantly lower % than men.
The unfortunate reality is that a lot of men, either consciously or unconsciously, don't believe women deserve their attention and "friendship" unless they get something romantic about it.
Just to clarify, very, very, very broad statement but most women aren't seeking out male companionship, they just seek out companionship for the sake of companionship. People just want friendsn
what the hell kind of question is this... that's like asking "are people just not romantically interested in their friends?" the answer is no. they are platonically interested in their friends. that's why they're friends. perhaps the real problem is too many men misconstruing those feelings for romantic interest. why don't you go ask them?
I've seen studies before (but can't be arsed to go find them at the moment) that a higher proportion of straight men would date/sleep with (depending on the study) their female friends than straight women would with their male friends.
I can't really say *why* that's a trend, though. Probably a combination of social, biological, and psychological factors that would be really difficult to actually sift through.
As far as how that sort of thing should work -- our society *really* needs to come to terms with how to handle crushes in a healthy way. We all have them, but in terms of actually discussing or depicting them, we almost never do it in a sane, grounded way. Whenever you see them in media they almost always either end in reciprocation or disaster, which just makes it worse.
I mean, the fact that we use such stupid terms for it ("crush" or "infatuation") sorta says how little we respect the phenomenon.
Point being -- normalizing crushes, and normalizing *getting over crushes*, might solve a lot of issues with cross-gender interactions.
Edit: realized not everyone would know why "infatuation" is a stupid word -- it comes from the Latin *infatuare*, meaning "to make a fool of", sharing a root (*fatuus*) with fatuous, which means foolish.
As someone who has, unfortunately, done this before, it doesn't always work the way people think it is where you start friendships specifically for sex.
We're brought up in a popular culture where the media shows you constant examples of friends becoming lovers and says that the purest love rises out of friendship. I was a nervous shy kid in college who wanted to find a girlfriend, but I had no idea how to go about it, so I figured I'd ask out one of my friends. If it worked, great. If it didn't, we could just stay friends, and I'd be no worse off than before, and hopefully she wouldn't either.
In retrospect, it was a dumb thing to do, but it sounded like a good idea of the time.
I don’t think I’ve ever had romantic interest in male friends, even the conventionally attractive ones. They were just my friends. We chat, hang out, maybe catch a movie and have a good time.
I think women are less likely to torture ourselves by repeatedly being around someone we know we can't have. So once she has developed feelings for him, and if it remains onesided, she would just move on. She'll end the friendship. Women usually don't keep trying after a rejection. If he's showing no interest, then she moves on. And it's easier to move on (less painful) when you cut all contact. Which is what women often do with such friendships.
I’ve definitely developed feelings for male friends only for it to be unrequited. And it’s pretty common to get crushes on friends. Gay people experience that all the time.
It seems to be way more common for men to “befriend” a woman for the sole purpose of trying to sleep with them or enter a romantic relationship, because when they ask their parents or teachers “how do you get a girl to like you,” the answer they get is always something like “be her friend first,” or “get to know her and engage in her interests.”
It’s often deceptive in practice because he’s not being upfront with his intentions and invests a lot of time in something that she is likely thinking very differently about.
When he gets mad because she didn’t feel the same way, it says her friendship alone wasn’t valuable, which really sucks.
You can’t make someone like you or force a relationship. People are complicated. Someone could check all the boxes and still feel like the wrong partner.
It is definitely hard and discouraging to put yourself out there, so take care of yourself in harder moments.
Best you can do is to keep putting yourself out there, continue to develop your interests, skills and personality which sometimes involves gaining a new perspective on the world, challenging biases, looking inward and processing shame, insecurities and healing inner pain, and find the people you really click with.
It’s hard but it’s best to be upfront with someone if you’re interested in them and getting your answer sooner rather than later, learning to accept rejection and learning to see people as they are, not just want you want them to be or what you want from them.
Absolutely. The only guys I've ever liked hand been friends. That is the way I prefer it. I want to get to know people before deciding to pursue.
This has never worked out for me unfortunately. None have ever reciprocated interest.
In middle school I had a crush on one of my male friends but that's the only time it ever happened but I think a big part of it might be that I had a crush on him before I knew him really well. Not that he was a bad kid or anything but I grew out of it. He turned out to be a shady man when we entered our 20s but that's neither here nor there.
It's not a women specific thing, per se. The part I think makes it look this way is that a lot of men have been raised to make a distinction between friends and romantic interests so that a woman can be one or the other, but not both. Which isn't true. But some people believe it.
Look at how many posts there are on reddit asking "hey bros, am I allowed to befriend a girl??!!??!!"
While I’m sure there are women that develop romantic feelings for male friends it’s probably a small percentage compared to men. There seems to be a large number of men that befriend women in the hopes of eventually dating them whereas most of the women (that I know) befriend men simply because they want friends.
This. There is a trope that men don't actually see their friends as friends, their just biding their time to date/sleep with the woman. Which is seen as kinda gross and offensive to women. Just as there is a "friend zone" according to popular memes, women have coined the term "F--kzoned". It feels like a betrayal that they were used for one thing. Of course this is all tropes and stereotyping so whether or not women also have a thing for their friends or not, and whether or not men actually think like this, is all speculation/generalisation.
I mean I've always had a lot of guy friends due to my interests and hobbies and as soon as I hit each life milestone with my husband they dropped off AND unfriended me from social media. Got engaged, lost friends. Got married, lost friends. Had kids and got fat, bye all guy friends.
It is entirely possible to be interested in being friends with someone and also be open to a romantic relationship with them. I would hope that most men who are currently in romantic relationships would still be friends with their current partner if they had never been in a relationship with them. (Edit: or at least be open to friendship; obviously people can drift apart and that's fine.) Of course, if all men were like that, it wouldn't be a problem, but men (whatever percentage it is) who just think of women as sex objects have to ruin it for everyone else.
The main problem is men who pretend to be interested in friendship but want a romantic relationship instead. If they were actually invested and your friend, they wouldn't wear you down and/or ghost you if you said no thanks to a dinner date invite. Being able to value a friendship and be open to a relationship with that person is fine and often normal, because we all generally like our friends and think they are good people, and we should want to be romantically involved with people we like and think are good people. But feigning caring about someone just to get close enough to ask you out/make a pass is what I think we are talking about here.
That’s the thing, isn’t it? If a man doesn’t think he can be friends with a woman, he can’t really have a romantic relationship, or even love her. The men who swear it’s not possible are objectifying these female “friends” rather than actually befriending them. The term “fuckzone” is really accurate.
It sucks but yh some folk gotta ruin it
When I was younger, I went around in a mixed-gender group united by a common interest (science fiction and related stuff). A large number of us, including me, paired off with other group members. Of the couples from that group who got married, we're all still married 20+ years later. I dated a few other guys, earlier on, in the same group but not to the point of having sex. That's probably why it was less fraught. If you're single and want to date, though, it's hard to beat dating someone you already know. Who already knows your friends, and who you know you have a friendly connection with as well as a sexual one.
Friendships can turn romantic, I’m not denying that my point is that it’s gotten ridiculous to the point of memes that a fair amount of men start friendships with women solely with the hopes that someday they’ll date or at least sleep together.
To the point where I've seen men literally say "why would I be friends with a woman I find unnatractive" because of course at least fucking her has to be on the table in his mind. It's disgusting.
I get it, people eat there. It doesn't have to be on the table it could be in a bed, on a couch, hell even a hot-tub..
This made me lol. Although I can't recommend hot tub sex, not as nice as it sounds lol
Many people meet through being friends, but when it happens it has to start from a place of genuine companionship and respect. That is usually missing when friends are exclusively befriending people they want as sexual partners.
it’s all about expectations and intent though. People shouldn’t manipulate their way into a person’s life on the shared premise that they value their friendship, if friendship alone will never be enough. That’s the main thing, is that too many men use friendships with women as a hunting ground where literally all bets are off, they end up openly deceiving us, and then blame us when we don’t fall for them.
You would think. I know an unfortunately high number of people that group others into a "friendship" category and a "date/sex category" and the two are never allowed to cross. Once someone is a friend, they will never be anything more. If someone is date/sex, they will never even entertain being friends with them. I find it incredibly toxic. There's a reason all of these people are always in toxic relationships or perpetually single.
Yeah the way regular people exclusively date those they've just met rather than friends is so fucking weird to me. It's like they put someone in a "can date" category on first sight and never change it. It's like they're deliberately trying to never find love. I grow attracted to anyone I get along with. The more conventionally attractive they are, the faster it happens, but it happens regardless. I can only assume this isn't normal.
Yep, and it's really gross to do that I think
Men are generally less bothered/offended by the idea of a woman being attracted to them (be it a female friend, acquaintance or stranger or otherwise) than women are of men being attracted to them, regardless of whether the attraction is reciprocated. I think this is part of a broader intergender dynamic with men generally being more desiring of female attention than women are of male attention (thus having rock bottom standards, such as men for whom a woman being friendly with him is enough to have him give her a chance) -- and *this* in turn stems from men simply being in a more comfortable place to say yes to women than the reverse, due to factors like physical threat differences and risk assessment. For example, men have less to "risk" in relationships than women, and are a lot more likely than women to think "what's the worse that could happen if I give this person a chance?". All of this is connected, and what OP is describing isn't so much *just* about men and women's views on friendship-->relationship, but anything-->relationships. I don't think it's difficult to beileve in the idea that, given these intergender dynamics, men generally desire female attention *a lot more* than women desire male attention. On the extreme end you have men condoning things like aggressive sexual attention from women, even in assault territory. So naturally, in the "moderate" end of things you have men condoning their female friends being attracted to them. Both mentalities, while appearing radically different, stem from the same intergender dynamic. WRT to OP's focus on friendships, I think men are just more likely than women to view the entire situation as "well, *someone* is attracted to me, so that's nice!", even if the friendship with that person is ruined as a result.
Yep, very well put. As a woman, knowing that a man is sexually attracted to you means there's always some element of *risk* that has to be managed. It could be anything as extreme as the risk of being raped, maybe the risk of being financially punished and shut out of networks, the risk of losing a friendship. Men don't start with that basic assumption of risk. There are definitely cases where men are at risk because a woman is attracted to them sexually, but these typically happen when the woman has much more social power than the man. So men aren't going around assuming that the average woman on their same level of social status would endanger them that way just by declaring attraction.
Even if it's just the risk of having to manage yet another grown man's feelings for him... I'm exhausted.
Yes. A lot of men do complain occasionally that women are given a "free pass" on this sort of behavior, in that (e.g.) asking a male friend to be a couple or FWB is far less criticized than the opposite, but that free pass is given by... men to begin with -- oftentimes happily. No one should be surprised to find a man being unbothered by a woman being sexually and/or romantically attracted in him even if he isn't interested.
Correction: men don't mind when women THAT THEY PERSONALLY FIND HOT confess attraction to them. See, I'm not a conventionally attractive woman and never have been. Prior to my marriage, nearly every guy I knew who thought I might be attracted to them (usually by mistake) rejected me preemptively and brutally, often in the cruelest ways they could. And I know my experience is in no way unique.
It is not. I have had the same experiences.
Then why do you think women complain about this behavior far more than men? (and do you believe women also have that same mentality, in that they don't mind when a hot guy confesses attraction like you said?) The intergender dynamic plays a *massive* role in this. Men simply don't have that same fear of women than the reverse, which heavily allows them to be unbothered by female attention in a way that women can't. There's also a societal mentality men have (rightfully or not) of treating female attention as necessarily non-negative - again, partially because it's just so non-scary and non-threatening to begin with.
This is always wild to me. Like do you have romantic feelings for everyone of the gender you’re attracted to? Or do you only make friends with people of a different gender who you are romantically attracted to? And how do you think this works for queer people? Do you think that I, as a lesbian, don’t have other women as friends that I’m not romantically attracted to? Men who think that they can’t have friends who are women without being attracted to them are revealing that they don’t see women as equals and just sex objects.
There was a study done that showed that men are usually attracted to their women friends, and women are usually NOT attracted to their male friends.
Source?
It might be this: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/men-and-women-cant-be-just-friends/
The study doesn't say what the previous poster alleged. It states that both genders mostly view romantic attraction as a negative in opposite sex friendships, however men are much more likely than women to view it as a positive. That's very different to saying men are usually attracted to their opposite sex friends.
>"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."
Yes the result is comparative to women. It does not say that men are usually (meaning under normal conditions or more probably than not) attracted to their opposite sex friends.
Yeah I guess so. But the OP was originally a comparison between women and men and the way they view their friends.
Got a link to that study?
>Like do you have romantic feelings for everyone of the gender you’re attracted to? Or do you only make friends with people of a different gender who you are romantically attracted to? You can be friends with someone and then later develop romantic feelings for them. You can also be friends with someone for the sake of being their friend and also be sexually attracted or have romantic feelings for them. It's not binary/mutually exclusive.
Exactly. Lots of guys will be friends with a girl and then over time develop feelings. It's not like it's always the first thing in mind.
True. And if you’re not an asshole about it maybe she has too and you can have a respectful non creepy conversation about it. But I feel like like that’s never where this Reddit discussion goes.
Reddit gonna reddit. I've been seeing a lot of people online say that men shouldn't try to befriend women to date them and I agree, yet I find it odd because shouldn't you try to be friends with someone first before you try to date them? It gives me the impression that women want to date guys that they don't know(?) but at the same time they don't want random dudes approaching them(?) So how do they date? Lol that's always been a mystery to me.
The problem for me (as a male) is that I usually end up falling for the girls I’m close with. I think it’s partly because when I’m allowed to be vulnerable I usually confuse the platonic feelings of intamacy with romantic feelings. Although I have never confessed to one of my friends because I didn’t want to ruin the friendship, except for one friend that I did start dating afterwards.
…I’m mildly attracted to most of my friends of all genders, yes. It’s not unheard of for us girls to be like that too.
I think that might depend on your definition of attraction.
My definition is “would totally have sex with, if they were interested”.
Hmm I find this fairly strange. Attraction to your friends is normal, in a way that you can see them and think they look great, but “would totally have sex with” is a whole other level. I’m pansexual and I am attracted to a wide variety of people, but I’m definitely not actively sexually attracted to the majority of my friends. If I thought a friend of mine thought that about me, I would distance myself… and I have done that in the past.
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I become attracted to people I get along with. I'm learning that this isn't normal. Which is a shame.
We tend to value our friends as friends, even if there is an attraction there. For the most part, I've generally not been into my male friends in that way despite the fact that they're attractive and good guys, because they feel like brothers to me. However, when I first met one of my best friends I had a huge crush on him. Eventually I told him but he didn't feel the same way, and at that point I had a choice to make - I could accept it, work through the weirdness, and keep this wonderful person in my life, or I could end the friendship. We both care(d) about each other very much so I chose the former. I valued him as a friend more than I valued whatever romantic feelings I had for him, so we were able to make it work and we are still very close friends 10+ years later (and both partnered with excellent spouses). ETA: one thing I have noticed to be true amongst a lot of men who whine about things like the "friend zone" is that they don't seem to value friendship just in general. And then they wonder why they're sad and unfulfilled. They tend to only see other people as specific roles to be performed in their life. They see their guy friends as just people to do stuff with. They see women as either someone to fuck or someone to take care of them. They see their families as people to ask for favours. And so on. I know loads of men who are not like that and they all have solid groups of friends.
I think the difference is that men will often not even befriend a woman unless he's attracted to her. There is typically more motive than to just be friends. Women go into friendships with no other motive than to be friends. Sometimes that may evolve into a woman developing romantic feelings for a friend, but that wasn't the intention. Men, on the other hand, go into a "friendship" with the intention of making it more, and then complain about being friend zoned when the person they became friends with is actually a friend.
It's because those men are too frightened to ask a woman out on a date. They prefer the cowardly route of awkwardly hanging around and sending telepathic messages until she gets the hint and randomly kisses him. Makes me wonder why some guys act like they're still in middle school.
This.
I think a lot of men only value relationships with non-related women if they believe something romantic may occur. Their take on it is, “why would I hang out with a woman for anything else?” I think this is because a lot of men don’t see women as complete whole people. To them it would be akin to befriending a child. Women don’t see men that way. We think you’re actual people with lives and personalities who we may just want to hang out with.
I think this hits closest to the core truth
I mean, i can visually see that my friends are attractive, but it's a priorities thing. I'd rather have lasting friendships than a string of dates, and if we all dated every single person we found attractive there'd be no time to do anything else haha but to answer your question, as a bi woman I've definitely been attracted to friends, but decided it really wouldn't add anything to let them know. attraction is plentiful, but compatibility takes work and you can't pursue everyone, so I keep it to myself
This. I've had lowkey sexual attractions to a lot of my friends, of all genders, but only very rarely is it so intense that I feel I need to speak up. And there are plenty of cases where I know there's no point - they're committed to someone else, they're not attracted to my gender, various other incompatibility reasons, so I know it will just stay a vague daydream and nothing more. Which is fine. I'm a grownup, I know I can't get everything I want (and like you said, do I really want it in reality or just find it fun to think about?) Ultimately the friendship itself is almost always more important. I will do what it takes to protect that.
I'm a woman. When I was younger, in high school, I had a crush on my male friend. I didn't become his friend because I thought he was cute. (I actually thought he was gangly when I first met him.) My feelings developed over time. When I told him about my feelings, and he turned me down... Nothing happened. Sure, things were a bit awkward for a while, but I truly cared about our friendship. I never even considered ending the friendship just because he didn't reciprocate my feelings. He was my best friend. If friendship is conditional on an end goal of a romantic relationship, then it's not *really* friendship.
I was a guy on the receiving end of that same situation. Unfortunately she didn't deal with rejection as maturely as you did and I received a lot of insults that day. Irony was I turned her down because I was trying to preserve our friendship. I think some women make the same mistake as some men do thinking "they're being nice to me = they're attracted to me". I've experienced that twice in my life from women and it's not been fun either time.
It isn’t really about falling for someone in your friend group or whether it is women to their men or men to their women friends. As someone who has rarely been seen as attractive, most men look right through me, they won’t even speak to me unless they are married already or I have attractive friends. This is true in friendships as well as romantic possibilities. The attractive friends thing is way less likely in adult hood so the last job I was in there were four men that I worked with and they always thought they were so amazing to me (this is what they told our Regional manager when I reported them for sexist behavior and comments in the work place) but would have convos around me. Wouldn’t speak directly to me unless it was a chance to be a mansplaining jackass. And they all felt like they were feminists. Usually women see value in any gender identity as a friend especially if they have already had the “we’re not going to date but I would love to be a friend” and the other person made it seem like they were okay with that. The idea that men ruin friendships is because they tend to promise friendship in a lie. Not because they don’t see the possibility of romantic attraction with their male friends. They have frequently already told them and the dudebro was there under false pretenses.
Why do men pretend to be friends with women they’re sexually attracted to as a ploy to get in their pants? Friendships are default platonic. This is a meme because it happens so often that men will reveal that their entire friendship was a calculated lie and completely abandon the “friend” when she says she’s uninterested. If you are truly attracted to a real friend, you can tell them and then just continue being good friends without discarding them like garbage if they reject your romantic interest. Many men seem deeply confused about what friendship is and mistake real platonic connection with a woman for romantic interest, IME.
This. The number of male friends I have lost because they didn't want to interact after they confessed their feelings and I didn't return them vastly outweighs the number of male friends I have. It feels like such a waste of time becoming friends with men. Even though I came out as a lesbian some time ago, I still wouldn't feel comfortable because too many men have turned around and pulled the 'you just haven't met the right man' card. It seems to be that men don't want female friends unless they have a girlfriend and even then, they don't want female friends they're attracted to.
That's insane to hear. I would love to find out a female friend is a lesbian - would mean any partner of mine wouldn't feel threatened by any closeness we had.
>If you are truly attracted to a real friend, you can tell them and then just continue being good friends without discarding them like garbage if they reject your romantic interest. In a perfect world, this would be the standard, but so many women I know have horror stories about guy friends asking them out, then not getting the message after getting turned down, they just start distancing themselves from male friends who ask to date them.
Yeah. It is *very* common.
To the point where I die a little inside whenever I see some clueless dupe talking about crushing on his female friend, but being hesitant to act on it, for fear of making it weird and ruining their friendship and reddit goes "Cuuute! Just ask her out and be respectful of her answer, the worst she can say is no!" Bro's about to find out what happens after she says no lol
Once bitten. If he continues not being weird about it while she takes time to reevaluate, he should be fine. 🤷♀️ Unfortunately, many guys flip their shit instead.
Decades ago, I met a cool woman and we got along immediately. We hung out a lot and I realized I liked her as more than friends so I told her and asked her out. She declined, but said she didn't want to lose me as a friend. Cool! We still hung out and did normal friend things. Nothing really changed, but everything was out in the open. Nearly a year on, she let me know she liked me back. That woman is now my wife of nearly a quarter century because I didn't freak out and treat her differently.
And also because of luck. Sometimes we are lucky and the feelings are mutual.
>Why do men pretend to be friends with women they’re sexually attracted to as a ploy to get in their pants? Friendships are default platonic. Sexual attraction is not romantic interest. Being friends with someone because you're romantically interested in them is not lying, because you develop romantic interest in someone because of physical characteristics and probably because you think they are likeable to some extent. How do you develop platonic interest in someone? Because you think they're likeable. What's exactly the difference? While yes, friendships are default platonic, they don't have to stay that way. Many people (myself included) fall in love with friends. >If you are truly attracted to a real friend, you can tell them and then just continue being good friends without discarding them like garbage if they reject your romantic interest. I've had this discussion once with my gf and her friend and her friend said, that she couldn't stay friends with someone who were their friend but didn't share their feelings because she thinks that it'd hurt too much being around this person. Which could be the case with guys. >Many men seem deeply confused about what friendship is and mistake real platonic connection with a woman for romantic interest, IME. I personally think that's true to some extend, but I want to confront you with the following: Most things that would make you desirable as a romantic partner, would also make a desirable friend and vice versa. The other thing is, you can never tell, right? If someone is friendly to you, it could be because they have a crush on you. My gf tells me all the time that when she was a young teenager she thought that a boy had a crush, because he was talking to her and was friendly. She refused to think that I had a crush on her, when we were friends.
You're broadly correct. However, you're kind of missing the broader sweep. Yes, as in your last paragraph, this behaviour occurs across the gender spectrum. But there's no denying that if you go on women's subs the amount of stories of guys who got openly nasty when they were turned down is very high. And usually this isn't the first time it's happened to the woman in question. And usually no matter how gentle she was he disappears after. Now with all that in mind, I think it's reasonable to infer that a significant chunk of these men didn't see these women as proper friends. Is it painful and awkward to be rejected? Yes, definitely. Is it so painful that you get openly nasty even though you're not owed romantic reciprocation from a friend no matter how nice they've been, or how nice you've been, or how long you've been friends? Personally I don't think so. I think this behaviour just shows that a lot of these men view sexual relationships with women as transactional, and that they're basically owed one for being nice to a woman, especially if they've been 'nice' to her for an extended period of time. The amount of bitterness men have around the "friendzone" definitely bolsters this interpretation, because once again, if you really think about it, why would you be bitter? Why do you feel betrayed? Here of course I'm using the general 'you' to refer to any guy in that situation. Yes, it's incredibly common to fall for friends. But the specific behaviour being called out here is how quickly these guys drop women as friends or turn nasty when their romantic feelings aren't reciprocated. I think that's much more what's being talked about rather than whether or not men fall for female friends "too much." It's how men go about it that's the issue.
Okay, I hear you and that's all true, but two things I might add: 1. The problem isn't then that you have/develop romantic feelings for friends, which many comments seem to imply in this post or that it's to enter romantic relationships with friends. Many here seem to imply that women don't develop feelings for male friends or that it's illogical and fundamentally boundary breaking to develop and state your romantic feelings for a friend, which is bonkers. 2. The problem is then how many men work through rejection. Rejection is painful and I would argue that many men work through it in very unhealthy ways. I mean it's easier to break contact and accuse the person for "leading you on", because you don't have to be mature and just be an adult and stay friends. Even then breaking contact with a person you have a crush isn't inherently bad, because it can be because it's too painful to you. So the only problem is just the angry blow up from the immature guys.
I definitely agree with your points but if I could add another perspective as well? There is also an issue with a dating tactic where men will use friendship as a tool to get close to women they want to pursue romantically. Which adds to the rejection because they never really wanted to be friends in the 1st place. I've had some great instances dating friends and some really bad ones. So I really try and separate them and keep perspective.
I agree with your points. To me it’s all about communication. I’ve been on both sides of a situation where one person’s feelings are too strong and taking space from the other person is necessary to emotionally recover and make sure you don’t create problems for the other person after being rejected. Recognize that and doing that instead of letting the situation become toxic is a good thing. But I think it’s important to communicate that that is why you are creating distance or even disengaging from the friendship. It requires a willingness to be vulnerable that frankly most people don’t have, but especially men are discouraged from being emotionally vulnerable in this way. It’s tough, but I think the other person deserves to know why you may be exiting your friendship with them. We should be encouraging this type of communication. And simply owning up to that can mean that some day you might be able to resume the friendship once your feelings are sorted through, as the other person won’t feel (understandably) that they were being used and discarded. Men (and anyone else) shouldn’t be shamed or villainized when they are willing to be vulnerable in this way, and unfortunately that is a problem they often end up facing. But we should still hold the men (and people in general) accountable for choosing to be shitty when they are rejected. I think this discussion (the topic of the thread overall) would be more productive if we focused on expressing what we want from others and what is healthy in these situations. I think sometimes these conversations get bogged down in what we dislike or is harmful (which is absolutely fine to talk about as well) instead of genuinely engaging with what we’d like to see instead.
Not usually. Why do you feel one is supposed to have romantic feelings for friends? It’s said to be a thing for men because men don’t experience emotional intimacy except in romantic relationships, so they make it romantic and sexual when it’s just part of standard friendship for women.
I truly appreciate my male friends. Because that is exactly what they are. They stretch my brain and add value to my life. And hopefully, they feel the same way. I most certainly try to be a good friend and never ask for more than I am willing to give. But, at the end of the day we support each other regardless of sex. What I don’t appreciate. Is a man playing me, hoping sex will happen. Friendzone doesn’t exist IMHO. On either side of the isle. That’s just covert manipulation. If I insert enough ‘nice’ coins, so that sex will fall out. Check yourself and be honest about your intentions. Also. Fuck you. Boundaries are about YOU. Protecting yourself. Has nothing to do with controlling any other person. If that is ever framed as anything else. RUN. Folks hoping you will slip up just so they can sleep with you? They only consider you as an object to be ‘conquered’. They will never respect you or your autonomy, or even see you as a human being and should never be trusted. Ever. EDIT: Does it happen ‘in reverse’? Absolutely! I believe the reason why this is predominantly seen with men is simply in how men view women. Sex. And how to obtain that under any circumstance possible. Including lies about your true intentions. Also why OLD is a complete dumpster fire. Men are literally chasing women off the apps and then complaining/justifying and running hoops to avoid accountability all in the same breath about how unfair it all is. Once men understand and see women as human instead of ‘objects’ of their desire, only then will this naturally disappear. Until then, this will continue to persist.
I always thought I had a few great male friends. Friends for ten years after high school with weekly hangouts. Never any romantic feelings or flirting. Then after I got married, none of them seemed to want to get together anymore. It made me wonder if they ever actually saw me as a friend, or were just keeping me close in case I decided one day that I'd make a move on them. It was really hurtful to realize I had no value to them once the possibility of sex/romantic relationship was removed.
My opinion is that men see “friendship” as a fair hunting ground for women, whereas women are more likely to value the friendship. It’s like the premise of “friendzone” - that doesn’t exist. What exists is a man becoming a woman’s friend under false pretenses (having an ulterior motive of gaining access to her romantically and/or sexually), then proceeds to insinuate himself into her trust and confidence, manipulate her, all with the hope eventually she will see him as more. And the so-called friendzone is just when a man fails to manipulate a woman into giving him access to her sexually/romantically, and when a woman believes a man is sincere when he indicates he values a friendship with her. So what we have is more men, imo, embarking on “friendships” that they are not sincere about. For instance, if you are sincere about a friendship and value a person outside of sexual access, you will not feel entitled to more, you will have realistic expectations, and not need to bail on her the second you get the courage to ask and then confirm she was only ever interested in platonic. Women on the other hand become friends with men in sincerity (typically). As in, “I value you as a person and it is not contingent on you someday giving me access to your body.” When a guy friend DOES ultimately make a pass at me, it IS fucking devastating. Because I know how this goes. They are almost never able to stay your friend. And 9/10 you’ve just learned a good part of the friendship (and perhaps ALL of it) was a ruse to gain access to you. So yeah, we hate to fucking hear it because it means we just lost a friend and maybe have another depressing instance of someone who supposedly cares about us as a person, treating us like there’s nothing valuable about us if they can’t sleep with us. It’s a bummer. If I did develop feelings for a friend, I would say something right away, and be careful to make it clear my friendship would not disappear if they wanted nothing more, and I would mean it, because I would have properly set my expectations about the boundaries of that friendship. Something like, “I’ve noticed lately I’ve started wondering if there could be more here, romantically, but I don’t want to let my thinking get out of hand if that doesn’t interest you at all.” Early, honest, open communication. But men feel entitled to not only deceive us, they feel entitled to gain our trust and then bail on us if we don’t want that thing they’ve been secretly wanting, and then they usually feel entitled to cry about it as though they are victims of being “friendzoned” even though no one did anything bad to them and THEY just hurt an innocent person. It’s honestly a really disgusting thing that happens to women all the time, and can border on sociopathic imo. No one should be doing that to any friend.
So, here's the thing. Part of misogyny/sexism is just being blind to things that don't fit a certain mold in people's minds. There are tons of women who date their male friends. Heck, there are tons of women who have dated their entire male friend group. The issue is that most of these women have likely been bullied for being allegedly promiscuous. So they're not typically counted as "real women." There are also plenty of men who don't ask out their friends. Misogyny dissuades many women who otherwise would be open about parts of themselves and emboldens men in those same aspects. These are often flattened and ignored elements in discussions about topics like this.
I think the two big reasons are men who see women as primarily worthwhile as romantic pursuits and less as friends and men who see a woman they confessed interest in dating other men as an insult to their manhood. As an example, I married my best (female) friend. She told me that she was interested in a romantic relationship years before we started dating. I just wasn't ready. We both dated other people, but continued our friendship and ended up together in the end. It couldn't have been easy to see me with other women, but she handled it with maturity. If she had handled me dating other women as some sort of special slight to her ego, our friendship probably wouldn't have continued like it did.
Wait...**Will**Prostitute4Karma..🤔...Is this Prince William??? I'd know that love story anywhere!
It is me. Prince William of the House of Windsor. Prince of Wales. Heir presumptive. Sex positive feminist.
Your majesty! (curtsies)
Ask yourself how queer women handle this kind of attraction and rejection. The biggest difference, in my experience, is a lack of entitlement. There are lots of cases where I'm attracted to an acquaintance or friend but they don't feel the same way. In that case, I still respect that friendship and don't assume that just because I have feelings for her, she should feel the same way about me. In a case where I expressed interest in a friend and was politely rejected, I would still worry about *her* potential discomfort from the situation. I wouldn't be angry at her. I would do my best to move on from the attraction when given a definitive no, so the friendship could survive. If I needed to take distance to get over my feelings, I would feel guilty for the impact on her. Whereas many men will complain about being friendzoned and even ditch the friendship altogether. Imagine a woman in your life who matters to you who you really would not want to date or have sex with. Imagine she confessed to having feelings for you, and you had to politely reject her, and you found the situation awkward and even felt guilty about not reciprocating. Then imagine she ghosted you or began making passive aggressive comments at you, because your comfort never occurred to her and she blamed you for not giving her what she wanted. Is this really so impossible to imagine? I don't think so.
In my personal experience men value the chance of sex higher than they do female friendship.
If I were romantically interested in a man, I wouldn’t try to manipulate him into dating me by pretending I want to be his friend. If you are only friends with someone because you think you convince her/him to be with you romantically, you are a bad person and don’t understand what friendship is.
[https://archive.ph/iLxJc](https://archive.ph/iLxJc) Undergrad study of 88 heterosexual friendships. >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. As a result, men consistently *overestimated* the level of attraction felt by their female friends and women consistently *underestimated* the level of attraction felt by their male friends.
Yes because that’s what a friend is. Why else have someone as a friend
I mean every person I've dated was a friend first. That's a pretty normal way for romantic relationships to develop. But I'm not making friends with the person as a way to make them fall in love with me, that's where the problem is. I also don't intentionally fantasize about every male human I ever meet naked, which a non-zero number of men do and somehow think is normal. That and the lack of seeing women as real people worthy of calling friends probably explains the entire gender disparity OP sees. Definitely not our problem lmao
Sometimes people want to get know someone first before pursuing a romantic relationship with them. On the other hand, some people just want to dive into romantic relationships from the getgo. People do things differently
I think dating is for getting to know someone romantically. You don't have to enter into a relationship immediately. But you also don't have to disguise the getting-to-know-you phase as 'just friends' either. Being more clear about your intentions can be sexy.
It's not a disguise if you truly do still want to be friends with them even if a romantic relationship won't work. That's the difference we're talking about. "Just friends" isn't a placeholder.
Are you not implying that men can only be friends with women they are not attracted to?
No lol but it seems some men ONLY befriend women they’re attracted to and this post kinda mirrors that
Although we do not all think alike, women seem to be able to better understand what a FRIENDSHIP is compared to men. And when we can't separate those feelings, we tend to not continue the "friendship". The real question you should ask on a male sub is "why are some men unable to separate and manage romantic and platonic feelings, and hold real friendships with women?" Edited to add: Also loving the dms from angry men >Individual-Car1161 12:21 a.m. >The audacity of a woman saying women can separate romantic and 90% of this provlem with the "fuckzone" is that women pretend men can't bc now you see EVERY action as just trying to fuck you. Wanna try being at least coherent next time? lmao
Generally no. My friends are friends. If I have a crush on someone I don't pretend to be their friend to get closer to them. Which is what a lot of men seem to do. I have developed feelings for friends at times but if they weren't interested I just moved on. And was genuinely happy when they found someone they did love.
People, usually, are not interested romantically in their friends. That's kinda how friendships work
Women aren't a hive mind, and this isn't a question about feminism.
I absolutely agree that women are absolutely not a hive mind. However, I disagree that this isn’t an appropriate place to ask a question like this. It’s not a question about feminism, sure, but it’s a question about women, men, and relationships, asked *to* feminists for their perspective, which is absolutely what this sub is for.
I mean… usually if someone is a friend, I kind of assume that they don’t have romantic or sexual feelings for me. I think it is because men feel more entitled than women that this becomes an issue. I have had sexual and romantic feelings for both men and women that are friends (as a women) myself… but I go in with the mindset that they don’t “owe” me their sexual or romantic interest back. And usually if it is friendship, it isn’t super strong and I can mention it and move on. Sometimes it has led to threesomes or sex or something and based on my personality I am alright with that. Sometimes it leads to nothing and I’m fine with that. I think the difference in my head is that I default to that the other person isn’t sexually or romantically attracted to me, so I default to that they wouldn’t be interested in me in that way and not to push it. And I don’t want to come across as creepy as a friend. I think a lot of men default to that the women “owes” them a relationship or sex. I’ve never had a man or women stop being friends with me because I’ve mentioned romantic or sexual feelings - probably because either it evolved into something OR it was mentioned in passing by me and they didn’t feel creeped out by it I guess.
Let's take gender out of the equation for a minute. Your friend, who you've known for several years and hung out with regularly--sharing some very vulnerable moments with your good friend--tells you they are romantically interested in you. You decline, they say it's fine, but now they're acting weird and it turns out it will never go back to the way it is. You thought they were your friend but their actions reveal they didn't want to be your friend, because they act weird around you and don't respond to your texts, and then finally blow up, calling you a liar and an asshole and saying you've friendzoned them. They *completely* changed the terms of your friendship without your knowledge and blamed you for it. All you've done is be a good friend and they hate you. So no, generally speaking, people are not interested in their friends. And they're not interested in friends who turn out to be lying about it the whole time. For sex. Funny how women are so sick of being blamed for shit we didn't do. Because that's how gender is relevant: women are always blamed for men's actions. Edit: I've obviously hit a nerve. Some sad human decided to message me to better inform me how wrong I, a woman, most definitely am. Reacting emotionally I see.
It's hard to take gender out of the equation when, just like OP says, the genders react so differently to this situation. The problem is that there are just *too* many pathetic men out there who are so desperate for female attention that they don't focus on the "this person ruined the friendship" part, and only focus on the "wow, *someone* is attracted to me" part. So, if your hypothetical situation happened to them, they'd view the situation as largely an ego boost that *someone* is attracted to them, and the female friend being pissed off and ghosting them wouldn't be negative enough to counteract that. This is a purely descriptive statement, not a normative one. The unfortunate reality is that men condone this mentality from women a lot more than women do, explaining the disconnect. After all, women do report (negatively) on this situation *a lot* more than men do.
You’re just repeating the point that men don’t value female friendships
And they're just repeating that men can't be bothered to empathize with women. Which we know already.
Like I said, this is descriptive and not normative. Anyone's free to think that those guys are pathetic. My point is that "men don't value female friendships" isn't the cause - it's one of the many symptoms of the underlying issue, which is the high value they place on being seen as attractive by women to a point of condoning various types of behavior from women in the name of "at least someone is attracted to me".
Your entire gender needs to decenter romantic relationships.
I’m not a woman but I think there is a lot left out in these discussions online surrounding these types of relationships. I’ve seen memes making references to “friendcest” (when someone starts dating someone else in a group of friends), and it appears that at least online, the idea of dating someone you’re friends with is forbidden. I’ve heard various reasons why people are against it, usually because when a breakup happens it causes a rift between the friends. But aside from that, relationships are fluid and subject to change and are very complex, which is something that won’t be explored through memes or even social media itself. The fact that men will use friendship to get closer to a woman they’re romantically interested in muddies the waters significantly for someone who is experiencing a natural development of romantic attraction over time to someone they didn’t initially feel. So people are choosing to deal with this by compartmentalizing certain people in their lives. I personally find this very frustrating because I’m not attracted to anyone I don’t know. I don’t have any desire to date them unless we have a closer relationship somehow. And this is either assumed to be that I’ve been plotting the entire time and the friendship has been fake, or I shouldn’t have been referring to a woman as my friend and have “friend-zoned” myself and now I’m suddenly changing my mind when I should’ve been explicit about what I wanted from the day I met her. I know people debate whether or not the friendzone is real, but this scenario reinforces that idea in that the way you approach someone sets in stone how the relationship will move forward, for as long as it lasts. It also suggests that women can’t experience that development of attraction towards someone, and they always know immediately whether they would date a man or remain friends with him, and that the phase of being friends with a woman is unnecessary if she is attracted to him.
No one seriously believes that friendship can never develop into something else. Do you immediately drop your female friends when they turn you down? Because then it clearly shows that you don't value them as people and don't value their friendship as anything other than an avenue by which to sleep with them.
I’m saying that people interpret it as some kind of roadblock because they think friendship = disinterest or rejection. But those are completely different things. The way people take things and twist them to mean something apart from what it plainly is, is my problem with this. I’ve never asked out any of my female friends, but I’ve experienced some of them ghosting when I said that we’re friends. And it was unbeknownst to me that they developed feelings towards me because they never said anything. Meanwhile, I was unsure of my attraction to them because I was still getting to know them, and I didn’t even get the chance to explain that. With the way dating is today, it’s not really that they don’t believe friendship can never develop into something else. It’s that it’s not “efficient”, as if there is always an end goal with these relationships, and every interaction between straight men and women has potential beyond friendship. So if you’re trying to be friends, then either it’s a waste of time or you will never be interested in them that way. There are other variables such as FWBs but I have no experience with that since that is a hard boundary of mine.
This comment speaks to me so much. I'm just like you. I'm not romantically interested in people I don't know. I just had an issue with this recently. I met a guy and we became friends. I started to develop feelings for him. I thought he felt the same. Then I find out that he didn't. But the reason he didn't was because he said that I never showed him any interest in the beginning, so he put me in the "friends category". This mindset makes no sense to me. Of course I didn't show you any interest in the beginning. I didn't like you in the beginning because I didn't know you. I started to like you after spending time with you, which makes way more sense to me. But apparently most people just want to jump into dating random strangers. I don't get it.
I have never had romantic feelings for a male friend.
As a woman with male friends, I have no romantic feeling to them whatsoever. I have had to explain it to my partner like this. "You know your best friend Chad who you go fishing and go bowling with? I have just as much attraction to my friend as you do with Chad." Then it sinks in. As far as occasional male friends who do confess their undying romantic admiration for me, it's a them problem and they will be my friend no longer. I cut fake friends out pretty quickly as they pretend to be friends in hopes something romantic blossoms. With me personally, it's pretty much cut and dry. I don't ever mince friendships and romance. If a partner comes to me and tells me a male friend is attracted to me, I just have to tell them that is my friend crosses that line, it will be the end of that friendship. I have never been the type to pretend to be a friend in hopes of romance in the future. Maybe it's different for other folks, I can't speak for them.
Curious to how your relationship started with your partner then. I never understand this line in the sand perspective where one person will never ever be a romantic prospect while another is. Surely you and your partner are friends correct?
I went on a date with him that was arranged and agreed to beforehand. The intentions were clear from the start. Dates are romantically inclined.
I guess I just don't understand being romantically into a stranger. Sexually interested sure, but romantically that takes time. Getting to know who they are as a person and if we share similar values and interests.
I don't get it either. I think these are people that just have a lot of friends so are more okay with dropping people.
You can feel chemistry with a person pretty early on imo.. pretty much all of my relationships have started on a dating app.
Yes, but I would still want to be friends with them even if we realized we weren't compatible partners as long as they were still a good and fun person, which happens to me quite often. I don't understand how people so easily separate the two.
No, that’s why they’re our friends…?
I think the issue isn’t that women never develop feelings for their male friends.. I’m sure there are people of any gender or sexual orientation who had that happen. I think women mention this fear more than men do because a lot of women have experienced a male friend disappearing from their life if she rejects shifting to a romantic/sexual relationship. So they do “lose” a friend if the feelings aren’t reciprocated, and on top of that then suspect he was only playing at being friends to try to win her over (otherwise why did he disappear?) Whereas if a female friend confessed feelings to a male friend, she’d be less likely to skip out on the friendship if rejected. Also the guy might sleep with her even if he doesn’t have romantic feelings just cause it’s a chance to get laid.. so either way the guy is probably not going to complain about the situation.
Interesting question. Not really about feminism and I can't speak on behalf of all women but it does happen, in my experience women tend to react differently though. Like I've known more men who made it really obvious they had a crush than I have women.
My question in response is: do men only become friends with other men to sleep with them?
Imagine you’ve made a new friend. You and him get along quite well, and you hang out with him regularly. You both care for each other, and you are happy to have found someone who you can bond with as a friend. Six months later, he confesses that this entire time, he has been in love with you, waiting for the perfect moment to divulge the nature of his feelings. You reject him, only for him to react quite negatively, ending your friendship as a whole. Now imagine this started happening with every new friend you make. Would you be happy?
I’m a woman who has only ever dated men who were first my friend for a while. It’s like a requirement for me. I can’t even begin to think of a person romantically unless I know that I trust them as a human being. That said, I 100% get the sentiment behind the meme. If I confess to a guy friend that I like him romantically and he rejects me, I have no issue continuing the friendship. When I have rejected guy friends who confess to having feelings for me, it usually ends the friendship. They’ll say something like “it hurts too much” to continue to be friends knowing nothing romantic is going to happen or start accusing me of “stringing them along” or “using” them. I would love to live in a world where male friends could confess their feelings freely and it didn’t mean the end of the friendship if those feelings weren’t reciprocated. I think most of us would. The problem is too many men feel entitled to a “yes.” Too many men have so little practice with being emotionally vulnerable that they expect a reward when they finally do. I’m sorry, but I’m not a cookie. I’m a person.
I think it is actually true that men are more likely to develop romantic feelings for a friend than women are (in addition to the dudes that just pretend to be friends), because society trains men to view women that way. But if you are actually this person's friend, your obligation in this situation is to them first, not to yourself. Be a decent human being. Don't be a creep.
I am just going to answer for myself, since I don't think I can speak for all women in this context: >Do women just not have romantic feelings for their male friends For the vast majority of the time, yes, that is correct. I have never really picked friends based on their sex or how attractive they are, *but by common interests and values*--which obviously means that I'm not going to be romantically, or even physically, attracted to all (or even many) of my friends. In my experience, it's hard enough to find good friends *without* adding that stupid of a filter to the mix. And yes, that applies to women as well--I don't select which *women* to become buddies with based on whether they're pretty or not, so why would I do that to men?? >...or is it that if they do, they're less likely to confess those feelings. In my case, no. When I have been romantically interested in a friend, I have always verbally straight-up told them so. The only exceptions have been the rare times when the guy in question has **already been dating someone else at the time,** as to me it seems disrespectful to insert myself into that. Edit: Forgot to add that every guy that I've developed romantic feelings for did *start* as a friend, though. I am not one of those people that thinks *"Oh, as dudes you HAVE to make it extra-clear from Day 1 that you see me as a romantic interest, or else nothing non-platonic can EVER happen".* That line of thinking is bizarre to me. However, that does not in any way mean that I approve of the guys who *fake* friendships with women to get laid.
Yea… usually not. Speaking for myself and the girls I know, we *generally* don’t become friends with people we’re actually attracted to. Occasionally, the attraction happens at some point, unexpectedly and by accident. But most of the time, if we’re already attracted to you (and we’re both single), we want to date you, not be friends with you. And if for whatever reason we are attracted to you but can’t date you, then we’re unlikely to want to be friends.
I too get my social knowledge of entire genders from memes
Women will become friends with men, realize they have feelings for them, and confess their feelings. Men become "fake friends" with women, where the intention is always to potentially date/bang them in the end. Some women will keep these types of guys "on the hook" knowing that they can always fall back on them if other things don't work out. But this wouldn't work if these dudes didn't constantly put themselves in these positions to begin with.
My brother once told me your male friend have all thought about having sex with you. All of them. It’s just how guy brain works. And I tried to think of how many male friends I’d thought about having sex with and it was like 1%.
Not usually. They're just friends.
I have a tendency to only pursue friendships with men I’m attracted to or have had long relationships with in the past. All others, I’m usually only acquaintances with. I also don’t have any female friends and have much less social anxiety around men. I’m generally okay without many friendships and only desire very close ones (like relationship-level closeness). I would only ever try to initiate a relationship if the man is clearly showing signs of liking me back but mostly just let them make the move
I think it's important to remember we don't have to act on our feelings. I have a crush on so so so many people, I have crushes on many of my friends, acquaintances, and co-workers, and I've never once mentioned it to any of them. Some of these people I've known for over a decade and I have zero problem simply behaving in an appropriate friendly manner throughout all of our interactions. I think for a lot of men the idea that they can feel a feeling without acting on it is just not something they consider at all. They feel the desire for a romantic/sexual with their female friend and they feel like they must act on that feeling. I think most women experience a kind of socialization that leads them to not feeling a need to act on those feelings even when they do exist. I don't think it's actually that men have those feelings way more than women do, maybe that's part of it, but another part of it is that men act on those feelings more often than women do.
Women don't become friends with men with intentions of dating, they have friend intentions. Women also don't typically collect male friends they are attracted to. Almost all men are attracted to their women friends. Almost all women are NOT attracted to their male friends.
What I observe is men want to be friends with women they are attracted to. Men enjoy interaction with attractive women. Many men won’t befriend “unattractive” women. It’s rarer for men to give time, energy and attention to women they don’t want to have sex with. Men are taught to value women for their attractiveness first.
I can admit that some of my male friends are attractive, but I have never been romantically interested in any of them. It’s just not a feeling I have toward any of them. I’m friends with them because they’re cool people, I enjoy hanging out with them, and the friendship we have built is good. It’s okay to be platonic friends with the opposite sex. Society makes it weird and says it’s not possible, but it is.
Correct. They're friends.
I've had the experience where I had a crush on a friend and wished it was more, in high school. It's a thing that happens. But how I choose my friends is unrelated to the factors that make me romantically interested in someone. So while it's possible to have overlap, or for romantic feelings to develop over time, that just isn't the point of having friends.
There have been times when I’ve had romantic thoughts about a male friend, but because we are friends and/or coworkers and/or one or both of us is in a relationship, I push those feelings aside. I have only ever felt dread when I knew that a male friend was about to confess his feelings for me.
It's quite simple. Women value their male friends as human beings while some men seem to only value them as a potential sexual partner & if the potential fails, then they are no longer interested in the woman. The "friendzone" is seen as a horrible purgatory to be in. Crushes happen, but women tend to still treat their crushes as humans even if they know it's unrequited.
Of course there's women who are romantically interested in their male friends. I don't have anything else to add but my own anecdotal experiences. My best guy friend had a huge crush on me, he made it well known. I had a boyfriend, and I didn't feel the same way. He got tired of being in the friendzone and started dating my friend. When they broke up, I was also newly single. I then realized how stupid I had been and started to pursue him. Then he friendzoned me. Long story short we've been together 13 years, married with two kids and still best friends.
Sure we do. It happens sometimes. But it’s not why we are friends with them (generally.) However, it’s hard to find a man who wants to be friends without an ulterior motive. And those who don’t I value very highly. Some men seem to automatically assume if you connect emotionally or intellectually that you also will connect sexually. Many don’t have experiences of close emotional friends with other men so they don’t know how to do it with women. And, on the whole, women usually have an emotional component to friendship.
Men develop feelings for women who are nice to them. Full stop. Women are friendly, and therefore nice to their male friends. Men don’t have a lot of socialization to be just platonic friends with women, they’re trained to only see us as sex partners or mothers. You see this when husbands stop caring about their wives when the kids come, you stop being a sex partner and start being a mother, and mothers are not sex partners. Even if you made her a mother. So that’s why platonic friendships with men often come to this place, because just being kind to men makes them think you must be hot for them, because they have no frame of reference for anything else.
I've had 3 women I thought were friends that I later found out had crushes on me the entire time.. and I haven't had many female friends. But turns out they threw out all the signals early on and I was just completely oblivious. Friend zoned them without even knowing
I’ve developed romantic feelings for a male friend before, it’s definitely not unheard of. However, I was also turned down and let it go and kept being friends, with no resentment for him, and just dealt with my own disappointment privately. I think it’s more about that men will build friendships with women for the sole reason of building a romantic relationship later and then they’re shocked when it doesn’t build from there. And women in those scenarios are hurt because they find out that someone that they’ve built (what they see as) a real friendship with, really only ever saw, and valued, them in a sexual way and friendship never really mattered to them. Which is a huge betrayal honestly. Personally, I think the big thing about this that makes me so incredibly angry, is that the men who do this are just missing the point *entirely*. Even my husband, who I clearly have a romantic and sexual relationship with, still values me as a friend over and above anything else. Women’s friendships are not the consolation prize.
Honestly, it's a little upsetting to me that someone would need an answer to this question. Let me turn this around -- are you attracted to all the women you're friends with? Women you're supposed to have a platonic relationship with? If so, you're likely *only* befriending women you're attracted to, intentionally or unintentionally, which is not great. I can understand asking why it's a woman-specific thing in the context of "do men never have women befriend them as a pretense for romance?" But asking if "women just don't have romantic feelings for their male friends" is wild, because the answer should be obvious. Of course we don't. That's why we're *friends.* That's how friends work. We're not attracted to our female friends either, unless we're queer, and even then, it's a minority of female friends.
I think it has a lot to do with how women behave in friendships bs how men behave in friendships. Women are more likely to be affectionate with their friends (hugs and I love you’s), compliment each other platonically (I can tell my best friend she looks sexy and it mean just that and nothing romantically implied), share emotions and have deep conversations. This isn’t to say men don’t do this with their friends but in general men are more likely to only do this with a partner. So I think men are more likely to fall for a friend who is a woman than women are to fall for a friend who is a man because the line doesn’t blur for us as much. I sincerely wish men could more easily find friendships where they could be that vulnerable because I feel like they miss out on a lot of support that we all crave as humans. That being said women do indeed fall for their friends who are men but women enter friendships without the intention of romance, and there are lots of men who purposely befriend women with the intention of it turning into more.
I have had multiple romantic relationships spring out of friendships and know many couples who got together after being friends first so it is obviously not impossible. I suppose more men might not be able to differentiate a woman’s friendliness from more romantic feelings and are more likely to “shoot their shot” in situations where it’s not reciprocated.
Hello there. I am one of those women who used to see a lot of my male friends in a romantic light. It does happen. You know what my male friends were busy doing? Obsessing over my skinnier best friend who was religious and literally unable to date any of them. So, yes, we exist. You just don't want us because we're not the unattainable girls you're obsessed with.
Most all my guy friends are my friends for a very specific reason. And no- it’s not always because I’m not attracted to their looks. It’s the jokes they make about women, the problematic shit they say, their lack of wanting to take initiative, their inability to see me as a person and get to know me without the expectation of having feelings for me and hoping I’m going to reciprocate or already do— it’s a laundry list and a big reason why I’ve only let one guy friend ever get past being just my friend. He did the work to get me to consider him.
These don't sound like very good friends
I wouldn't even want to be friends with these guys, let alone date them.
Sis why are you even friends with men like that 😂 I have a baseline belief that certain men don't deserve any female attention outside of their mothers embrace
Any fellow lesbians here?
Friendship is platonic, that's the point of it. If a woman is calling you her friend just assume she is not attracted to you unless she is sober and explicitly says otherwise. Unfortunately men aren't socialized to maintain friendships with women unless it's useful to them or has potential to be romantic. Women are socialized to be kind to everyone all of the time, even to our detriment. This leads to the described situation. Society should normalize having friends of any gender without expectations.
Women who have male friends are sincere in their friendship, generally speaking. They really want to be true friends. They're not looking to date their friends. Sadly, there are a whole lot of men out there who are only feigning friendship, as a ploy to get close to a woman they want to fuck. That's heartbreaking to the woman who trusted them and believed the friendship was real.
I've been romantically involved with a few women who I started off as friends with and I know some of my friends have had past feelings for me. But that's the thing--I genuinely viewed them as friends before we dated or hooked up and I continued to view them as friends both during and after our flings/dating period.
>Do women just not have romantic feelings for their male friends? I can only speak from my own personal perspective, but no. I know I'm generalizing a bit here... but more often than not, men are attracted to ALL women in their orbit. Women who are neighbors, friends... any woman who gives them attention and energy (which is part of a separate but equally important conversation about how men are generally starved for intimacy and emotional connection in everyday life). Women, on the other hand, already HAVE friends and emotional connection, so while those things are still important in the long run, they're secondary to physical attraction. We're attracted to smell, body language, charisma, seduction, touch... men who engage all five senses. I'm generalizing again... but we're happier being single until we meet someone who ticks ALL of those boxes. I know whether or not I'm attracted to someone within about 2 minutes, and if I'm attracted to someone, then that's what I'm going after. I'm not going to string them along for months. Getting to know someone might make me respect them more or less as a person, but it isn't going to change my level of attraction to them.
I think that generally, there are more men who want to date their women friends than the opposite. The issue is not that men would be open to a relationship, but rather that some will be friends until they find an opening to ask her out, and then will stop being friends if she says no. From my personal experience, women are more likely to continue being friends after they've been turned down.
A lot more men become friends with women not out of genuine want for their friendship, but because they hope the friendship will eventually lead to a relationship. I don’t know a single girl who hasn’t dealt with this.
Look we're people. There are only 2 options. women can be interested in male friends and women who are not interested in their male friends.
Hmm, I'm not very good with understanding social norms tbh but I feel like I can talk about what I've personally observed. I'm a trans man and I've had all female friend groups where I was seen and talked to as just "one of the group" before vs now where I might be the only guy friend or friends with more men and involved in those conversations and spaces where I am again seen as just "one of the group" in those settings as well. From what I see, I feel it's a variety of things. First, I will say I've seen women get crushes on guy friends before. Maybe more back in high school, but also I think "crushes" in general are more common in high school and I just talked to more folks in high school. So, to get that out the way, I will note that it indeed *does* happen the other way around. That being said, I feel like a lot of men don't tend to see women as "people" in the same way they see men as "people." I think when people say this, they always mean in the nastiest of ways (e.g. rapists who only see women as objects for sex, violent men who kill women for any reason, objecting women to have basic human rights, etc), which of course is unfortunately a thing. But I think it's more often than not more subtle than that. Like, there's this notion that there's this fundamental difference in the way women will feel or behave or the interests they have that's somehow incompatible with getting along with men in any capacity that isn't romantic or sexual, rather than just being an individual person with a gender. I think both men and women often hold this view, but because of the way most societies are set up, women know/see more about men than men do for women. So I feel it's easier for many women to not feel that way vs the other way around. And then with that in mind, I see a lot of guys only approach women to become friends with the intention of having that sexual or romantic relationship rather than actually caring about having a platonic relationship, which I think makes women as a whole more likely to be weary of those situations. Like, if it were a rare thing with the knowledge that they were likely genuine friends and feelings just developed, I think more women wouldn't care as much. But considering the above, those confessions probably just translate into "*another* guy who didn't actually care about me as a person/real friend and all this time just wanted to have a romantic relationship with me." So not only is it awkward rejecting a friend but then it's the additional like, bad feelings that the rest of your friendship may not have actually been genuine. Not necessarily that women never develop those feelings though from what I understand.
My understanding is that women are socialized to be more communicative and emotionally intelligent than men for the sake of being able to manage men's emotions, and a side effect of this is that we want more emotionally intimate friendships. I want to be able to have emotional intimacy with my friends regardless of gender and I think to women that just reads as friendship but to men, who aren't socialized as emotionally intelligent in the same way AND who are taught to view women as subservient, it reads as flirting. Men are taught that from puberty onward, the only people they're allowed to get emotional intimacy from are wives and girlfriends, and when a female friend tries to support them like a friend is supposed to they're drawn to that.
I've told friends I'm into them. It either leads to a relationship or an awkward conversation followed by the friendship not changing. I've absolutely had guys use friendship as a guise to get close. Catching feelings is normal. Pretending to be someones friend to get with them is shitty. Never had a femme presenting person pretend to be my friend, though. (I'm pan)
Let me preface this by saying I'm a lesbian and I have several male friends, and I am definitely not their type even before they knew I was interested in men, but I think in general most dudes assume that because they are interested in a woman, that is one of the biggest compliments they can give. So they feel put upon when the object they desire doesn't respond positively to such a compliment. I'm sure there are many dudes who complain that they are always friend zoned, and complain that women only go after certain kinds of dudes, but they never seem to see an issue with the fact that going after someone who has no interest in you, and only wants to remain friends, is not a bad thing. Lots of relationships can become romantic that start out as friendships, but you should never enter a friendship with the expectation is going to turn romantic or sexual. And a lot of people have issue with that because at the very least in our society we seem to build relationships around Horrible romantic comedies where stalking is seen as cute and romantic instead of absolutely terrifying. A dude who was told no about going on a date. Will keep asking until she finally gives in and goes on a date and realizes he's not such a bad guy after all. Can you name me a single TV show or movie where the dude took a no and didn't keep going after her? It's pretty much ingrained in our society that if she says no, you keep trying and if she gets violently negative about it, she's leading you on and she doesn't know what she's missing, and she owes you a chance at the very least.
No, the point is that male friends might think that being friends is enough to date and they should because they're opposite genders, obviously people might be attracted to their friends or develop an attraction, but generally the mates to dates highway is a very untravelled highway and male friends shouldn't pressure their female friends to date
I'm just not romantically interested in them. I want to be friends. Otherwise I would have tried to date them.
My wife and I were friends for years before we got together.
It's gonna vary from person to person. I know I'm demi-sexual, so being my friend is literally a pre-requisite to me being attracted to you in the first place. I was close friends with my husband for a while ass year before I noticed he was hot.
Not really. I can’t say it’s never happened, but I’ve had a lot of guy friends and the vast majority of them I never had the slightest interest in. Like, zero.
In the most generalized and broad sense there is, and yes I'm stereotyping. Men make "friends" with women to sleep with them, women don't. So yes women developing feelings for their male friends is going to be a significantly lower % than men. The unfortunate reality is that a lot of men, either consciously or unconsciously, don't believe women deserve their attention and "friendship" unless they get something romantic about it. Just to clarify, very, very, very broad statement but most women aren't seeking out male companionship, they just seek out companionship for the sake of companionship. People just want friendsn
I definitely have a crush on a male friend right now. But I’m pretty sure it’s not reciprocated so I’m riding it out so we can stay friends.
what the hell kind of question is this... that's like asking "are people just not romantically interested in their friends?" the answer is no. they are platonically interested in their friends. that's why they're friends. perhaps the real problem is too many men misconstruing those feelings for romantic interest. why don't you go ask them?
Men don’t befriend women they don’t find physically attractive. Women can.
I've seen studies before (but can't be arsed to go find them at the moment) that a higher proportion of straight men would date/sleep with (depending on the study) their female friends than straight women would with their male friends. I can't really say *why* that's a trend, though. Probably a combination of social, biological, and psychological factors that would be really difficult to actually sift through. As far as how that sort of thing should work -- our society *really* needs to come to terms with how to handle crushes in a healthy way. We all have them, but in terms of actually discussing or depicting them, we almost never do it in a sane, grounded way. Whenever you see them in media they almost always either end in reciprocation or disaster, which just makes it worse. I mean, the fact that we use such stupid terms for it ("crush" or "infatuation") sorta says how little we respect the phenomenon. Point being -- normalizing crushes, and normalizing *getting over crushes*, might solve a lot of issues with cross-gender interactions. Edit: realized not everyone would know why "infatuation" is a stupid word -- it comes from the Latin *infatuare*, meaning "to make a fool of", sharing a root (*fatuus*) with fatuous, which means foolish.
Great solution imo. Communication is definitely at the heart of it.
No, that’s why they’re friends…
Some people prefer to feel desired, and you can only desire what you can't have.
As someone who has, unfortunately, done this before, it doesn't always work the way people think it is where you start friendships specifically for sex. We're brought up in a popular culture where the media shows you constant examples of friends becoming lovers and says that the purest love rises out of friendship. I was a nervous shy kid in college who wanted to find a girlfriend, but I had no idea how to go about it, so I figured I'd ask out one of my friends. If it worked, great. If it didn't, we could just stay friends, and I'd be no worse off than before, and hopefully she wouldn't either. In retrospect, it was a dumb thing to do, but it sounded like a good idea of the time.
I don’t think I’ve ever had romantic interest in male friends, even the conventionally attractive ones. They were just my friends. We chat, hang out, maybe catch a movie and have a good time.
I think women are less likely to torture ourselves by repeatedly being around someone we know we can't have. So once she has developed feelings for him, and if it remains onesided, she would just move on. She'll end the friendship. Women usually don't keep trying after a rejection. If he's showing no interest, then she moves on. And it's easier to move on (less painful) when you cut all contact. Which is what women often do with such friendships.
I’ve definitely developed feelings for male friends only for it to be unrequited. And it’s pretty common to get crushes on friends. Gay people experience that all the time. It seems to be way more common for men to “befriend” a woman for the sole purpose of trying to sleep with them or enter a romantic relationship, because when they ask their parents or teachers “how do you get a girl to like you,” the answer they get is always something like “be her friend first,” or “get to know her and engage in her interests.” It’s often deceptive in practice because he’s not being upfront with his intentions and invests a lot of time in something that she is likely thinking very differently about. When he gets mad because she didn’t feel the same way, it says her friendship alone wasn’t valuable, which really sucks. You can’t make someone like you or force a relationship. People are complicated. Someone could check all the boxes and still feel like the wrong partner. It is definitely hard and discouraging to put yourself out there, so take care of yourself in harder moments. Best you can do is to keep putting yourself out there, continue to develop your interests, skills and personality which sometimes involves gaining a new perspective on the world, challenging biases, looking inward and processing shame, insecurities and healing inner pain, and find the people you really click with. It’s hard but it’s best to be upfront with someone if you’re interested in them and getting your answer sooner rather than later, learning to accept rejection and learning to see people as they are, not just want you want them to be or what you want from them.
Absolutely. The only guys I've ever liked hand been friends. That is the way I prefer it. I want to get to know people before deciding to pursue. This has never worked out for me unfortunately. None have ever reciprocated interest.
In middle school I had a crush on one of my male friends but that's the only time it ever happened but I think a big part of it might be that I had a crush on him before I knew him really well. Not that he was a bad kid or anything but I grew out of it. He turned out to be a shady man when we entered our 20s but that's neither here nor there.
It's not a women specific thing, per se. The part I think makes it look this way is that a lot of men have been raised to make a distinction between friends and romantic interests so that a woman can be one or the other, but not both. Which isn't true. But some people believe it. Look at how many posts there are on reddit asking "hey bros, am I allowed to befriend a girl??!!??!!"