How I Escaped The Friendzone

Today I want to share with you the answer to one of the common questions that ever hits my inbox. And that is – How do I get out of the friend-zone?

What I have to say is that this is a question  quite frankly many people ask. So I have complete empathy and understanding of this position and I have actually had the experience of getting put in the friend-zone.

So just know that while the advice I’m going to give to you is going to be direct, it might sound a little bit harsh at times, it comes from a place of wanting to motivate you to do better and better rather than stay stuck there .

 Change your mindset:

Often times guys talk about the friend-zone as if it were a place they got put in by a girl that they like. They say “She ‘friend-zoned’ me. This is a denial of responsibility. Getting out of the friend-zone is not something that she needs to allow you to do, it is something you can do. You choose whether to remain stuck there

Focus on yourself:

Step back and focus on yourself for a period of weeks or even months. Transform the way you behave and think about yourself. Then come back and let them see something different about you. Most times this results in having relationships with people who you feel have friend-zoned you 

Break the news

Steady your nerves so that you can be transparent with as much confidence as possible. Two steps to achieve this:

a) Clearly picture the worst case scenario of “going for it”

 May be she laughs, or she ridicules or she insults you – That is about as worse case as I can imagine, but then there is nothing shameful in being rejected. There’ll something to be proud of even if it hurts at the moment.

b) Spell out exactly what “not going for it” is costing you

By minimizing the risk you minimize the chances that she’s interested in you. Men and women alike are attracted to people who go for the things that they want while knowing they might not get them. What that signals to all of us is the quality of high self-esteem. Avoiding rejection actually lowers your self-esteem whereas facing your fear raises it.

 For those who are not in the friend-zone yet …

Perhaps you’re lucky enough not to have heard of the friend-zone. It’s the limbo to which attractive people send us when they decide that we are definitely not partner-material. Entering the friend-zone is like passing the event horizon of a black hole: just as light cannot escape a black hole, a friend cannot escape the friend-zone.

Anyway, that’s the lay-theory. But what does the research say? If you are attracted to a friend whom you suspect has placed you firmly in the friend-zone, can you convince that friend to reconsider your suitability as a relationship partner?

That’s what Edward Lemay and Noah Wolf of the University of Maryland set out to discover.

For their first experiment, the scientists rounded up 127 pairs of platonic male-female friends. Each of these volunteers completed a series of questionnaires about their attraction to their friend, how much they felt their friend reciprocated their desire, and whether they had ever tried to initiate a romantic relationship with their friend.

Lemay and Wolf found that the attraction between friends was detected by those friends. In other words, we can tell with a good degree of accuracy if our friend is attracted to us. Lemay and Wolf also found that those who were attracted to a friend also thought that their friend reciprocated their desire: we project our feelings onto our friends, assuming that if we like them, they must like us too. This projection effect was stronger than the accuracy effect. In short, we’re delusional.

Let’s try out a little thought experiment. Think of a specific friend who identifies as a gender you find attractive.

Do you have someone in mind? OK. Now rate how attracted you are to that friend on a scale of 1–9. One means “not at all attracted”, five means “moderately attracted”, and nine means “extremely attracted”.

Research by April Bleske-Rechek, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, shows that women rate their attraction to their male friend at an average of around four; men rate their attraction to their female friend one point higher, at around five.

But this delusion could be useful. If we kid ourselves into believing that our friends are attracted to us as much as we are attracted to them, we are more likely to take a chance on initiating a romantic relationship with them. A chance we may not have taken if we were more accurate in our perceptions. If we knew that our friends didn’t dig us the way we dug them, then we would remain confined to the friend-zone forever

Now, you may have spotted a flaw in this plan. If you hit on a friend who likes you less than you like them, surely they will knock you back. What’s to gain from self-delusional overconfidence?

Lemay and Wolf carried out a second experiment, this time following 102 pairs of male-female friends over the course of a month. This allowed them to follow how friends’ perceptions of one another developed over time. They found that volunteers whose friend attempted to initiate a relationship with them came to desire that friend more over time.

As Lemay and Wolf put it:

Initially biased perceptions appeared to motivate behavior that resulted in targets [i.e. the desired friend] confirming those perceptions, the hallmark of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

So there you go: with concerted effort, you can claw your way out of the friend-zone. If you fancy your friend, and let them know it, your desire could inflame theirs and lead to a long and fulfilling relationship.

I hope this post has inspired you to go and claw your way out of the “friend-zone”.

Let me know in the comments how it went.