Friendzoning might be about what you do with friends... And what you don't.

A while ago I was hanging out with a dear friend of mine. A dear male friend of mine. We were having an intimate, intense conversation about emotions. At some point he told me he was so glad we could be just friends and have a conversation like this.

So we got to talking about that, and he told me how, as a Man, you are supposed to have two sorts of friends: Friends you go out with, who slap each other on the back and brag about stuff and make dirty jokes, and friends who go out fishing and sit together. Silently.

According to media, and pretty much everyone around you, these are your only options. There are two people you are allowed to talk emotions with: Your mom and your girlfriend. (Imagine your girlfriend being the first person you actually Talk to since your mom! That must suck.)

Contrast that to girls: Girls are encouraged to have deep, intimate discussions about emotions. They get together and talk about their feelings, their dreams, their problems. They have Best Friends whom they tell everything.

This got me thinking: Remember this narrative? Girl meets guy. Girl and guy make friends, are supportive, have conversations about feelings and stuff. Guy makes a pass on girl. Girl turns him down. Guy gets very insulted when girl is not interested in fucking.

Pretty typical, right? Those Nice Guy Asshole Dudebros, only in it for the sex, right?

But look here. In the girl’s mind, she’s making a friend. She does what she’s been taught from a very young age: She gets to know the person she wants to make friends with, she supports them, starts grooming emotional intimacy. This is how you do that. Only difference to her is that it’s a guy, but that shouldn’t matter right?

From the guy’s perspective, something very different is going on. In his world, you have emotional intimacy with your mom or your romantic/sexual partner. The girl is not his mom, thus she must want to be his romantic/sexual partner. From his perspective, she is pretty much offering herself up on a plate.

Then she turns him down. Friendzoned again! The horror! Leading him on again! How dare she! That bitch!

For the record, I am NOT saying the whole friendzone narrative is in any way healthy or acceptable or normal. I am definitely not making excuses for guys doing horrible things to a girl who turned them down. Those things are not right.

What I am saying is that if we want boys to grow up to be emotionally mature beings who talk about their feelings and have a healthy support network and not hurt girls, we need to change another narrative: The one that says Real Men don’t talk about their feelings.

tl;dr: When guys are taught that you can only talk about feelings to your mom or the person you’re having sex with, of course they are going to think emotional intimacy = wants to have sex. If we want to change the friendzone narrative, we need to change the Real Men Don’t Talk About Feelings narrative.