You know that feeling you get? You meet a guy and you two get along great. You’ve got all that witty banter going, he makes you smile and you think you may like this guy. Luckily, he may like you too so he asks you out. Then you start getting a feeling about him and you aren’t really sure how to explain it you just know that it doesn’t feel right. That feeling is what Ally McBeal, star of TV show Ally McBeal, calls the “getting the Ick,” and these are stages of getting that so called feeling.
1.The Getting to Know You Stage– you meet an amazing guy and you’ve got butterflies, he’s so easy to talk to, he seems to really like you and he asks for your number and then by some miracle asks you out. On the basis of what if, you say yes, this guy seems to have a lot of potential. So yes, you’ll gladly grab some food.
2. The Date– You go out with him. Maybe it’s multiple dates, maybe it’s only one. At some point you go on a date that’s just average. It’s nothing special, it’s normal. Quite honestly there really wasn’t anything wrong with it. The conversation flowed fine, you laughed and joked and it lasted a good two hours. But for some reason you kept checking your phone to see when it would be over. Oops, that sounds a little mean, and yet, it happened. It’s not that you weren’t having a great time, you really can’t pinpoint what was wrong.
3. The Realiz​ation– You go home that night racking your brain, trying to figure out what went wrong, why weren’t you feeling the way you’ve felt with complete buttholes with this perfectly nice guy? You collapse on the couch recounting the events to your eager roommates and that’s when it hits you, the connection you two had had before is no longer there. You don’t know what happened, you just know that this isn’t the guy.
4. Realization #2– Ok, so he isn’t the one, he’s really got nothing left to offer except the fact that you’d still like to be friends. Which makes you realize that you’re about to friendzone this poor boy who has done absolutely nothing wrong. You kind of feel like a b*tch. Even though all you’re doing is realizing there’s no potential, but he did pay for your dinner, and he has put in his time. Now obviously, collegiettes, you don’t owe a man anything, he made his decisions and he placed his bets, it’s not your fault that you’re not interested. But you can’t help but feel that you led him on. But it has to happen, you have to friendzone him.
5. The Friendzone– However you ladies choose to do this is entirely up to you. Whether it’s by ghosting and just hoping he gets the message (which I’m sorry, loves, but this is a bit cowardly) or being entirely upfront about it, this part is never easy, either way, both parties are going to end up feeling pretty awful. All I can say on this one is that you can either keep going out with him after realizing that you really don’t want to do anything more, or you can do the right and respectful thing and break it to him gently.
Those are the five stages, we’ve all got to experience them at least once. Let’s hope not often.Â