My guy friends are gorgeous. Really, if a St. Thomas University 2012-13 male calendar existed, they’d be on it – and I’d own 20 copies.
I’ve fallen madly in like with many of them (not my fault they were blessed with spectacular genes), but it was never returned – ever. I called it wedding bells, they called it 100 per cent platonic. Reality Check: We’ve all been launched into the friend zone. And most of the time, we stay there forever. The friend zone is equivalent to a fly trapped on those sticky strips hanging on our grandmother’s front porch in the summertime: you’re stuck there with nowhere to go.
The friend zone is a dark and gloomy place. It often contains repressed sentiments, comfort food and Taylor Swift-themed songs playing in the background. Many times, we ask ourselves how we subjected ourselves to this category. It doesn’t make sense, we’re perfect together and we have a great connection. But we’re still just another fly.
Eventually, we come to terms with our fate. Sure, we assure ourselves we’ll be best friends, but our first instinct certainly isn’t to give a high five or a pat on the back when seeing our “best friend” mingling with someone else. We’d much rather shove our heads into a brick wall.
Part of the problem is that we often can’t take the hint we’re migrating to the friend zone. So we push for something that isn’t there, and fall under the illusion that we’re taking our friendship to “the next level.” We interpret a casual hang out as a romantic getaway; we see an innocent text message as a poetic love letter; we take a simple compliment and turn it into a confession of their everlasting love. They have no idea we’re one step away from tattooing a wedding band on our ring finger.
But before we send out those marriage invitations, here are a few “friend zone” warning signs:
- They refer to you as their sibling, cousin or parent.
- They talk to you about people they’re currently interested in.
- They say: “If only I could find someone like you,” but it’s never…you.
- They fist bump you, as opposed to purposely brushing their hand against yours.
- When introducing you to others, they refer to you as “just a friend.”
We get it, friendships are great – but Facebook says we’ve got enough of those. It would be nice to provide our relationship statuses with a bit of excitement.
And sometimes all we really want is to be someone’s everything, rather than just another fly on the wall.
