How to Avoid the Friend Zone

One of the worst possible fates for a man is to wind up in the dreaded friend zone.  Everyone knows what that means – a girl wants to ‘hang out’ with you but doesn’t want anything more than that.  She wants you to buy her dinner and drinks while she vents about problems with her family, friends, and the guy who is actually getting to fuck her.

That guy is not you.

Essentially she is using you as an emotional tampon.  And being stuck in the friend zone really is as gross as that sounds.

This terrible tragedy befalls many would-be players every year, and unfortunately it is a reality that everybody has to deal with at one time or another.

I myself recently had a brush with The F-Zone.  It was an especially dangerous run in because in this case the girl was particularly hot.  Every man knows that the hotter a girl is, the harder it is to say no to her.

Allow me to explain how I managed to avoid the friend zone with this cutie.

The Story

I had met this girl almost a year ago at a bar in central Seoul, where we drank together all night long, and I’m honestly not sure how the night wound up.  I can’t claim that I slept with her because I really don’t remember.  However it ended doesn’t matter though because a couple of months ago she messaged me out of the blue saying she missed me and wanted to meet.

We tried to align our schedules for a rendezvous, but the only time we could find was the day that Julius was getting back into Korea.  We were having a welcoming party for him and drinking quite a bit.

After we had all been drinking and talking for about an hour, I was running my normal flirtation and escalation game to try and take things to the next level before we got too inebriated.  In the middle of the escalation, I put my arm around her and playfully said,

“Of all my girlfriends, I think this one is my favorite!”

At this point, her face dropped and she very seriously informed the table that she was not in fact my girlfriend, but that we were just friends.

This was a critical moment in the interaction.

There were two possible meanings to her response: either she objected to the term girlfriend since we were certainly not in a relationship or she was serious about being just friends.

The first meaning would have been fine because I wasn’t looking for a commitment of any kind, but was just using the term since it’s impolite to say a girl is your favorite ‘potential fuck buddy’ in pretty much every social situation.

The second possible meaning however would be highly problematic.  I don’t buy into being ‘friends’ with a girl under any circumstances unless you’re hooking up and just use the term in public.  Since I was not hooking up with this girl yet, the danger of being friend-zoned was still very real.

In order to find out what her intent was with her statement, I had to test the waters a bit and see where the point of resistance was.

I kept a smirk on my face and said, “Sure baby girl, we’re ‘just friends’!” and gave her a wink and a kiss on the top of her head.

Everybody else was still light hearted, so it seemed reasonable that she would laugh it off and keep going.

Instead she stopped me and insisted, “No really, Jack.  We’re just friends and that’s all that I want.”

At this point I told her in no uncertain terms that I am not friends with girls, and if she was only interested in being friends then she didn’t need to contact me anymore.  She got angry and left, not that I particularly blame her for it.  I set the rules and she decided she didn’t want to play anymore.]

I had called her out and drawn a line in the sand – I will not be friend zoned.

Analysis

In the aftermath, Julius told me that I had likely just blown a good opportunity with a very attractive girl, and he might be right.

Is it possible that I overreacted and sent her packing wrongly?  Definitely.  There’s a good chance that she just got flustered at the idea of having that conversation in public with an audience.

Julius may very well have been right and with a little patience and time I could have coaxed the scared fox into a casual relationship where we meet once or twice a month and hook up.  But what Julius was missing is that I didn’t want to invest the time and patience on a maybe.

In this world of ever-present flakes and time-wasters, I have no interest in a maybe.

I am comfortable losing a cute possibility who had failed to show interest in me when it counted.  There are many more girls who would have swooned at the possibility of being more than friends, and those are the girls who I want to spend time with.

I have an abundance mentality and a strong sense of exactly what I want.

Read More: Be Honest With Yourself

Mentality Makes the Difference

A scarcity mentality hears this story in the frame of what I potentially lost by scaring her off.  An abundance mentality looks at what I saved by choosing not to chase an uncertain prospect.

The scarcity mentality would look at this situation and say, “Jack!  Why did you react so harshly to her?  She was just nervous in front of people she didn’t know and she freaked out.  You should send her a message to apologize and try to keep talking to her!  She was cute, you might not meet another girl that cute for a while!”

Do you see the problems with this mindset?  The thoughts are negative.  The behavior is desperate.  This mindset comes from a place of fear and uncertainty.

This fear stems from a basic idea that I am somehow not good enough.

Unfortunately this is the mindset that most men take on in a situation like this.  I’ve certainly found myself acting and thinking this way before.  It’s a natural and primitive response, the basic fear of rejection and loneliness that exists as a survival mechanism deep in our lizard brains.

Just because it’s natural doesn’t mean it’s something we must accept.

By altering your internal dialogue, an excellent technique from Mike Cernovich’s Gorilla Mindset (review coming soon), you can flip the script on the girl and look at the entire scenario differently.

Let’s look at the story again with an abundance mentality, lacking in fear.

“Jack, who does this girl think she is?  You invited her out to a party with cool people in a cool bar she had never been to before.  You went out of your way to include her in the conversation and make sure everyone knew you guys were hanging out.  Then that same girl balked at the idea of being even a little interested in you?  Sounds completely worthless to me, good thing you didn’t waste any more time chasing that pipe dream.  Hey look, another cute girl in the corner!  Let’s go talk to her!”

Honestly though, that is just my trying to explain the mentality.  My actual thought process was much shorter and more succinct:

“Huh.  Whatever.  Hey look, another cute girl in the corner!  Let’s go talk to her!”

I realize that I may have what is basically the brain of a street dog, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing.

I never get upset that I lose one tennis ball because there will always be another one, and who knows, maybe I’ll find that same tennis ball again a different day.  There’s really no losing in this situation.

The Real Way to Avoid the Friend Zone

All this talk about mindset and abundance and whatever else may sound a little obscure.  After all, it doesn’t directly answer the initial question of how to avoid the friend zone with girls…

But actually it does.

Having the abundance mentality allows you to separate yourself from the present moment, from the girl in front of you – it allows you to see the forest for the trees.

Once you realize that there are billions (actually billions!) of other women in the world, any one girl seems very insignificant.  It’s not such a big deal to let one of them go.

More importantly though, you become strong enough to make a decision and stand your ground.  You need to realize deep down in your core that men and women cannot be friends.  Let me reiterate that very important point:

Men and women CANNOT be friends!

Trying to be her ‘friend’ so that you can one day cozy up to her and get sex or start a relationship is a guaranteed recipe for failure.  Don’t try to be her friend unless you have zero sexual interest in her… And even then, why be her friend?  Does she bring something of extraordinary value to your life that you can’t get from your male friends?  Probably not.

The fact is that if you’re straightforward and honest about your intention to not be ‘just friends’, then she will respect that fact and make her decision accordingly.  That doesn’t mean that she will necessarily choose to keep meeting you, but if they do then it means you’re on the right path and both parties are interested.

The best way to get out of the friend zone is to NEVER get in it to start!

The True Benefit of This Method

In a lot of situations, including the one I described above, this straightforward approach will scare off your prospect.  You will lose out on the ‘opportunity’ to spend time with her, giving her your time, attention, and resources.  That sounds like a pretty good win to me actually.

Spending time with girls who aren’t interested in anything more is extremely annoying.  It’s a waste of time, your most precious resource.  On top of that, it also has a very high opportunity cost because any time you spend with these users (that’s what they really are) is time that you could be talking to and meeting other women.

Every time you meet a girl past the initial pickup is a decision to spend time with her over meeting other women.  This makes it essential to cut out the timewasters as quickly as possible.  By making your intent known (whether verbally or nonverbally) from the beginning, you will be able to find the women who are actually interested in more and cut out the others quickly.

Never feel bad about next-ing a time waster or attention whore.  She wants you to be a Beta orbiter, and the only way to avoid that is to refuse to be sucked into her world.

Stay strong, players.  Stay out of the friend zone.

Til next time

-JN