"you have no idea how badly I was secretly hoping that this was exactly what was going to happen"

[intertribal]

Lessons learned from Season 4 of MTV's "Friendzone":

• People who have been friends since childhood can't transition into more than that, despite what soft-focus romance novels and black-and-white pictures of children kissing may tell you.


• The more confident you are that your best friend likes you back, the less likely it is that you are right.


• Displays of jealousy are not an accurate indicator of the other person's feelings.


• Do not ever do this in front of a group of people.  Especially if those people are your sorority sisters/fraternity brothers.  No but really.


• It is uncanny the number of times that the other person responds with "yeah, I've actually... always had a crush on you too."


• Sometimes, people do change their minds.


• The worst?  When you tell someone you like them, and they say they have a crush on your best friend.


• Don't ever try to get out of the Friendzone with someone who is in a relationship.

The "friendzone" is frequently and disparagingly described as such: Person A meets Person B, and instantly is attracted to Person B.  Rather than directly asking out Person B, Person A hangs around them, surreptitiously becoming their friend in the hopes that they will eventually change their minds, out of inertia if nothing else.  Frequently, Person A is described as a guy, and Person B a girl; Person A does good, friendly deeds for Person B with the expectation that Person B should love and fuck them in return.  The xkcd comic is a classic understanding.  The Friend-Zoner vs. the Nice Guy is another.  And I guess that's fair - there are people like that, usually guys who conclude that girls "just don't like nice guys."

But the reality is a lot more complicated, as "Friendzone" the show demonstrates.  Feelings are fluid.  Feelings are multi-faceted.  All of the people on "Friendzone" who are in love with their best friend genuinely and deeply care for both the best friend and their friendship.  They worry about losing the best friend and making the friendship awkward.  In real life, Person A may have approached Person B with interest, Person B declined, and years later, Person B develops feelings for Person A.  In real life, Person B liked Person A all along as well.  In real life, there is not always a hard and fast line between "platonic" and "romantic."  In real life - as long as they did not meet as children - both parties wonder if anything could or should happen with this person they click so well with, but fear is the mind-killer.  Fear that the other person does not feel the same; fear that a prior bad experience with a friends-to-dating transition will repeat itself.  "Friendzone" is more like "Fearzone," really.  And MTV knows all about that.

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Yep, feelings are fluid, and they do change. And people are suggestible, and driven by lots of notions--of what they "should" feel, of what they'd like to feel, of what they're afraid of feeling. And feelings can change with circumstance.

It is what it is--but what it is keeps shifting.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

And well... i am now "out of the Friendzone," as they say on the show.