Only Men Can Successfully Friend Zone

How to actually go from lovers to friends.

The Greek Lovers. 1846. Henry Peters Gray

I define ‘friend zoning” as the act of transitioning a relationship from a romantic context to a friendship context by telling the person that you’d rather be friends.

Friend zoning is the most common way to end a romantic entanglement (well, maybe ghosting is the most common, but friend zoning is a close second). Often, when people engage in friend zoning, they aren’t really being sincere. They may not care about being friends; the more important thing is that they want the romantic interaction to end. If that is the case for you, you should ignore this post.

In order for the act of friend zoning to successfully transition your relationship dynamic to one of friendship, the woman cannot be the one to initiate the friend zone. It has to be the man.

If a woman friend zones a man, the woman’s intentions are definite, but the man’s intentions are not. Sure, the man may agree to be friends, but the woman will never be sure of his true intentions. And the woman is right to be uncertain; the man almost certainly wants to be more than friends, or at least remains attracted to the woman.

If a man friend zones a woman, that is a much stronger signal that the man truly wants to be friends. The woman’s intentions are uncertain, but her current attraction is much more likely to become platonic over time than the man’s would be. Also, the possibility of the woman being attracted to the man is less of a barrier to friendship than the possibility of the man being attracted to the woman.

I’m not saying that this is always the case, just that if the man initiates the friend zone, the chances of success are much higher. This has been true in my experience.

This post only applies to cis male/female relationships. I’m sure there are all sorts of interesting versions of this dynamic within other types of relationships.