I’ve heard about the friend zone for as long as I can remember. I’ve read enough Harry Potter books and watched enough of the third season of Doctor Who to feel sorry for the Martha Joneses and Ginny Weasleys of the world. The concept of the friend zone is unavoidable; it pops up on every social media site and TV show I can think of. To sum up the premise of every meme on the internet, the problem with the friend zone is the idea that women reject nice men in favor of shallower men and relegate their nice male friends to a special area of brother/sister relationships, servitude, and extra strength. These nice men serve as tear resistant shoulders for when said girls lament over why their current boyfriends are jerks and why they cannot find worthwhile men. The idea of undying unrequited love is not new, but it’s become far more popular in this decade than ever. I hear guy after guy complain about being deffered to the friend zone; of their fear of the phrase, “I love you…as a friend”. And quite frankly, I’m 100% sick of it.
I’ll be the first to admit that it is both disappointing and heartbreaking when your romantic feelings are not returned. I wouldn’t argue that the pain that comes with romantic rejection is invalid nor that we should stop expressing frustration with regards to rejection. This is normal and healthy since pain and rejection are a natural (albeit unwanted) part of life.
What I do get annoyed by, however, is the constant broadcasting of the message that, as a woman, if I don’t date the nice guy who opened the door for me at the dining hall or fall in love with the childhood best friend who has secretly planned the names of all of our future children, I am shallow. The idea that I am unappreciative and inconsiderate for wasting some boy’s precious time in trying to be kind to me when all I wanted was a friendship. I have been dying to ask: is subliminally manipulating a girl into a relationship you “nice”? Are you really a “good guy” if you constantly make a woman feel guilty about her romantic choices?
We hear this over and over again. That women love to manipulate their guy friends into doing favors for them, while they decide to date and enter into serious romantic relationships with other guys. This simplifies and degrades women as unintelligent, unkind, and cruel. The friend zone perpetuates this idea that women are created for the sole purpose of rewarding the wonderful male friends in their lives. Women become goals to achieve, they become simplified into nothing more than romantic conquests of men, rather than complex, complete human beings who have unique needs and desires when it comes to pursuing romantic relationships.
The friend zone also denies the reality behind the reasons why women enter into relationships with shallow men. In an era where the majority of sexually objectifying images are of women, where women are constantly made to feel worthless if they don’t achieve a certain ideal and are rarely represented as intelligent human beings, has anyone ever questioned whether this is the ideal environment for women to thrive in? Whether this has an impact on women’s self esteem?
I bring this point up because one of the main complaints men bring up when they complain of being friend zoned is that women turn them down for men who eventually treat them poorly. If women are dating shallow, abusive men, they may be in an actually abusive relationship, which is usually attributed to low self esteem caused by the some of the factors I mentioned just now. If you truly love a female friend and believe that she is in love with an abusive person, stop complaining about your love life for two seconds and do everything in your power to help her get out of it. Recommend she go to a therapist or talk with her parents. Talk to her as much as you can and help her realize that she doesn’t deserve to be in a relationship where her significant other doesn’t respect her.
If a girl isn’t dating someone that is truly abusive to her or others, then the reality is that she simply is not interested in a romantic relationship with the friend zoned guy, and subtly manipulating her into believing that she isn’t capable of making a good choice in a romantic partner is probably the opposite of nice. It reduces men and women to romantic, sexual relationships rather than relationships built on camaraderie and non-romantic (yet no less powerful) love. If we’ve come to an age where the phrase, “I love you like a brother/sister” is something shameful rather than positive, then we’re living in a pretty lousy age.
As a woman, I want my romantic choices to be respected. I want to be allowed to date a guy because I feel incredibly attracted to his humor, personality, and interests rather than whether or not he has been nice to me. I want to be able to develop friendships with guys and not feel that I have to date them in order to reward their kindness towards me. Romantic relationships are complicated and personal, and forcing women to enter into relationships with men simply because they are kind both demonizes women and distorts the reality of relationships.