Starbucks? Your phone dings with the message from him.
You reply, ‘Sure!’
The next time your phone dings, the words ‘Pick you up in 5′ are there, a bright white in contrast to the black background your lock screen turns into when you have a notification.
At first glance, anyone would most likely notice that the presence of Emojis next to a male name would insinuate that you were texting your boyfriend.
But you’re not.
Actually, you’re texting the one person you want to be with, but he’s so clueless of your feelings that you relax and go along with it.
So, he picks you up, after knocking on your door and talking with your family for a bit (if anyone’s home), and you two head out. You banter about what music to listen to on the way (“Driver picks the music, shotgun shuts his cakehole,” he’ll say with a grin on his face, knowing just how much you adore “Supernatural,” and you’ll respond with some sarcastic comment to make up for the fact that you’re smiling like a bumbling idiot), and you blast him on his parking job when you finally get there. He’s nice and holds the door open for you, lets you order first, and just shrugs when the barista at the end of the bar makes a comment about how cute of a couple you are (and you, not wanting him to think that you might actually like him, correct her with a “No, we’re just friends.”)
You stay and you chat for a while, joking about the customers that walk in, talking about school and life and everything and soon, you’ve sat through shift changes and rushes and the baristas are starting their pre-closing duties and you don’t know where the day went. It was bright and sunny when you got there, and now it’s pitch black as you walk outside; you have to blink a few times to be able to see anything.
You get in the car, complaining about the music again, and you also berate him for his inability to go anything less than 5 over the speed limit – and when he rolls his eyes and says, “You do it, too, so shut up.” You gripe about how it’s completely different because at least you know how to control your car and have never gotten into an accident (unlike him). And then, suddenly, you’re back home and both of your parents are home from work. He comes inside to say hello and stays for another hour and a half past what he says he was going to, and you’re the one who shuts the door behind him when he leaves.
It sounds like a date.
It looked like a date.
It felt like a date.
But it wasn’t a date.
Because you, my dear, have just been “friendzoned.”
In today’s age, dating is something that’s completely different than what our parents went through. Terms like talking and hooking up were totally not in most of our parents’ vocabulary (I mean, most of our parents probably know what hooking up is, but chances are it was nothing then like it is today), and it’s confusing trying to navigate the dating waters in college when you don’t actually want to date because you’re holding out for one person.
Now, don’t go jumping to conclusions that this article is about me and my dating problems. As someone who has heard the stories of her closest friends complaining about being “friendzoned,” I’m actually doing this so other girls can realize that they aren’t the only ones.
Guys constantly complain about the “friendzone,” where a girl treats a guy like they’re dating, but claims that they aren’t. Tumblr has posts about it that will make you laugh for twenty minutes straight, and I’m pretty sure Buzzfeed has made a video or two about it. Oh, and did you know that The Weeknd even mentions it in his song, “The Hills”? (And, yes, so did T-Swift, but I don’t really care about her, so…)
But, why can’t we acknowledge that guys do it, too?
As someone who doesn’t have a lot of dating experience, I’m probably the last person my friends would want to come to about having dating issues. Except, they do (which floors me). And, I’ve come to the realization that when it comes to dating, women, like in so many other (probably more important) things, are treated unequally to men.
We constantly spend time talking about how men are taught to make the first move and we need to bring awareness to the fact that they get nervous too and how much more sensitive they really are and blah, blah, blah that we deny the obvious fact: guys “friendzone” way more than girls.
Usually, girls have reasons.
Guys probably don’t even know they’re doing it.
(And the ones that do are just total players, so, please ladies, give ‘em some payback and play ‘em too).
But, how is this okay? Why is it okay for you to actually dread hanging out with him because you know that it just means you’re going to have to spend more time feeling like you’re on a date when you’re really not? Why is it okay for you to be so close with him and know things others don’t when you don’t even hug him goodbye because that’s not a normal thing you’ve done and starting to do so would mean that you want something more and he probably doesn’t and you don’t want to lose his friendship and –
See the problem?
We see these headlines, these one-liners meant just to grab your attention for an article so the writer can boast about high page views, from dating columns in Cosmo or Seventeen or even here, at Her Campus, that say: 10 Signs that He’s Actually Into You! or Best Friends or More? and we read them, confounding our memories to fit the scenarios splayed out or manipulating them to fit the answers to the questions in these articles because we desperately want assurance that our feelings are validated and we’re not crazy in thinking that he’s got feelings for us.
But maybe he really doesn’t.
Maybe he really just wants to be friends.
So, what happens then?
Here’s what I tell my friends: you just trudge on. Yes, you text first, because at least having some type of communication with him is better than nothing. Yes, you go out with him, because you hope that one day he’ll change his mind. Yes, you encourage him to explore his new feelings for that girl he met at a party (that he never invites you to because for some reason it doesn’t cross his mind [but he has no problem hitting you up the next day to go out for lunch to talk about it]), because you want to appear supportive when in reality you just want to wring his neck and claw his eyeballs out for being so clueless.
And, somehow, the world still turns.
In the words of John Mayer: Gravity, is working against you.
And it’s okay.
Stay classy, Captains!