[Slow Ben]

amphibian said:

1370231614[/url]' post='1059547']
Everything was turning up Milhouse, then I accidentally on purpose got involved with a truly crazy woman who decided to seriously screw with my life in many ways.

That's like rule number 1, man. Don't stick your dick in crazy.

[Garak]

I need some advice guys (or a whack on the head with a mace, either's fine). I have a friend I'm attracted to but I've yet to tell her. The reason is that, aside from my brain going on a coffee break, I suspect she has no interest in me in that way. She's also going to Denmark at the end of the summer to study and wants to move there eventually. Considering these two things, I'm inclined to just shut up and keep it to myself (not that a long distance relationship would put me off ... and not like I won't pull a Johnny Rico if I have to).

Now since everybody else in the group noticed my interest in her (and five minutes after they started mentioning it I wanted to punch them), I'm pretty certain she knows as well. I've always been honest with her so I think I should be honest about this as well. I'm not getting my hopes up about anything (let's just say my love life has been a one way street thus far and I've long ago given up any hope that will ever change) but I'm not sure how/if this would affect our friendship. We get along great, she's not even bothered when my humor goes in the weird places, at D&D we have a tendency to look out for one another a bit more than for the rest of the group and the one time we both played as drow ...

Ok, now I'm rambling. Basically I consider her a very good friend and I don't want to ruin that. I don't think she'd react weird if I told her (as I said I'd be amazed if she doesn't know/suspect plus she's a pretty levelheaded person) but I also don't want her to then wonder every time I do something for her, if I'm doing it because of friendship or because feelings (I'll wonder why I'm doing it but that'd be my problem). Complicating her life is not something I want to do.

Ugh, I'm over-complicating this aren't I?

[Primateus]

You're saying, Garak, that you want Apt, Sindriss and me to chase her back to whence she came?

You ARE over-complicating it, but then again, it is an overly complicated matter, At least I think so. But I'd reckon your best bet would be to just be honest with her. Take a chance I say.

[Garak]

Prim, thanks for starting with a joke. I just noticed your location is Aarhus .... your offer sounds doubly funny and serious at the same time right now. So I'm tempted to say yes

I think I will talk to her about it, bring it up in a conversation but I basically needed to air my thoughts, plus for all I know this could be terrible idea and I shouldn't even consider it. And my friends generally are not good sounding boards - I trust you guys to be more mature about it. Of course now I expect Apt to show up with a weird comment or two.

[amphibian]

I think you just say something along the lines of "You probably know this already, but I've had a crush on you for a while. We have quite a few common interests, get along super well and I find you beautiful inside and out. Is this something you'd be interested in exploring?"

Don't reassure her that you'll always be friends or that you won't be hurt if she says "No". There is some risk involved here and facing that is part of being an adult.

That being said, best of luck either way. If she says "Yes", explore away. If she says "No", accept that it hurts and it'll hurt for a while - but it's not the end of you as a person in her life or her in yours. Things might change, but you're both best served if you're honest here.

Now if she was moving to Denmark forever, I'd tell you to hold your tongue and go find someone else.

[Garak]

For now she's going to study. I know she wants to move out of the country but that's kinda down the line and sometimes, plans change. So I'll probably risk it.

[amphibian]

Anyone can accept if she says no. Well... anyone with a working brain.

The problem is that accepting the "no" and getting over the rejection combined with the unavoidable awkwardness does take a while. The time is greatly shortened if the people involved are mature and have other friends and pursuits in their lives to occupy the intervening time between "no" and "we're okay again".

So with all that said, there's really not a reason why you shouldn't speak up and ask her if she's interested in exploring a romantic relationship with you. It's going to get weird no matter what - even if you don't tell her. Might as well take a shot at happiness.

[Jagh-o-matic]

Meh - female friends are out of the question for me. 'Cept the wife, of course. Always some kinda boundary issue. Either we're gettin' it on (not actually a possibility in this era, see second sentence above) or somebody's frustrated and it's time to get the hell out of there. So - here's hoping she's been secretly reciprocating all along and you live happily ever after, or the both of you are more socially flexible than I.

[Una]

I have experienced this from the other side twice. At least, I think so. It has been more than twice that someone I thought was interested in me as a friend was actually just trying to use the friend status to try to transition into something more, but I figure those don't count. Yah, I've always been a little clueless when it comes to whether someone likes me. I think it comes from being a late-bloomer who never got any attention while everyone else was learning how to date in high school and undergrad. Once I started getting attention, I literally could not recognize it for what it was, but I digress. Only twice has a guy who had a longstanding, well established friendship confess to having a crush on me, which I had to turn down. The first, we continued to be friends for a few years. I went away to school and then a few years later, he started acting really weird and saying mean things to me. It coincided suspiciously with me seeing a new boyfriend. The final straw was when I came home for a visit, met him for dinner, and he spent the whole evening tearing down everything from my appearance (making digs about my age and my weight, sheesh!) to my choice of profession. I haven't spoken to him since. I lost quite a bit of respect for him. If he didn't want to be friends, he could have just come out and said so, instead of this roundabout way of getting rid of me by deliberately offending me. The second was a classmate. We were awkward for a few months, then went back to being just really close friends. I saw other people. He saw other people. He's married to a wonderful girl that I think is just perfect for him. She is an absolute angel and I'm really happy for them both and we still keep in touch.
So Garak...which kind of guy are you?

[Morgoth]

I'm pretty confident that the whole friend zone thing is entirely an invention of the person being zoned, or whatever one calls it.

[Illuyankas]

Yeah, it's an entitlement thing. Girl not let me stick dick in her? Must have friend zoned me!

That whole friend zone 'leading me on' thing is just as bad as fucking ladder theory. It's like, which is easier to believe, every single woman innately has a complicated system for determining who's fuckable or who isn't based on attactiveness, income, size of car, size of penis, how much of an unlikable asshole you are etc which you can advance up or across using this simple cheat code I invented and you can learn from my book for only $99.95? Or she's just not that into you?

To be completely honest the friend zone, ladder theory, 'alphas', the Game? All bullshit, all things you are an idiot for believing in, all things pushed by shitlords looking to manipulate bitter lonely dudes with more money than sense. It's the same shit that leads to the whole other level of bullshit that are pickup artists, but that's another post entirely.

[MTS]

Exactly, I'd imagine most girls (or guys for that matter) on finding out a close friend has a crush on them would confront that situation immediately, either shutting it down forcefully, gently or reciprocating the feeling. It takes a special sort of cynicism to think that most girls would instead just string the guy along for whatever perks that friendship brings.

[Primateus]

What's even worse about it is that it's usually very hypocritical. Most of the people who complain about being friendzoned, strung along (I don't see how this couldn't happen, but I doubt it happens as often as some people claim it does) or whatever, these people usually complain about it not realizing that it'd be a two way street. I see alot of guys complaining about how some woman "friendzoned" them all the while they probably do the same, or worse, to women.

The "friendzone" is just another word for not having your feelings reciprocated, what's worse, it's an idea that you're somehow entitled to having people love you back just because you get a funny feeling in your nethers when you look at them.

Don't even get me started on pickup artists and their despicable manipulation of people not aware of what's being done to them.

I've never even heard of the "ladder theory" and I'm not sure I want to.

Yech, I just googled, shouldn't have done that! Should NOT have done that...I feel violated now.

This post has been edited by Primateus: 09 June 2013 - 12:20 PM

[amphibian]

My best friend is a woman.

I did kiss her once - way back in the first couple months we knew each other - but it didn't go anywhere. She turned me down, which was fairly easy to do because I was pretty drunk and I am generally the opposite of stubborn when drunk. We became strong friends afterwards and it's been five years now. I'm going to bring her some bagels later and we'll talk about her sister's wedding, job stuff and more on her porch while skritching her two big dogs on their goofy heads.

So I really don't get people who have such enormous problems with being friend-zoned or say that they can't have female friends or male friends. Move on, go meet people who vibe right with you and have some fun. The rest will fall in some semblance of order or lower its difficulty of arrangement to something you can easily deal with.

Being socially flexible isn't really something people are born with. They try to be so, fail, try again, fail again and each time, we inch closer to success. After a while, it starts working more often than not and we usually end up being fun people to be around. It's not a one-step-cure-all thing.

[Jagh-o-matic]

Hmm...yes, well, I've got a lot of issues.

[Macros]

Friend zone is a crock of shit.
its a cowards answer, be a man and accept the girl has no romantic interest in you.

Im great friends wth several girls that Ive had crushes on (lets face it, still di, theyre still the same girls) Ive kissed some of them and thought something might happen, when it didn't I was (surprisingly) mature about it and accepted Id rather have them as a friend and still in my life than run away and never speak to them again.

[Una]

Totally. I do think the friend zone is a real place. But it's not a bad place to be. Like I said, I've been friend-zoned my fair share of times and my attitude has always been that, at the end of the day, having more friends is a good thing. So if things don't work out romantically, it's really not the end of the world. I haven't lost anything, but I've gained (or kept, as the case may be) a friend.

[Macros]

We all werr

[Una]

Ah. Well. That's high school. That was so long ago I can barely remember.

My mother was onto something when she insisted I go to an all-girls' school just for high school. People always asked, "but how do you learn to deal with the opposite sex?" Looking back, I don't think that I missed anything of value. Because high school boys are idiots. It's rather funny, but so far, no one has disagreed with me about that. High school girls aren't much better, but the level of dumb seems to go down if there are no boys in the vicinity. By the time you get to university, you don't need to play dumb to attract boys, so I was all good by then.

[Morgoth]

I don't know about that. I am quite happy that I suffered through most of my mistakes in High School, so that by the time I reached university I had the experience necessary to work at the whole how-not-to-be-a-twat routine.

..It's a work in progress.