So, how do you “recognize” that you encouraged Ms. Bates to do so, if you did? What is encouragement? And if you denied that you did, are you suggesting that everyone should believe or disbelieve you?
Troppus,
You say that both are sexual advances and then you say “Jimmy Chitwood, yes to everything you said” where Chitwood denies that both are sexual advances. Which is it?
You say "I would never make an uninvited sexual advance on someone without some hint that he was open to it. "
Then you say: “And no, flirting or suggesting a date is not a sexual advance. Find out if she’s interested before you get physical.”
You seem to be saying that flirting and suggesting a date are not sufficient before one gets physical. If a man flirts and suggests a date, does that not count as “some hint that he was open to it”?
“rendered uber literal”
For the second time, that’s because we’re on internet forum where the only data we have to understand what the person means is the words written by that person (and smilies). Please don’t try to read between the lines into my questions again, it didn’t work last time.
Chitwood,
The situation you describe is definitely a sexual advance but the concept is broader than that.
An advance can be sexual in the sense that the means through which the advance is made is sexual such as the hand-on-penis situation you describe. An advance can also be sexual because of the ends it pursues such flirting or asking if someone is in a relationship.
When you say “sexually” do you only refer to intercourse and similar? Because the term “sexual” can be much broader than that.
Earlier Troppus said that a hint must precede a sexual advance. I presume you agree.
If person A thinks the same and gives the kind of hint you describe to person B, hoping that person B will kiss A, then the hint was inviting sexual contact.
The validity of the friend zone really depends on how it is used.
If you are using it as a Nice Guy excuse to be angry at women, then no, it’s not helpful. A lot of Nice Guys start out with the assumption that any given woman should be attracted to them (after all, they are so nice), and if they are not, it’s because those women are doing some wrong/irrational/unfair. So when a Nice Guy’s friend-target fails to make a sexual advance oh him, he may well say “Oh, she put me in the friend zone” as a way to put the blame on her rather than the reality that A: Not ever girl thinks you are hot and B: A woman’s option of a potential pairing matters.
The “friend zone” is, however, a useful way of understanding that pretending to be someone’s friend in order to get in their pants is a bad plan. Being nice and friendly is great, but it doesn’t automatically lead to a relationship. Indeed, friendship and romance are typically parallel paths. One can happen without the other, or they can both happen together, but progress on one doesn’t equate with progress down the other. If your dating strategy is to be friends with a woman and constantly display what a nice guy you are, under the assumption that she’ll eventually decide that what she really wants to do is jump your bones…well, that’s not a good strategy. If you want friendship, be a friend. If you want romance, ask her out.
MichaelEMouse, I will try, but I want out of this thread sooner rather than later, I’m really uncomfortable with the turn it’s taking. Let’s forget the term “sexual advances” as it’s too broad.
I am no more interested in sleeping with my male friends than I am with my girlfriends. I talk about sex, bras, periods, dating with my girlfriends and they don’t assume I’m attempting to flirt or steer the conversation towards sexy topics. My guy friends shouldn’t assume that, either. No mixed signals to be misinterpreted; there is no sexual connection and references to sexual topics is not a secret code that invites a physical response.
Having said that, if a guy befriends a girl who is involved with someone else or who hasn’t expressed (literally) interest for the sole purpose of wearing her down or convincing her to give him a shot: tough. Just don’t do it if you can’t handle rejection or watching her get close to other guys. And if a guy is unable to befriend a woman without trying to bed her, he has no respect for her as a person and should refrain from seeking her company.
And finally, if you encounter a woman you are interested in, let her know up front. Ask her out, or state clearly "if you weren’t
seeing so and so, I’d ask you out. Don’t hang around for months like a sad puppy waiting for her to pet you, or she’ll treat you like a sad puppy. Friendships do turn into romance, but not by saying some magic words or swooping in with an unexpected kiss. It happens naturally, and overthinking it just drives you crazy. If signals, chemistry, and flirting just aren’t your strengths, your only recourse is to be as literal and direct in real life as you are on this board. If you like her, tell her.
I recall a cartoon that featured two women talking. One says to the other “Remember, it’s not sexual harassment if they’re datable.”
I spent a long time in the “Friend Zone” simply because I lacked the ability to read the signals from women. And honestly, some women’s signals are so subtle that it’s harder than playing poker, looking for another player’s “tell”.
It’s worth posting this from The Onion.
Troppus,
I agree with much of what you said in your last reply. Was it directed at someone else though?
I do think the friend zone does relate to a real phenomenon (that’s not to say it’s not complex blah blah).
But it depends on some of the details of the friendship.
If a guy is really into a woman often he doesn’t act completely like a normal friend. e.g. Whenever she calls, he’s there. He’s always complimentary and buys her drinks and stuff. He dare not flirt with other women or talk about anything happening with other girls etc
The woman might enjoy that guy’s company but she’s unlikely to see him as a potential partner because he’s too available / nice / asexual.
While one way for a guy to pull himself out of that zone might be just blurting out his feelings, a better approach might be to make himself less obtainable first.
Really wish I’d had that advice a few years ago…
And I know some here will say “Yeah well that guy’s an idiot” or whatever, but the situation I’m describing is very common.
Agree
You should be sorry after embarrassing yourself in that “faisco” of a thread.
I set up a thought experiment, for those who haven’t read the thread, demonstrating how women–given nothing other than a difference in the appearance of the man hitting on them–will respond to the SAME EXACT BEHAVIOR (by their own definitions) from two different men, attactive or not-attractive (again, by the women’s own definitions).
What I got was woman after woman coming into the thread and saying, yes, they react differently BUT there could be subtle differnce in the behaviors of the men hitting on them. The more I pointed out that I was not specifying the behavior because my stipulation was that the attractive guy and the unattractive one had behaved identically, the angier and the more irrational these women got.
To me, I think they’d have done better–or at least not humiliated themselves–in that thread by fessing up (“OK, you got us, we do pitch a fit when an unattractive guy hits on us, and we get all cute and cuddley when a hot guy hits on us in the same exact way, but we’re weak creatures, just like you.”) Instead I got a gigantic dose of self-righteous bullshit, and it’s still flowing, apparently.
Pseudo,
If you would like to continue the thread linked to, perhaps the best place to do it would be in that thread, not here.
Agreed. In fact, I won’t respond in this thread to any further references to that thread, since it is a hijack, and I will label any hijacks as such. I was simply trying to provide clarification by summarizing my aims in that thought experiment which so many women persisted in reading otherwise.
If anyone wants to get into what that thread accomplilshed and did not accomplish, please re-open it. I’m still interested in pursuing the discussion, though not here.
I know this is a zombie thread, but I’ll answer anyway - sometimes I’ll be physically attracted to a guy initially but then I’ll get to know him and his personality will be a complete turn-off. Then he goes in the “would not sleep with” box.
When I was in college, I had a good friend who was madly in love with me. He asked me out once a year for five years. I swear to God I was crystal clear with him from the very beginning, but he was under the impression that I would eventually realize I was in love with him, if he just persisted long enough. The last time he asked me out, he finally got me to agree to one date, but all that date did was make me realize that I was not sexually attracted to him and would never be, not in a million years. When I told him this, he quit school and signed up for the army (for his mandatory military service, which he would have had to do at some point anyway, but he decided to do it RIGHT THEN as some kind of dramatic gesture).
We are still good friends, actually, and recently he told me that his infatuation with me and subsequent disappointment taught him an important if cliched life lesson - that “this too, shall pass.” (Well, what he actually said to me was, “I can’t believe I was so crazy about you. It seems ridiculous in hindsight. It’s funny how something that seems so important can seem so trivial in hindsight.” 
)
the friendzone is a lie and i’m having a hard time believing that hazel’s ex-obsessor of 5 years is so blase about it.
Wow - he sure knows to stroke a girl’s ego.
What makes you say that the friend zone is a lie?
If you want to do it right, you kind of need to have her opening.
Well, they do and they don’t. Reminds me of a story my dad told me. He was really into this girl/young lady. After awhile he got up the nerve to ask her out. She replied that he was “too nice” to date. He replied back something to the effect of “well, nice guys get horny and need to get laid too” 
Or in other words, nothing wrong with friendships per se but they sure are a distant second to sex and or an intimate relationship.
My take on the friendship zone is sometimes the woman WANTS a man friend thats just a friend. And for some women getting man friends is easier than getting boyfriends/lay of the day. So, once you are a confirmed friend they are somewhat unwilling to risk losing the man friend if the romance goes tits up.
Opps.
Missed edit window. Meant to say “…getting man friends is NOT as easy as getting boyfriends…”
While no one has ever said it to me, I’ve read in countless places online that “Let’s just be friends” usually doesn’t actually mean you want to remain friends, and is instead a way to let people down easily.
And if that phrase isn’t used, the fact that some friends do eventually become romantic kinda proves that the concept of the friendzone, which is that once someone thinks of you as a friend you can never be more than that, is incorrect. Not even the slightly less broad “Once she decides that you aren’t relationship material, there’s nothing you can do to change that” actually holds up.
No matter how you slice it, the friendzone is not just about being friends with people. I had several hot friends back in the day (some I would have called “tens”), yet I was never put in the friendzone. I was unattractive to them from the start.
BigT pretty much answered for me.
Guys and girls both have lists of people they’re attracted to, people they tolerate, and people they dislike. The friend zone is a deluded concept invented to assuage the inevitable truth of inadequacy. It’s a bunch of “tolerates” who desperately wish they were in the “attracted to”’ but know that they aren’t.
So this “friend zone” is invented. “Oh I’m just the typical ‘nice guy’ that she’s too blind to appreciate.” or “Oh, I’m just terrible at reading social cues so I missed my window of opportunity and now she only sees me as a friend.”
No. Attraction is pretty Newtonian. A person will be attracted to you until proven otherwise. Either they get to know your horrible personality, your off-putting habits, etc. and lose interest or they’ll just keep on being attracted to you. Unfortunately the converse is much more rare. If someone doesn’t find you appealing upon the first impression it’s pretty hard to change the way you look. However the friend zone theorists hope that their supreme friendliness will overcome their ugliness (in the eye of the beholder, of course) and crawl out of that morass known as the friend zone but in reality it’s just one person attracted to another person who isn’t. No friend zone.
I agree 100%. You should give seminars. You’d do the world a far better service than those beyond stupid PUA classes.