A girl and boy can’t walk down the street together without someone thinking the word “couple.” Though of course in this modern age, it’s a little better since we’re now able to hang out with friends of the opposite sex without having to worry about being stoned for secretly copulating before marriage. It’s nice to have guy friends, to be one of the “bros,” but let’s pop that fantasy bubble and face the truth: are they truly just “friends?”
I watched a clip on YouTube recently about a questionnaire someone performed on a university campus asking whether you would ever “hook up” with your best friend. The girls laughed and shook their heads at the thought of that silly notion ever entering their heads. However, some boys flat out proclaimed “yes,” others hesitated and said something along the lines of “I just want to touch her breasts” and the final few laughed nervously and walked away. All those boys had officially been “friend-zoned.” It’s the colloquial term that was created to help understand what man has since the stone-age days been depressed about: If you don’t know what friend-zone means, then you’ve clearly been living under a rock. It’s when a man tries to take a step further in his relationship with a woman, yet she has already deemed him merely a friend in her mind.
I’m not just generalizing all the boys and it just happens to be the stereotype that they’re the only ones who get friend-zoned, but it does happen to girls too. I am a victim of this debacle as I was friend-zoned for over six years. It’s mortifying looking back at those memories, when I was young and naive. I don’t blame him at all; if you looked back at what I looked like – with my little girl mustache, glasses and a huge gap between my teeth, I would have friend-zoned myself. Through an epiphany one night, I realized the blame should be put on tween songs and Taylor Swift, with her cursed song, “You Belong With Me” for making me pine over him for so long. At least she ended up with the guy (and about a hundred other celebrities).
Once again I am merely generalizing, but I realize the reason being is that men would be willing to put their friendship at risk for something physical, whereas women weigh out the pros and cons first. Don’t get us wrong, gentlemen, we have had the fantasy or two with you in our dorm room or on a date but you will always be the guy we use as our “fake” boyfriend when a creep starts hitting on us.
But I’d rather be the fake boyfriend as I get to live in that fantasy for that split second than what this girl I know does to a poor sap who has been so badly friend-zoned. He takes her out on dates, he texts her all the time and studies with her. Yet it doesn’t change his status in her eyes, which is why he is worthy of her farting. That’s right, farting (for some boys, no it’s not a myth, girls in fact do fart). But does she care? Nope. Even though we all told her that he wants her way too bad that you could practically see the animal driven lust in his eyes from the other side of campus, she still chooses to ignore that basic fact and march on. Now would you take the fake boyfriend without a complaint?
Which leads to my conclusion and this is a message for all you friend-zonees (people who have been friend-zoned) out there: You need to move on. You need to stand up and say “No, World. I refuse to join the ever growing ranks of the people who will always be there for that person, but with a horrible price to pay, my heart.” However, if you guys are truly meant to be and it’s just taking that person a few crappy relationships to realize that, then I wish you all the luck, patience and the miracle we call a jar of Nutella.
– Sara Al Mehairi can be reached at [email protected]
