1080: How These Endless “Friendzone” Rants Make Me Feel

Page_1 Good morning. Today another article about “nice guys” and the concept of the “friendzone” appeared. Here it is.

Today I would like to talk about how this article made me feel.

It made me angry, and it made me want to cry.

Why? Not because I am the sort of person who exhibits those behaviours — I certainly do not expect women I am friends with to immediately jump into bed with me, particularly because I’m now in a committed, loving relationship with someone who is super-awesome — but because I recognise some of the things being described, and the fact that they are being twisted, generalised and used as a means of shaming people feels like a punch in the gut.

I don’t normally talk about this stuff because it’s embarrassing and difficult to talk about, but I am going to make an exception for today as a means of making my point. This article made me feel like absolute fucking shit, even though I know it was not about me. I am going to talk about my past relationships and how they came to be, though naturally I will omit names and personally-identifying details.

Some context for those who are newcomers to this blog or don’t know me very well: I suffer a pretty strong degree of social anxiety, and have done since an early age. I feel enormously uncomfortable when around strangers, clam up completely when faced with the prospect of making small talk, and even, at times, find it difficult to talk to my own friends or relations.

As you might expect, these circumstances are not ideal for getting together with someone. Consequently, even as all my peers around me at school were getting into relationships, going out with people, having sex and bragging about all of the above, I was left constantly frustrated and bewildered. My already-active imagination would picture what it might be like to be in a relationship with someone — note: relationship, not simply having sex — and I’d even go so far as to imagine how those conversations might go in great detail. One of the diaries I kept as a teenager included numerous fantasy scenarios of how I might get a girl I liked to talk to me, and how I might express my feelings. Sex did not enter into this at all — I simply wanted to be with that person. (I’m aware writing fantasy conversations in itself is creepy, but I was ashamed of these entries the moment I wrote them, and inevitably ended up throwing them away immediately.)

The fact I overthought these things meant, inevitably, that I never did anything about them, and I was always absolutely mortified any time a friend of mine would tell the girl in question that I liked them. I hated myself — you can thank near-constant bullying through primary school and a fair proportion of secondary school for that — and thought that the girl discovering that I liked her “in that way” would cause her to immediately hate me because I was certain that no-one would ever want to be with me. (This never happened, of course, but it’s the way my mind worked, and to a certain extent still does.)

Fast-forward a bit, and I got into my first relationship during a school production. I had got very close to a female friend of mine, and after the fact I learned that most of my friends were expecting us to get together as part of the production. However, what actually happened was that she set me up with a friend of a friend whom I didn’t know very well and didn’t particularly fancy. I’m not particularly proud of saying this, but I entered into that relationship because I was worried no-one else would be interested in me, and I wouldn’t get another chance. (I was young. And stupid. And suffering from what I now recognise to be mental health issues.)

As it turned out, said relationship grew quite nicely over time, and I realised I actually did quite like this girl — I just didn’t know her that well before we were pushed together. We did a lot together, I got on well with the rest of her family and it was all looking good.

We never had sex, though. I remember vividly “missing my chance” on this. We were sitting in her bedroom one day fooling around, and she mumbled something to me. I couldn’t make out the words because she was embarrassed to say them out loud. In retrospect, it was obvious that she was saying “I really, really want to make love to you” but I was too scared to make assumptions — too wrapped up in my own self-loathing to believe that anyone would ever want to have sex with me. I asked her what she said, and to say it more clearly. She wouldn’t. The moment passed.

A couple of months later, it was our school prom. We went together. We did not leave together, because she cheated on me on the dance floor with a guy she is now married to. Good on her, I guess.

My only other relationship at school was one which lasted from Monday to Friday of one week, during which time I saw my paramour precisely once and kissed her once before she decided at the end of the week that actually, she didn’t want to go out with me after all, and that we should go back to being friends again. Once again, sex did not enter the equation. The fact that our relationship began at a recording of Songs of Praise may have had something to do with that. (I swear I am not making that part up.)

Fast forward to university. Early in my student career, I met someone who seemed perfect for me. We spent a ton of time together. She was constantly in my room, she was into the things I was into and we had a great time together. I knew very early in our relationship that she was someone I wanted in my life. I was attracted to her, I liked the person she was and I wanted her around as much as possible.

I said nothing. Because I was too scared. Because I hated myself. Because I thought she would hate me and think I was some sort of disgusting pervert if I said anything. Consequently, she got together with someone else, who I spent a healthy proportion of time absolutely despising as a result. (Said person is now, paradoxically, one of my closest friends. Funny how things work out.)

I liked a couple of other people at university. I even went to the effort of sending a secret Valentine to one, complete with a cuddly toy and some truly dreadful poetry. (I am never writing poetry again.) She immediately knew it was me and let me down gently. I left it at that and we continued being the friends we were before. Again, sex didn’t enter into the equation. I just liked this person and wanted to be with them.

My next girlfriend at university was someone I got together with at a Christmas meal for one of the groups I was a member of. I’d never met her prior to that night, but we hit it off and were in each other’s arms by the end of the night. Neither of us were the one-night stand types, though, so we went our separate ways at the end of the evening and arranged to meet up again. We went out a few times, but she dumped me after I bought her a Christmas present because it made her feel “weird”. That made me feel weird.

We subsequently met up again later a few times and went out, but we eventually lost contact. To this day, I’m still not entirely sure quite what went on there, and if I could have done things anything differently. Ships in the night and all that.

I could go on, but we’d be hitting a bit close to home if I started talking about some of these other relationships. What I wanted to (hopefully) make clear by sharing some of these things is that in many cases, a dude making friends with a girl and complaining of not being able to take things any further is not always a case of “putting in kindness coins and expecting sex to fall out”, as runs the phrase I’ve seen numerous times recently. In many cases, it is a simple case of the dude in question not knowing how to express that he would like to take things any further. In more cases than one, you can probably see that I blew my chances with someone largely as a result of my own crippling self-loathing and lack of confidence.

I have had a number of situations in my life that fall into the “friendzone” category by popular definition, and I’m fully aware they’re my own fault for not expressing myself properly. But it’s not a case of being a creeper, or of expecting a woman to provide me sexual gratification in exchange for my kindness — in every single fucking case I wanted an actual relationship with that person; because I wanted to be with them; because I wanted to share my life with them; because I felt we understood each other. It was not because I expected them to have sex with me. It was not because I wanted to have sex with them. I didn’t express myself because I was too fucking terrified to say anything to them, because I was too fucking terrified that they would run away from me screaming if they thought I was a creep who was leching after them.

You see, herein lies my problem with articles like the one I shared at the start of this post. They are gross generalisations. There are men out there who don’t know when to quit. There are men out there who have unreasonable expectations of women. There are men out there who see women purely as sex objects there for their own gratification.

I am not one of them.

But every time I read one of these endless fucking “friendzone” articles that uses a lot of words to say almost nothing we haven’t seen a hundred times already, I feel like shit. I feel like a creep. I feel like a piece of sub-human scum. Why? Because I recognise some of the situations being described. I have been in some of the situations described. And yet, apparently, the following quote from the above article is universally How It Is:

Here’s the hard truth, Friendzone. You’re not a nice guy. You are a gutless, pathetic, sad, horny little worm who’s too afraid of rejection to just tell a woman how you really feel.

Yes. Yes I am. Yes, I am a gutless, pathetic, sad, horny little worm who is too afraid of rejection to tell a woman how I really feel. Do you know why I am afraid of rejection? Because I hate myself. Because the early part of my life was spent with people reinforcing my own self-hatred through near-constant bullying and harassment. Though those days may be long gone, the mental scars remain. And every time you say shit like the above, even though it may not be intended to be about me specifically, I take it personally. And it hurts. And it makes me angry. And it makes me want to cry.

It hurts even more when you make the assumption that I am afraid of rejection purely because I want sex. As I have hopefully outlined above, in every single case I was the one who wanted an actual relationship but found myself unable to express it properly. I’m pretty sure I can’t be the only person in the world who feels like this, so every time you publicly shame “friendzone guys” like this, you run the risk of doing some very real damage to what is probably already a very fragile sense of self-esteem and self-worth for those people you have inadvertently and inconsiderately lumped in to your catch-all descriptions. While you may cause some of the creepers to re-evaluate their behaviour and start behaving in a less misogynistic manner — though personally I feel it is unlikely that they will read anything like the article above and take it to heart — you’re just as likely to make people who already lack confidence to never ever want to put themselves out there. (Those are the people who will read the articles.)

I am very fortunate in that after my last relationship — which led to marriage — fell apart and nearly destroyed me completely, I found someone who loves me for who I am, respects me and is a good match for me. Not everyone is so lucky. If I were still alone right now, I don’t want to think about how awful I’d be feeling. Fortunately, instead I find myself on the way back up from the bottom rather than slowly sliding into the abyss.

So just fucking stop it with the “friendzone” and “nice guy” articles. Please. We get it.

(As an aside, I would like to stop writing about this now because I know it’s probably quite tiresome to read. But in this instance I felt it important to respond to the article linked above. I will return to writing about something more entertaining tomorrow. Hopefully. None of you die or anything in the next 24 hours.)

1003: Isolation Chamber

Last night I spent a thoroughly pleasant evening in the company of the few “real-life” friends I see on a regular basis. We played Descent, I made some poor tactical decisions and lost yet another quest (seriously, I am the most incompetent evil overlord of all time) and we had fun.

As always, though the experience was, for me, tinged with a certain hint of bittersweetness. Said friends, you see, all live back in the Southampton/Winchester area, which is where I used to live before the rather inconvenient and upsetting collapse of almost my entire existence over two years ago. I, however, am not located there; instead, I am nearly two hours’ drive away in Chippenham, Wiltshire. It’s not a difficult drive, to be sure, but it isn’t something I can particularly do on a sudden whim. Well, I can, but I do need to have plenty of time on my hands before I do it, and there are other considerations as well.

It’s frustrating, though. Regular readers will know that I am not an especially “social” person a lot of the time, but I do appreciate and enjoy the time I get to spend with these friends. We’ve built a strong Social Link as a group together in recent years, and most of us have had to take on some difficult challenges in that time. Although in a lot of cases, said group of friends didn’t necessarily help and support directly, the fact that they were simply there was often enough. I know I certainly felt that way, though naturally I can’t speak for the others.

It’s hard to feel that way when you’re two hours away, though; when you have to make full on capital-P Plans to see them rather than just sending a text and asking if people are up for something. I miss being able to do that, and not just with the particular group of friends I saw last night, either; there are ex-colleagues still in the area whom I used to love being able to just call up (well, text up) and hang out with.

I feel more than a tad isolated, in short.

And in more ways than one, if I’m honest. Leaving aside the geographical issue that gets in the way of seeing “real life” friends for a moment, there’s also the whole issue of having like-minded friends who are into similar things that you are. I have a number of interests that I am perfectly willing to describe as “niche”, and at times it can be difficult and frustrating to be a fan of these things when there’s no-one nearby to share the experience and enjoyment of them with. It’s not as if I have absolutely no-one, obviously — Andie is good at taking an interest in the things I like (for the most part, anyway!) and aforementioned friends share at least some of my interests.

The “simple” solution seems obvious — take an interest in more “mainstream” things so you can more easily share the enjoyment of things that everyone enjoys. But it’s not that simple. I have tried on a number of occasions to engage with things I know various friends and acquaintances are interested in — everything from football to The X-Factor — and every time I have come away feeling like I’m forcing myself to try and enjoy something I dislike immensely, and it just doesn’t seem worth it. Apparently your tastes are hard-wired into your head somewhere, and it is very difficult to change them. I am predisposed to like the things I like (board games, video games, anime, soundtracks, music, writing, The Internet, My Little Pony) and similarly to dislike the things I despise (too many to list).

Knowing that doesn’t help with those feelings of isolation, though. Knowing that the things I enjoy are only appreciated by certain specific subcultures can be a difficult pill to swallow at times, but it’s the situation that my own tastes have gotten me into. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t regret or feel embarrassed about anything that I enjoy; it’d just be nice to be able to enthuse about it with people who are a bit closer sometimes.

But at least I can enthuse about it with people thanks to the trappings of modern society. I can chat with my friend in Canada about anime; I can discuss strategies for failing to beat the hideously difficult secret boss in Persona 3 with another friend in the States. I can rant and rave in private about the things that are getting my goat to someone in yet another disparate geographical location; I can share my pride in something I have achieved with yet someone else entirely.

Things could be worse, in short — but it doesn’t stop those occasional feelings of loneliness and isolation. I’ve been having more than a few of them recently, and it’s getting me down a bit, so apologies if the tone of these posts may be a bit on the melancholy side at times.

Oh well. I’ll deal. I always do.

#oneaday Day 742: Being a Treatise on the Nature of Friendship in the Digital Age

Today was a good day, because I took the relatively rare opportunity to take a friendship with an “Internet Friend” to the next level — real friendship. Speaking face to face. Being able to see each other, and having to actually speak words instead of typing things.

My erstwhile Internet Friend Holly and I had been conversing online for some time after a chance encounter — as I recall, it was a Twitter follow and a question on Tumblr that has long since been lost among pictures of cats and pushed Formspring answers. Regardless of exactly how it happened, we got chatting, and we did that Internet Friends thing of talking a whole bunch, going quiet for days, weeks, months at a time, and then picking up where we left off without too much difficulty. A familiar story to many of you reading this, I’m sure.

As it happens, Holly used to live where I now live (not literally in the same house, that would be super-weird). As such, she decided to come on down to visit her friends who are still in the area now she’s elsewhere in the country. And we decided that it might be fun to meet each other and hang out.

Now, anyone who’s ever broached the subject of a real-life meetup with an Internet Friend, whatever the motives for doing so might be, will doubtless be aware of that feeling of unease and anxiety that comes as the date for your meeting approaches. (Or perhaps it’s just me. For the sake of this entry, however, I am going to assume you know what I’m talking about.) Will your friendship successfully carry over into the real world? Will you be able to make the same jokes you do on Twitter/Facebook/Tumblr/text message/however you’ve been conversing previously? Will the other person take one look at you, think you’re some sort of hideous freak and run screaming out of the door?

Statistically, this is fairly unlikely to happen — in my experience, anyway. Out of all the Internet Friend meetups I have had over the years (and I’ve had a surprising amount, now that I come to think about it), only one encounter was a failure, and even then, it wasn’t completely disastrous — we just didn’t click in person for whatever reason. Past successful meetups saw me attending a showjumping event; getting married (though, granted, that didn’t end all that well, but that’s not the point under scrutiny here); flying to Toronto to play a ton of boardgames, see the sights and get sunstroke at the zoo; flying to Boston for super nerd-convention PAX East; having someone other than my brother and his family to visit when I’m in California (not that I don’t enjoy seeing my bro!); and, indeed, my current living situation and relationship with Andie can also be attributed to a successful Internet Friend meetup.

That one failure has haunted me a bit over the years, though. Despite all the other successful encounters, I still think back to that awkwardness I felt when I met Julia for the first time, and how awful I felt on the way home, thinking that all our long, heartfelt emails to one another had turned out to be essentially worthless. As those who know me well (and regular readers) will know, I am not the most confident person in the world, so to feel rejected like that — regardless of whether she had actually rejected me or it was simply my own social ineptitude that had caused the awkwardness — well, it hurt, quite a bit. As such, any time I’ve had the opportunity to meet up with someone I get on well with from the Internet, I’ve always been wary. All my insecurities and neuroses about my appearance, my personality and everything else all come out to play, and I find myself wondering if meeting is actually a good idea or not. In short, I worry the situation in the image above is what will happen.

Fact: it usually is a good idea to meet, and the situation in the image above is, mercifully, fairly rare. Look at it this way: you get on well online for a reason. For most people (those who aren’t making a specific effort to troll, anyway), their online persona is a pretty true representation of the person they are — often sans any insecurities they have in face to face meetings. And if you get on well when speaking in text, it’s pretty likely that you will get on in person, too.

You’re doubtless waiting on tenterhooks to know whether or not Holly and I hit it off, then. (Maybe not.)

We did. We managed to easily fill several hours of conversation on a variety of topics, and both left feeling good that we’d done that. We’re hopefully going to do it again before she has to depart back to far-off climes (relatively speaking). I’d call that a successful Internet Friend meetup, then, resulting in a real-life friendship. Hurrah!

So there you have it. You can make a Real Friend out of an Internet Friend. But you probably knew that already.

#oneaday, Day 28: He Seems Nice

Fellow #oneadayer @Bungiesgirl wrote an excellent post the other day about “The Curse of Mr Nice Guy“. She hit the nail bang on the head; there are times when it almost seems that it doesn’t pay to be a nice person, for a guy at least.

Thinking about it, I’m not actually sure I’ve ever known anyone who’s used the oft-quoted “I love bad boys” line. But I certainly know a couple of people who have consistently ended up with people who make them miserable when it may be that there is, in fact, someone standing right in front of them who would provide them with what they want out of a relationship. Only, because they’re one of the proverbial “Mr Nice Guys”, they’re not even in the running for that person’s affections. At least, not in the “anything more than friendship” sort of case.

Some people call this “friend-zoning”, where Mr Nice Guy has become too good a friend to even be considered relationship material. I’m not sure where this phenomenon or the term to describe it originally came from, but it happens all the time, and adds an interesting twist to the age-old question of whether or not men and women can possibly be friends with each other without the desire to insert parts of each other into various orifices getting in the way.

The simple answer to said age-old question is, of course “Yes, don’t be silly”. Take stock of your friends for a moment and there’s probably a good balance of both boys and girls there. And there are probably some people of the opposite sex (assuming heterosexuality for the purposes of this argument) that you don’t want to jump at the first opportunity. Even when drunk. The reasons for this could be many; maybe you don’t fancy them, maybe you value your friendship too much, maybe you’ve even had a relationship with them in the past. But the fact is, opposite-sex friendships can and do happen.

It’s when they’re a little lop-sided that difficulties happen, and such is often the case with Mr Nice Guy.

Let’s take a hypothetical situation. Ms Ladygirl is having a tough time of it. Her partner, Mr Wrong, isn’t what she wants, but she doesn’t want to leave him—either she doesn’t want to be alone or she has somehow convinced herself that she “loves” him. She confides in Mr Nice Guy, who 1) fancies her and 2) thinks it’s blindingly obvious that he could do a better job of providing her with happiness, cake and orgasms than Mr Wrong could ever do. Mr Nice Guy, being a decent, upstanding sort of chap, though, also generally does not like to exacerbate situations where emotions run high by throwing his own, possibly unexpected, feelings into the mix. So he listens to Ms Ladygirl, offers her support, takes care of her, holds her hair out of her face when she’s sick, carries her home when she gets wasted and then leaves her to sleep while he walks home to go and have a biiiig wank and cry into his pillow.

It’s a difficult (and, I hasten to add, completely hypothetical) situation. But what should Mr Nice Guy do? If he says nothing, then obviously nothing will happen for him. If he says something, though, Ms Ladygirl may interpret it as a selfish act—”I want you. So get rid of him.”—whereas he in fact meant it more as “You’re not happy. I want to see if I can make you happier than he does.”

Of course, there’s always the chance that Ms Ladygirl would correctly interpret his advances, cast aside Mr Wrong and happily live forever after with Mr Nice Guy. But due to the nature of your average Mr Nice Guy, that doesn’t happen that often.

Which is a pity, really, because Mr Nice Guys, as their name suggests, are in fact very nice guys. They’re not boring, they’re not clingy, they’re not any of the assumptions you might care to make about them. They’re people too; people who like helping others and hope that one day their caring, considerate, compassionate nature will bring them a partner who truly deserves their attention.

So if you’re a Ms Ladygirl and you’re clearly dating a Mr Wrong, I’d strongly urge to to pay attention to those non-spoken, non-obvious telepathic signals that the Mr Nice Guy you inevitably know is highly likely sending you.

Do the guy a favour. Grab him by his lapels and kiss him. Neither of you will regret it.

#oneaday, Day 147: Everybody Needs Somebody

Over the last few days, weeks, months, whatever, it’s been becoming clear that I’m not the only one having a shit time. Quite a lot of people have been having a shit time, for quite a long time, too. Estimates from several people, given completely independently, place the time of shitness as starting roughly 18 months ago and working from there. And that sounds about right to me. January 2009 is certainly when my downward slope started, though it took a while to pick up speed. Each thing I did that I thought was a positive move ended up being either not enough, or the wrong thing to do. I’m not sorry I took those steps, because I believe that they were positive steps, and the right thing to do at that time, but it’s not much consolation when I think about the position I’m in right now.

I know several other people that I’ve been talking to recently are in similar situations. Not necessarily for the same reasons. But for most of them, around the same time – January 2009 – things started taking a turn for the worse.

Some of these people I didn’t know back then. Others I didn’t know were suffering at the time. Others I did know were suffering, but didn’t know to what degree. Others still were happy to tell me everything. And some lied to make it seem all right when in fact that couldn’t be further from the truth.

A problem shared is a problem halved, as they say. And while it’s not nice to only ever talk about one’s problems with one’s friends, there’s a feeling of solidarity, camaraderie, whatever you want to call it, of helping each other through a difficult time. Everyone’s problems have a relative degree of intensity that is unique to that person. One person’s “I want to jump off a bridge” might be another person’s “get the fuck over it”. But it’s every person’s prerogative to think whatever they wish about their problems. Different people deal with different things differently. That’s what makes us – guess what? Different.

It’s all very well saying all this. Sometimes people can’t cope at all. I’ve felt like that before. I’ve had days when I can barely function. I’ve had nights where I haven’t slept a wink. Even now, now that there’s the possibility of things being back on the up, and good people coming into (and in some cases returning to) my life, there are still times when it’s so tough I wonder how I’ve made it this far.

There are people I don’t want to let down, though. And everybody needs people like that. Whether they’re friends, family, colleagues, whatever. Everybody needs someone looking out for them. Even if they’re not aware they’re doing it. Sometimes the thing that can draw you out of the darkness is the thought “what would so-and-so think about this?”, or “what would they do if they were here?” or “would they want me to do this?” They might never know what you’re thinking, what you’re doing, what you’re feeling. But the very fact they’re in your life is enough to give you the strength to do the right thing in many cases.

So, however shit a time you’re having at the minute, value your friends. Tell them you care. Let them know that you’re there for them. Don’t be afraid to let them know what you’re thinking, feeling or worrying about. You might not be able to tell everyone you know everything that you’re thinking or feeling all the time. But there will be at least one person out there who you will be able to tell, even if it’s only when you’re off your tits on scary drinks that combine things that should never be combined together like EVER.

So anyway. Profound thoughts on friendship done for the evening. I’ll write something funny again soon, I promise. But the last few days have just felt a bit, you know… well, like I want to write this sort of thing.

In other news, 3 days to go until 150. How should I celebrate?