The dreaded Friendzone. The one place no man wants to be. It’s a funny word, “friendzone”, and how it’s evolved just in my lifetime. I knew the word and had used it before, but I had not be aware of it being used in the negative way that it is now until a few years back when the subject of so-called “Nice guys” and how women supposedly always reject them for “jerks,” (a subject I’ve written about before) first came up on this forum I used to post on. Before that, it was a noun. It described men and women who are just platonic friends. And the idea was that oftentimes the man in this friendship secretly wanted to have more of a romantic and/or sexual relationship with the woman, but the woman wouldn’t be interested because she only sees him as a platonic friend. So he’s in “the friendzone.” But he’s secretly just waiting for his chance to make his move. Chris Rock had a whole routine on this as part of his act back in 1996, and it was funny.

Like I said, I’ve used it before, there have been women I’ve known before that I was kind of interested in but could tell that they didn’t see me that way, and I’ve said I was in the friendzone. But I just saw that as part of life, it happens to a lot of (if not most) people sometimes. And sometimes it’s the woman who wants to be more than platonic friends, but the man doesn’t. Sure, depending on your level of interest, that can suck, but that’s just part of life, it happens to everyone.

But I didn’t know that there were actually guys that used “friendzone” as a pejorative, as in describing something that a woman purposely do to men, as manipulation or whatever. When I started seeings guys online actually complaining about being “friendzoned” by women, and how this was so evil, that was kinda odd to me. What an EVIL thing for a woman to do: she’s treating me like a FRIEND. First, most of these blokes are just faking being friends anyway, with the expectation of sex later on. So they’re the ones who are really being manipulative, and they’re just mad that their manipulation isn’t working.

“I’m always there for her, and listening to her problems. So why isn’t she throwing herself at me, dammit?!?”

And second, and this is for men and women, if you feel like you’re being taken for granted in a friendship for whatever reason, then just end the friendship. If you stick around then you’ve got no one to blame but yourself. So stop whining.