“Being in the friend-zone” can also be sugarcoating for being on someone’s hook. The sad truth is that – even if they are in a relationship! – some people just seem to like having “what-if”s around them. I may be extrapolating unfairly because it happened to me twice as a teenager, and both times it was extremely painful when it ended, i.e. when I realized that they would never, ever feel about me the way I felt about them.
But honestly, how low is it to tell someone “I can’t date you, because our friendship is too important to me!” or “I can’t date you, I don’t wanna lose you as a friend!”?
In my eyes, a new partner should always become one of your best friends (if that won’t work, so won’t the relationship) – so if you already ARE very good friends when you start dating, you have a HUGE head start – plus you run into less risk of realizing that your relationship won’t work because you can’t really be friends with that person.
I feel this sort of behavior is so screamingly unfair because it’s just lying (at least by omission). Being someone’s friend is NOT A VALID REASON WHY YOU CAN’T DATE THAT PERSON! There always is another reason, however unpleasant to talk about it may be. It’s not doing someone who loves you a favor to avoid talking about what really keeps you from dating them. I guess that in most cases it’s simply the total absence of physical attraction. Hurt as it may to be told that your friend doesn’t find you sexually attractive at all, it is still better than being left with absolutely no reasonable explanation for why someone won’t pursue any romantic relationship with you.
Especially since this kind of insecurity can lead to the dog-like behavior you mentioned – you try to be an even better friend so that this person would FINALLY realize that you are not just a great friend but would also make a great boy-/girlfriend.
And that is why I think the term “being in the friend zone” has such a bad connotation to it…
I might be off on the meaning of “being friend-zoned” since I am not a native speaker, but I feel that the scenario I described fits the term. Sorry if this turned into a rant 😉
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