Hopefully as they age they realize the friend zone never existed and these people either never saw them as potential mates/dates or they did and the guy did something to change that.
Do what I do: Be fat and ugly. Not only will you not be in the girlfriend zone, men will go out of their way to make sure you know they "don't see you that way" regardless if you were interested or not.
Yey to us fat chicks! for real when I was super fit and beatiful having friends was hard, even at work! Now that I'm fat I'm much more relaxed, have a nice mixed (men and women) group of friends and don't worry about bosses wanting to fuck me
Edit: Also I want to add 2 things for the younger ones:
A bad relationship is worst than no relationship
If you are not happy and confortable by yourself you'll never be happy with someone else
I don't think I'm fat and ugly but I did start putting out mad lesbian energy (I'm queer but not strictly into any one gender) and men now just think I won't be into them either way so they just talk to me like a human. To think of all the friendships I lost to shitty guys in my 20s when I could've just said I was gay the whole time....
if you lost the friendships because you aren't gay then they weren't going to be any good. that's not losing friendships that's you being neo dodging all the bullshit coming your way
I have an opposite problem. When I (I'm a guy btw) was in school, I sometimes just want to have friends but whenever I talked to girls, I worry that girls would just think I have some other motive (which it seems to me like every boy in my class do just want romantic relationships). Like maybe I'm asexual/aromantic, but I never wanted those types of relationships, I prefer a long lasting friendship.
(I don't have much friends either way, regardless of gender; current amount of friends is: zero; because I just stopped talking to people after highschool, oh well 🤷♂️)
I (straight male) always found it easy to connect with girls, but I was also raised in a very feminist family (despite my mother being nominally conservative).
Dating is a lot of work and vulnerability and an attempt at 'clicking' on many more levels than friendship. It definitely wasn't that I wasn't interested in dating (I very much was), but 'Gorl fun AND pretty' just wasn't enough to automatically spark my interest in romance. 'Gorl fun' meant possible friend; 'Gorl pretty' was most girls, because girls pretty.
I got spontaneously voted the most handsome boy in the class when I was in 10th grade though. Always burnished that particular memory on the Altar of Ego.
God, that final bit. I was a resident assistant for my dorm in college for a year. Didn't date anyone that year. Had plenty of crushes, including plenty from the dorm. At the end of the year, my coworkers (female RAs) were like, "yeah we were all so surprised you didn't go out with anyone, like, half the girls here were in love with you." And I just stared into the middle distance, "and you didn't think to tell me???"
I ended up marrying my best (girl)friend from high school. We both went into it wanting friendship, were attracted to each other (while in relationships), and ended up getting pushed together by a mutual former friend.
I honestly think this was the best way for this to develop, because we were already close and good friends before we dated, and didn't try to make a relationship out of it.
Hey, as a flavour of aro ace myself the feelings of not wanting those types of relationships and not knowing specifically took a long time to figure out. If you want to talk about it, you can DM me or come over to !asexual@lemmy.world or !asexual@lemmy.blahaj.zone there are slao aromantic communities on lemmy as well.
That was pretty much it for me with a few different female friends. It wasn't so much
"hey you're hot and I wanna sleep with you rather than just be friends"
it was
"hey, I really enjoy spending time with you and I'm happy being around you, but I've been down this road before and I know it probably ends when you get a new boyfriend so... maybe I can be that boyfriend and we can continue to enjoy spending time together"
I'm not sure I'm even capable of not wanting to sleep with a woman that I get along well with. Like, I don't ACT on those feelings so as not to fuck up good friendship but they are there.
The thing about socialization is that it's ongoing throughout life. A guy having male friends who can tell him "idk bro sounds like platonic affection" can help him learn even as an adult
On the flipside it was very difficult as a nerdy nice guy to get some women to understand that when I said lets do x I really meant as friends because not everyone is actually sexually interested in you. Sometimes I just wanted to see a movie with someone I thought was a friend
Yeah! It's an intersectional, social issue. I've had just a couple woman adamantly insist to me that men could not be friends with women, in a completely platonic way.
I think they are wrong, in an absolute sense, but in popular Western society, they are right 8 times out of 10.
Do you mean aplotinic with promising sexual partners (presumably women)? or, are you generally aplotinic, as in you lack interest in friendships with anyone?
I'm a cishet dude. I think sex is awesome. but I don't understand the need to fuck everything that moves.
I get it, women can be very beautiful, sexy, cute, pretty, cool, whatever... there's all kinds of nice. and I do appreciate that a lot. I do appreciate seeing a woman who's any of those things. even none of those things. but I don't get ... like why do you feel the need to fuck every single person? friends are so fulfilling. the endless thirst is weird.
edit: please don't come at me with evo psych shit. can't believe people actually do this still. shitting is a biological drive too, but I don't look at every surface as a toilet because I understand that it's appropriate to shit at a toilet but not on a driveway. I think it's possible to respect women as much as you can respect driveways to not see them as objects to your so-called biological drive.
also how come women don't try fuck everything with a dick? you think it's not biological for women? come on.
no the answer isn't evolution or biology. it's sociology. we need to educate and socialize our boys better.
Contrary to what most dudes here are preaching, I think this happens just because most dudes rarely have any deep personal connection with a woman and, once they do, they feel attracted to them.
I didn't say I don't have sexual attraction. if anything my attraction has broadened since my teenage years, I find so many more types attractive than I did during peak hormonal days.
finding people sexy or beautiful isn't the same as treating all of them as goals. you can just think hey she's hot without needing to get in their pants.
also I'm not saying people shouldn't try to fuck anyone, I'm saying they shouldn't try to fuck everyone.
That last bit is easy to answer. I mean, I agree with you 100%.
When you’re talking about the difference between the drive of men and women though there’s one really really huge difference.
A woman can have one child a year and for a limited window in her life. A man can have as many kids as they can get women. A woman needs to be selective about a mate whereas a man can push out as many children as possible and hopefully some of them will be able to carry on the dna.
That is if we’re looking at it from a purely biological standpoint and we don’t take our intelligence into account, and I don’t know how much time you’ve spent around the average motherfucker, but I worked in a gas station in a town with no bars so I was the only way a man could get alcohol. And oh boy, the average motherfucker ain’t right.
I tend to agree. People tend to discount the biological drive, and even of we aren’t animals about it the drive certainly will color decision making.
That leaves the social factors that keep the sexes from easily and widely just being friends (a mess that isn’t gonna be solved in this discussion) and how we use our brains to override biology…some plainly better about it than others.
It’s a biological drive. Animals have evolved to desire multiple partners because it increases the chance of genetically healthy offspring.
Many people are completely controlled by their reptilian brain and their instinctual desires.
Humans are susceptible to programming. We learn how to behave from our environment. The culture uses hyper sexuality to attract attention of the animal brain. This has caused it a feedback loop of extreme hyper sexuality. Good luck navigating this world if you’ve avoided it and are trying to find a partner that does the same.
And every chad should have a gay guy friend. The women will always be around. The law of averages says the chad will end up with lots of options that find him desirable. Plus having a gay guy friend will likely improve said chad in various ways that most women like.
Hot girl problems. It's a real thing and leads to a tremendous amount of loneliness for them. If you are very clear and the guys aren't all invested already, then it's a great way to start a legit friendship. Problem is that with a lot of cute girls, they have had so many bad experiences with guys putting them in the girlfriend zone that they just end up jaded.
It's our responsibility as individuals never to get jaded, and also to be honest with ourselves about what kind of energy are we putting out there. Is the OP crossing boundaries with these guys, suggesting they may become more by accepting their overly nice gestures, actions, texts and gifts? If not, then it's the guys fault.
She could always make some girl friends but we all know how difficult THAT is. Hot women need some accountabilityv though if they're ever going to get out of this rut