As a woman this goes against my (personal) understand of the ‘Friend Zone’. A guy in the ‘Friend Zone’ is a man I like as a person but don’t want to have sex with; usually because of a lack of physical attraction on my part only, sometimes due to other factors (examples: we work together, he’s the ex of a female friend of mine, he sleeps around too much which is a turn-off for me, one or both of us in a relationship or was when we became friendly, age/maturity differences, etc - there are many reasons I wouldn’t want to get sexually involved with someone even if I think they’re cute).
There might be a small spark of physical attraction there that I’d be willing to explore and try to develop, depending on their personality and the timing. I just got out of a 7-year-long passionate relationship that began with months of totally platonic (on my part) friendship.
I don’t really know any women who prefer to have sex with someone they don’t know/like over someone they do. Most have FWB situations if they want sex without love and a committed relationship; it’s just that most of our male friends aren’t sexy. Of course, most of us won’t tell you this up front. We’ll tell you we ‘don’t want to risk losing the friendship’ or some other BS.
In retrospect, calling it the Friend Zone was probably a mistake. You’re correct that that’s a different thing.
What I’m saying is a stereotypical woman* might say something like, “I’m horny tonight and I’m never going to see this guy again. I might as well go home with him and we can have some fun.”
Or a stereotypical woman might say something like, “I’m in love. This is my soul mate and I want to spend the rest of our lives together making love.”
But that same stereotypical woman might also say something like “Wow, that was a really great date. This guy is good looking and interesting and he seems to like me. So I don’t want to sleep with him yet.”
Now as a stereotypical guy, I can completely relate to the first and second statements. But the third one leaves me going “bwuh?” I can’t understand the idea of liking somebody too much to want to “spoil” things with sex. As a guy, my feeling is that sex can never spoil anything that’s going well otherwise. If at the end of a really good date, the woman says “hey, let’s go back to my place and fool around” my thought isn’t going to be “why did she have to go and ruin everything?” No, it’s going to be “wow, this date just keeps getting better.”
*I say stereotypical woman in acknowledgment of the fact that nothing I’m saying applies to all women or all situations.
Definitely many many times an hour. Not only does the sight of a woman usually lead into it, my brain has always done rapid associations trains of thought and a hell of a lot of them lead to sex. For example, That commercial for the Fiat 500, with the “Holy Damn” hot Italian chick, she is very directly associated to sex in my mind obviously. But nearly any thing that my mind associates with Italy will within a fraction of a second lead to a sexual thought about her. Hearing an Italian accent, seeing a commercial for Fettuccine, watching a TV program and hearing a name like Ricci etc will pretty much lead there for the last month or so.
Of course, most of us won’t tell you this up front. We’ll tell you we ‘don’t want to risk losing the friendship’ or some other BS.