My question was what you do with a woman you still are attracted to while you are in the friends zone. You can continue the friendship but it isn't a fun place as you still like the person (and you have an ulterior motive now, you aren't really there because you love being friends). You also could leave the friendship but if I broke every friendship I have with women who have rejected me, I'd probably have no female friends whatsoever.
If you're harbouring feelings for someone who has told you in no uncertain terms that they are not attracted to you and you can't move on, then yeah... maybe its better to walk away from the friendship.
I'd be curious what it is that makes you continue to hope for something more with them though. Are you hoping they're playing hard to get or will change their mind if you spend more time with them? Or are they not being clear enough with you? Your post makes me think that you only see friendship with the opposite sex as a means to an end, which might play into why you can't move on after rejection too. If you cannot allow yourself to see a woman as just a friend or a sister, then you will always view her as a potential partner, even after the rejection.
I've had a couple of guy friends in the past that I did crush on for awhile and when they told me they only saw me as a sister/friend, I moved on and got over it. To be fair, it did take some time because hearts don't shut off like a light switch. But being told directly they're not interested and it will never happen, thats a pretty big turnoff. And you can't get any better resolution than that for moving on.
One of them I did wind up losing his friendship. Mostly because he seems to have had your view. He didn't seem to believe I would get over him (which, in hindsight, probably speaks rather largely of his ego). So he stopped talking to me.
The other guy... he's one of my best friends now. And I am incredibly thankful that neither of us had that attitude and we refused to allow things to become awkward between us, because otherwise I wouldn't have this wonderful person in my life now. I'll talk about him some more in a minute.
but hanging around when you, admittedly, don't want their friendship? That I do not understand at all. Unless, as you seem to imply, you were only ever in that friendship to find a date. In which case.... you're doing it all wrong. And I will say this; if this is your dating game plan that there is every chance that you've been rejected by those women simply for playing games. Game-playing is a turnoff. Hence why I said in my original post, don't make friends with women just to date them. Make friends because you want their friendship. If you're actual friends first and a relationship naturally develops out of that, then awesome. You've got a strong foundation for a future with her. If you pretend to be her friend with a goal in mind of dating her, you're starting out on a foundation of dishonesty and game-playing, which is shaky at best. I prefer to date guys I've known awhile first, but I would much rather he be upfront with me from the beginning that he`s interested and ask me out at the start than to play games with me to lure me in.
That's the question. Having nothing to do with women I've asked out in the past seems a bit overreactive to me and I wanted your opinion on it. I'm not interested in misconceptions of the friend zone, thinking guys are "bitter" because we get rejected, don't flatter yourselves women, you aren't that addictive.
experience tells me otherwise. I've rarely met a man yet who believed in the friendzone and wasn't bitter at at least one woman, if not all women, for being placed in the zone of his own imagination.
But the same goes for women who tend to believe it about men.
There are exceptions, naturally. But this seems to be the rule. Which is logical. The whole premise behind The Friendzone is that every woman must be attracted to every man in some way, and if she chooses not to date him and put him in the Friendzone instead, she's just being disrepsctful to him by not choosing to be with someone as amazing as him. And she should know better. (slightly tongue in cheek there).
Oh, and it's impossible for most men to be friends with women for no ulterior reason. Most of your male friends are friends with you because you are attractive to them in some way. Yes, you can have a deep friendship but we are there because we feel some sort of sexual tension for you, however small it is. They have just chosen to keep it on the downlow. Just a spoiler alert in your future dealings with men.
OK. I'm sorry. This just made me laugh.
One of my best friends is a guy. He's also one of the guys I was referring to earlier that I liked at one point, but the feelings weren't returned. And when I learned that, my own feelings for him dissolved.
Now we're pretty close. We love eachother. We're there for eachother. But we're very much brother and sister to eachother. We are a terrible match romantically, and neither one of us wants to date the other. In fact, I've turned into something of a dating coach for him for the woman that he really likes. He's even given me interrogation rights for the woman he's interested in so I can approve
ebil: ) And he thinks of himself as something of a bodyguard to me for weeding through the undesirables.
No sexual tension or romantic interest of any size on either of our parts =)
