Parking in The Friend Zone

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When you’re in a new place, making new friends, as any girl will tell you:

“It’s just so much easier to make friends with guys!”

And it’s true!  That’s because guys are more willing to randomly approach you, more eager to hang out and exchange numbers.  Sure, maybe initially they want to sleep with you…but whatever, they’ll get over it.

And sometimes this actually works out!  Sometimes you get along great, and decide to be friends, and everything is wonderful.  There’s a mutual understanding that everything is going to stay platonic…Even when alcohol is involved.

But sometimes this doesn’t work out.  Sometimes they just get annoying and fall in love with you.  They send little hints like describing their ideal woman to you, acting like you’re just having a friendly chat about liking other people when in fact they’re just listing out all your qualities.  Then they try to get you drunk in the hopes that you’ll finally admit your true secret feelings for them and the both of you will succumb to the throws of passion.  Then, when that doesn’t happen and you just end up hooking up with that cute guy from your Bio class instead, they ignore you for two weeks and claim to be really busy or sad about something completely unrelated. 

So okay boys, I’ll admit:  We know.  We’re pretty sure you don’t initially just see us and think, “Wow!  She looks like she’d make a great friend!”  But we can’t be positive.  And it’s a little bit deceptive because we act like we legitimately have no idea.  But it’s not like we can do anything about it.  It’s not like we can say, “Hey…so…just on the off-chance that you’re in love with me, don’t be.”  We’re not attempting to lead you on, we genuinely just enjoy your company and don’t see the harm in starting up a friendship.  We’re not considering how much it might hurt you. We don’t feel bad because we’re thinking about how you’ll benefit from a good friendship as well.  We’re just thinking, “Well, it’s not like I’m that good in bed anyway.  He’ll probably just get over it once he hears me burp the alphabet.”

Everyone has been there.  And it sucks to be that guy friend.  But it sucks to be that girl friend too.  Guy friends can be easier to make initially, but they’re a heck of a lot harder to keep around in the long run.  There’s complications when it comes to male/female relationships:

You need some kind of “Oh, you’re like a brother/sister to me!” chat, or a discussion of other people you’re interested in, or maybe a, “Hey, that’s my cousin too!”  ‘The understanding’ is closure on any future sexual activity.  No one’s waiting around for it to happen, no one’s being led on, or wondering ‘what if.’  It’s not a ‘will they/won’t they’ scenario.  It’s an absolutely, positively, understood ‘they won’t.’

Because eventually a Significant Other might arise, and if the friendship is just fueled by romantic interest, that’s a fuel you can be sure will run out once the significant other comes into play.  Tensions rise as they are introduced.  Threat levels are assessed as they judge one another’s attractiveness.  They shake hands and say hello, but the friend already knows its bye-bye friendship. 

Yes, guys always complain about being ‘friend-zoned.’   So okay, there’s no “benefits” in the sexual sense of the word.  There are hugs instead of kisses, phone calls prior to 1 am, and both parties stay fully clothed.  But ya know what’s cool about the guy in the friend-zone?  Sometimes he’s got one heck of a good friend.

Why We Are Douchebags To Those We Hook Up With

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I woke up and he was gone.

Ah yes, the sneak out.  You always feel really good about yourself the next morning when you wake up and realize you’ve been walked out on.

And let’s be honest, it’s not the greatest thing to have someone in your bed.  They take up room, sometimes they snore, it can get too hot, they could be in your favorite spot, they complain if your room’s not clean, conversation the next morning is always awkward, and when you think about it you really don’t want the person there when you wake up.

But then when they’re actually not there you feel even worse. 

He could at least leave a note.  Something like, “Haha, I used you, you dumb slut.” Or maybe just a ‘hey-your-bed’s-uncomfortable’ note.  I would appreciate that.  I would think, how thoughtful of him to take the time to write such an accurate depiction of our time together.

So you WILL stay in my bed and be uncomfortable as I hog the blankets.  You WILL make painfully awkward conversation with me tomorrow before you find an excuse to leave.  You WILL get no sleep, and you WILL wake up when I do, because I hooked up with you and it’s polite.

…But man I really wish you would leave.

I don’t think I’m one of those crazy/clingy/over sensitive people but I am a person.  And yes, sometimes I’m used as a sex object and I use people as sex objects but that’s no reason to forget that they’re human.  People are people.  It’s common decency to be respectful of people.  Especially people who are nice enough to sleep with you.  
            I don’t know where this whole myth of “You have to be mean to someone you’re using for sex otherwise they’ll get emotionally attached” started, but I think it needs to stop. 

It puts the person you’ve disrespected in an unfortunate situation.  Now, not only are they upset because you’ve blatantly disrespected them, but they can’t even talk to you about it because then you’ll assume they’re just complaining because they’re emotionally attached and want commitment from you. 

It’s like, “Hey…would you mind acknowledging my existance?”

“God, why are you like, so obsessed with me??”

It’s like we want people to expect to be treated like shit when we use them for sex, and when they don’t have those expectations we call them naïve or overly emotional and tell them their feelings have no legitimacy. 

If I have a friend over for dinner, and I leave to go to the bathroom and they’re gone when I get back, well, that’s a little weird.  I’m going to be a little upset.  Is that because I’m super needy and have too many expectations for our relationship?  …No.  If you got to go, you got to go, I’m not going to freak out about it.  But dude, you could have said bye. 

            I feel like it’s fairly common for people to be crueler towards people that they’ve hooked up with, as if to prove they’re not attached.  It’s because in a hook up you feel like you’re giving away too much.  You’re doing the exact same kind of stuff you would be doing with someone you actually liked.  Your actions are screaming “I HAVE FEELINGS FOR YOU” and your words aren’t saying a damn thing cause it’s awkward.  So to make up for those affectionate actions, we throw some douche-bag actions in there too, just to balance out the scale. 

We don’t like having “talks.”  We don’t want to define the relationship with words.  We don’t want to say, “Hey, so, about last night.  I was really just using you for sex.  Just so you know.”  No one wants to say that, that makes you sound like a douche-bag.  We’d much rather show it…by acting like a douche-bag.  Now there’s a classy solution.

It’s like saying, “Hey, remember that really intimate moment we shared together last night? K, well, I’m gonna flat out ignore you every time I see you from now on.  …And I’m gonna make fun of your genitals with my friends.  Bye!”

So I came up with a solution.  A way to avoid people becoming emotionally attached without having to treat them like crap.  Instead of going out of your way to be mean to someone, you be overly nice to them.  Profess your love and undying devotion on the first date.  I promise you, you won’t have to worry about any emotional attachment after that. 

It’s like we’re a little scared of love.  Love makes you a wimp.  You don’t want people thinking you’re in love with them, that gives them power.  Sex is awesome.  I know because Weezy raps about it.  We want to separate love out from sex.  We’re all still scarred by that time in kindergarten when all the kids would taunt, ‘You LIIIKE her/him don’t you????”  And you’d say, “Nuh-uh they have cooties!”

It’s like the second we get [drunkenly] intimate with someone we have to turn back and accuse them of having cooties.  But not the sexually transmittable kind.

But the taunting would continue until you did something to PROVE you didn’t like the person, like ignore them or hit them or steal their lunch money.  Having said that, Mike Walters, I’m sorry I beat you up on the playground in first grade.  I was madly in love with you.  

Is the “Hook-Up Culture” Sexist?

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My mom is clueless when it comes to new slang.  She still says things like “coolio” and “that’s the bomb” with little to no understanding of what it actually means.  Usually I find it amusing and let it slide, but when she called me and told me she “hooked up with the rabbi this weekend” I was quick to correct her. 

“Mom, you did not ‘hook up’ with our Rabbi.”

“No, but I did!  We had a meeting at the temple to discuss plans for your sister’s batmitzvah.”

As I’m sure most of you are well aware, ‘hooking up’ means something very different from just getting together to hang out with someone (although that’s usually how it starts.)  Hooking up is popularly defined as “Any form of getting some type of [sexual] action, such as making out, feeling things, oral pleasure, or sex.  A ‘hook up’ is what’s referred to as doing those things when you’re not [formally dating] the person” (Urbandictionary.com).  Though hooking up has existed on college campuses for as long as there’s been alcohol, it seems it has never been quite so prevalent, or at least not openly so.  Some students even feel that hooking up has replaced the dating scene altogether.  Recently Kathleen Bogle conducted a study on the college hook up culture, entitled, “Hooking Up: Sex, Dating, and Relationships on Campus” based on a qualitative analysis of data gathered from many interviews at both a small private university and a large public university.  Her findings explain some surprising things that you probably already know, like defining “friends with benefits” (friends who hook up but don’t have romantic feelings for one another), “booty calls” (when you call someone to hook up with), and ‘hooking up” (a vague term for any kind of sexual activity.)  But perhaps one of the most interesting findings of the study is that a lot of college students don’t really know what’s going on.  It’s as if someone threw away a gigantic rule book and said, “Eh, lets just kinda play it by ear.”  Bogle writes, “When I asked students to explain how someone would end up hooking up with someone with whom they had no prior sexual interaction, they would often answer by saying, ‘alcohol’ or ‘I don’t know, it just happens.’”  In fact, the answers to most of her questions were confused mumblings and explanations of how it depends on the situation.  But the main problems Bogle identified were these:

The term “hooking up” is vague.  Students gage what is normal behavior based on stories from their peers, so when you’re not really sure if your peers are kissing or having sex every weekend, it makes a difference.  People might choose to go further during a hookup than they would otherwise based on what they assume their friends mean by ‘hooking up.’  Additionally, many women in the study admitted to developing feelings for men they were consistently hooking up with.  But much to their dismay, “Too much sexual interaction in the early stages of meeting someone was seen as ruining any chance you might otherwise have to pursue a relationship with that person.”  This puts women with a sex drive in the unfortunate situation of having to sleep with people they don’t actually like if they want instant gratification, and hold out with the guys they’re attracted to the most. 

            The “passé” dating scene was much more give-and-take.  The man would take the woman out, and a relationship would develop before any sexual activity took place.  It was almost as if sex was the motivating factor for dating.  With casual random hookups becoming so common on college campuses, men are finding fewer reasons to commit to a relationship.  So why do women seem to want relationships more than men do?  The study has a few explanations for that too, and it’s not the evolutionary “Men want to spread their seed” reasoning that you might expect.  It’s the sexual double standard that men and women face.  If a guy has a lot of sexual partners, he is perceived as being cool, whereas if a girl has many sexual partners, she is seen as a “whore” and gets a bad reputation.  We can talk all we want about women’s sexual liberation, but as long as that stigma is there, women are hardly sexually liberated.  Sexually active women in the hook up culture usually opt to avoid that bad reputation by hooking up with the same person again and again, although that usually results in attachment and heartbreak over time.  Many of the women in the study grew sick of the hook up culture, and toward the end of their college career were looking for more substantial relationships.  However, with the dating scene growing increasingly rare, they felt like they had to hook up and leave the fate of the relationship in the hands of the guy.  What that leads to is a male dominated relationship culture.  The female bargaining tool of sex becomes less persuasive when it can be easily found elsewhere, allowing the man in a multiple-hook-up situation to dictate the entire future of the relationship.  Many times these types of relationships have no definitive end.  As one interview in the study explains:

“Rebecca:  …I think most girls want to try to find [or] stick with one guy so they can pretend they’re dating them.  I do it all the time.  I haven’t had a boyfriend yet, but I’ve had two fake boyfriends…You can kind of think that you’re together because you think you’re the only one in his life and he seems to care about you, you know?...You can kind of just make believe that [you’re together], like whatever he says you can twist it around to make it seem like something else.  And all your friends are telling you that he loves you and that you are bound to be married, but you’re never [truly] together.  So, it’s kind of that whole fake relationship thing.

Bogle:  When do you figure out that you’re not really together?

Rebecca: Umm, when there’s another girl.”

As William Shakespeare once said, “The course of true love never did run smooth”…In bed.