The Friend Zone Sucks

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If you have the friend disease, you already know what I’m talking about. You meet someone of your preferred sex and you like them—I don’t mean in the OMG YOU’RE SO HAWT I JUST WANT TO TOUCH YOUR GENITALS WAY either, I mean, you actually like them in the OMG LET’S HOLD HANDS AND MAYBE LATER LOOK INTO EACH OTHERS EYEBALLS MEANINGFULLY sort of way. And some how (maybe you under-batted your eyelashes, I don’t know) you find yourself being ‘friends’ with so little sexual tension you wonder if your private bits are failing to emit the sort of pheromones that narcissists and dirtbags seem to be able to smell from several miles away.

When you first met your ‘friend’ your heart skipped that clichéd beat it always seems to miss when you meet someone special. You couldn’t look him or her directly in the eye, and as you listened them talk across a circle of your other friends your imagination got carried away with the thought of first kisses and romantic dates and falling in love. You parted ways without hinting at any of this, intoxicated by your private fantasy.

Eventually, you saw him or her again, and your crush intensified. By the time you are Facebook friends, have exchanged numbers, are hanging out one on one—well, crush would be putting it lightly. But somewhere in the progression of your relationship (you can’t put your finger on it) you missed the boat. Your ship sailed. You began drowning—in friendship.

It’s not like you have trouble with your preferred sex. To the contrary, when all you want is to touch someone’s genitals you’re as tight as a Beyonce dance routine—you dip your hips, give a few seductive glances, before bending, flexing and rolling your jelly all the way to the bedroom (or wherever else it is you like to get freaky). But when you find that you actually, genuinely like someone, you’re more like Britney’s Circus tour—flaccid, uninspired, and peaking at around 70%.

You wish you could figure out how you became such good ‘friends’ completely bypassing flirtation, dating and love. You get along perfectly. You communicate effortlessly, sharing feelings, laughter and silence with a lack of restraint that reveals true comfort. You’ve been naked with people before and felt less intimate than this. It’s not like the spark isn’t there either—every time your ‘friend’ touches you it’s like the static you get from closing a car door, and you could swear that sometimes when you accidentally brush against them, they can feel it to.

But you have the ‘friend’ disease—doomed always to pine for the ones you actually like. Maybe you genuinely think they don’t reciprocate your feelings, and for you being ‘friends’ is better than being nothing at all. Or maybe your spider sense is tingling ever so gently, yet you’re still too cowardly to say anything. This person you like so much is securely in your life, after all, and you’re so close (while getting closer all the time) in a way that romance has failed you in the past. Why would you risk that? 

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