Friendzone: Friend or Warden pt. 1

So far, I have written two versions of the same essay centering around the idea of the Friendzone. They turned into rambling diatribes about politics and society and occluded allusions. They felt inauthentic and kept at an arms distance. I couldn’t get my head around the times I felt I had been friendzoned and the shameful pangs of rejection. It all really boils down to desiring affection and external validation, though, doesn’t it? It’s the innate human need to feed the soul with physical affection and mental stimulation.

I’ve flip-flopped on this topic many times in my life, but a few years ago I decided on a mindset that has proven beneficial. I don’t believe in the friendzone. I don’t support the idea of being friendzoned as a concept. People are either friends and lovers, or they’re not. I hate the idea that friendship is somehow degrading and below any romantics. How on Earth is developing lifelong friendships lower than a fleeing fickle flame?

Some of the best friends I’ve ever made are women. All of my life I’ve always tended towards female friends for any number of reasons including attraction. However, the friendships that have lasted years and even decades follow close to a 50/50 split. Hell, I’ve never even held hands with some of them, and I can’t say that about the homies. We support homie-sexuality around here. It’s not gay to fuck a homie. Homies need love too.

Jokes aside, though, and I’m sincerely proud and constantly in awe of the friends I have made throughout my life. I’m thankful to call such powerful, smart, independent, and gorgeous people my friends. A few times the line between the two has blurred and lead to romantic friendships or fizzled out flames. Romantic friendships add another level of complexity to the dynamic because the underlying friendship still exists but becomes sacrificial to a romantic relationship or sex.

I’ve had a few experiences all over the dartboard we call sex and friendship. I’ve had friendships turn romantic and romances turn to friends. It hasn’t really mattered which direction the relationship flowed because they all encountered a turbulent period of transition. God have I heard and even said the cliche, “Let’s stay friends,” in the waning moments of a break up. Nobody ever really stays friends after a break-up. You can become friends, but it won’t start out that way. It might take a day, a week, years, or never happen at all.

As much as I detest and loathe the concept of a friendzone, I cannot deny the realities that exist around it. The idea is so widespread and generally accepted that everyone has encountered that situation at some point or another. I’ve certainly felt both sides of it, and that’s really what I want to talk about.

Growing up I remember the feelings of rejection when my attempts to turn a friendship romantic failed. It hurt something fierce deep down in my adolescent heart. I couldn’t understand that the rejection didn’t mean a lower level of friendship, caring, or place in their life. Love tends to feel like a zero-sum game where you give your all or nothing. The logic said that if they didn’t want a relationship, they didn’t want any type of friendship either. I sit here at 32 and wonder at the number of friendships I’ve snuffed out during those younger years.

It took until my 20’s to understand how the friendzone affected the women in my life and the friends I had made. They opened my eyes to many realities of “the opposite existence” and all of the magnificent variations between them. I came to understand the distress felt when trying to make friends with a guy to only have them try fucking the first chance they got. Its a loaded gun behind every smile and hug and hangout. Its the constant fear that rejecting an advance may turn violent or fatal. Its a constant sense of distrust and waiting. Its a burden and its completely fucked.

I’ve always valued my friendships even when I lacked the ability to convey that to them. I’ve certainly gotten better about it over the years in terms of making an effort to maintain contact and conversation. One of my best friends from high school, Kiddo, still chats it up the same no matter how long we go without talking. Our friendship never turned romantic in all of the years since we met. At the other end, I’ve had friendships with a much higher level of intimacy without sex or romance. And that’s the thing, friendships are completely unique to the individual.

My own experiences of friendship exemplifies the fact that men enjoy a different societal and social freedom. Generally, (and these are all huge generalizations) men are not worried about rejecting someone’s advances and the situation turning violent or fatal. We also don’t have nearly the same frequency of unwelcomed advances. I didn’t quite understand the horror of unsolicited dick pics until a couple of friends sent me the ones they got. And let me tell you, nobody wants to randomly see your deformed dick at 9:37 in the fucking morning.

I think that’s a pretty decent stopping point for now.