I’m Not Friend Zoning You — I Just Don’t Want To Date You

Before you get mad at me for not being physically attracted to you, let me just say that being nice and listening to the same music as me is not going to guarantee sex and love for forever and ever because that’s not the way it works. It’s just not.

The problem with people being mad at women for not liking the “nice” guys is the simple fact that being nice isn’t the only factor in being physically and mentally attracted to someone. Human attraction is this very complex thing that no one will ever truly understand and certainly does not land on a convenient scale of “nice means dateable” and “rude means avoid at all cost.” There is a huge grey area in between those two things that literally make up human attraction, and it’s absolutely different for every individual.

Although it’s so commonly used and everybody acts as if it’s been around forever, the friend-zone is a term that somebody just made up one day. Someone fell for their friend, worked up the courage to confess it, got hurt, got mad, and put that person in a degrading box and blamed it all on them. It is neither person’s fault for someone landing directly in the “friend-zone” because just as the romantically interested friend simply cannot help his or her feelings, neither can the friend who doesn’t feel the same way.

Women are typically pegged for the evil friend-zoner, but you ought to know that it’s happening to females as well. All over the place, people are facing feelings that will never be reciprocated because gifts and nice gestures do not generate feelings of attraction. In fact, gifts and nice gestures generally make up a decent human being, but somehow these things are seen as remarkably spouse worthy actions and demand some sort of compensation in the form of a labeled relationship or sexual favors.

Some actually form reasons for why they are put in the friend-zone, and these reasons often include “high standards.” A person has too high of standards because they’re not settling for anything less than a put together, well-dressed, and appropriately tall human being who loves commitment. But the thing is, people don’t necessarily have high standards, and settling doesn’t mean dating the guy who doesn’t have a six-digit income and is 5’7. Settling is dating the guy everybody thinks you should date because you have smiled a few times around him and usually you feel good around.

People have plenty of different things that make their brain go, “Hey! That one’s good!” and the potential romantic interests that make your brain do that cool thing could be and will be a variety of different people. It could be someone who is mean. It could be someone who is nice. It could be someone with a six-digit income and an apartment with a nice view, and it could be someone with a minimum wage job who lives with six other roommates in a terrible part of town. It’s not necessarily up to you. Feelings are weird that way.

Regardless of physical appearance, actions, gestures, gifts, paid dinners, which do have a very slight contributing factor, they do not make up the entirety of a potential relationship. Relationships require that extra oomph you feel around certain people, and no one should be shamed for being open and honest for not feeling that.