Yes, I agree it’s good to break down gender roles, but I want to point out that, as a girl, I was on the receiving end of some “I value your friendship” type rejections, too. It’s really the kindest way to turn someone down.
It can also be genuinely true.
It’s quite possible to value the non-sexual friendship of somebody who one has, for any of quite a variety of reasons, no sexual interest in.
Oh, yes. Definitely.
Agree heartily. When said I said it was meant as an honor, not a rejection.
I agree, when the person in question is actually a friend. I never heard that from anyone I actually considered a friend. I guess “I value you as an acquaintance” doesn’t quite do it. I can appreciate how uncomfortable it can be to tell someone you’re not interested in exploring a romantic relationship, even though I can only remember having to do it myself once.
I guess the question is what sort of rejection is preferable to “I just want to be friends.” All rejections basically boil down to, “I don’t find you attractive,” but it stings to hear it.
I’d say the worst rejection I ever got, from a friend I had dated a handful of days, was “I can’t bring myself to be physically attracted to you” and “We’re both too crazy for this to ever work.”
In that moment, I wouldn’t have minded a “Let’s just be friends.”
Yes, sometimes people are just trying to let you down gently.
However: my first year in college, I briefly went with somebody who I liked a good deal but realized that I wasn’t physically attracted to and that, unlike in some cases, my liking him wasn’t fixing the problem; instead it seemed to be getting worse. So I told him that I’d rather just be friends (no, I didn’t say I was starting to find him physically repulsive!) and he said ‘I’ve got enough friends.’ I said ‘well I don’t!’ which was entirely true; and I did want to be friends with him, though we hadn’t been friends previously; and obviously I couldn’t if he was only interested in me as a girlfriend.
– Trying to think how to phrase this: in retrospect, if he was really only interested in me as a girlfriend and not as a friend, it might not have worked in the long run even if he had turned me on; but I do understand that many people aren’t comfortable hanging around as friends with somebody who’s rejected them sexually. I don’t work that way, though; aside from immediate visual attraction, which is a different sort of thing, anybody I really want to go to bed with is somebody I’d like to be around even if they’re only interested in platonic relationships.
In the final analysis, they all started sounding the same after a while. Now if someone had said, “I don’t want to date you because I think you’re a horrible human being”, that would have been worse. Imagine the shock when the future Ms. P just kept wanting to hang around with me.
I thought Sr. Weasel might be a little desperate. There’s a whole second chapter to the cute hookup story, which led to me freaking out, rejecting him, and bursting into tears while saying, “I’m so sorry,” over and over. And he hugged me and said, “It’s okay. I just want what’s best for you.” Which of course made me love him even more, and we figured it out together over the next few days. My behavior made no sense, but I had, up until that moment, felt cursed. It was difficult for me to accept that something this good really was happening to me. I think he understood that. Rock solid, that man.
I think it is time you realize you deserve exactly what you are getting!
When I got to the point time-wise with the future Ms. P where my previous gf had dumped me I told her that I was nervous, and I told her. She told me that some people in her therapy group said that meant I was about to break up. Of course neither of us had anything to worry about; within a month or so we’d decided to get married.
I thought a bit more about different ways to convey lack of interest. If anyone had not been nice about it, I probably would have been relieved to have dodged a bullet. That never happened, probably since most people just aren’t that mean.
From my college experience I got a lot of “I really like you but I’m gay” as a turn down. But then I was attracted to strong women who didn’t wear fancy make up or otherwise gussy themselves up in traditional ways. I might have been barking up the wrong trees. Eventually I took it that “I’m gay” was supposed to be a polite let-down.
It was mid-70’s so it was very cool to college women to be “experimental”.
Three of these women eventually marry guys.
Good comments by several folks about the “just be friends” ploy. I’m piggy backing off this one in particular just because it’s an apt starting point.
A gotcha that both men and women face equally is the idea that a friend of their preferred gender (mostly?) corks up the slot that could hold a real BF/GF.
There is a place in the freewheeling multiplayer game called “college” for the FWB or the “drag-along date”, but it’s real easy for that set-up to end up precluding one or both parties from getting what they really want: a BF / GF / mate. And once one is out of school and into the world of work the obstacles to BF / GF / mate get larger, not smaller. Making the opportunity cost of maintaining some “just friends” of your preferred gender increasingly problematic.
Once folks get married, the idea of having close individual friends the same sex as your spouse gets pretty darn ticklish. Lots of ways for that to get turned sideways or cause hard feelings.
So I can certainly understand and endorse the POV of @thorny_locust when being friend-zoned or of the boys that she friend-zoned. Regardless of who did it to who, for the recipient it amounts to
I’m looking for heroin and you’re offering methadone. No thanks. Where’s the fun in that?
It might be polite, but it’s often offered insincerely, or if sincere, is a gift not really wanted.
Slightly different topic:
A few years ago we had a thread about first dates and about how and how soon one knew whether or not a relation had any hope of succeeding. One poster made a comment that’s seared into my memory. As best I can paraphrase:
In the first 3 minutes I can tell whether I could possibly ever sleep with the guy. Sometimes my uterus hurts just thinking about it.
Somehow that visceral description hit me hard. Not that it’s wrong or inappropriate; it’s just … punchy. Very punchy. 
You’re actually flat out contradicting my POV. I said that I know that some people feel that way, but I don’t feel that way myself.
I’ve always had friends who did some things in groups in which people didn’t line up in pairs, and who had some close friends of both genders who they weren’t sexually involved with. Most of them eventually got married, which didn’t change that a bit.
I’m aware of, but don’t really understand, the people who want that kind of exclusivity in their relationships that cuts out everyone else, not only sexually, but for any kind of friendship. It doesn’t make sense to me to say that having a platonic friend blocks off the sexual-relationship slot. While nobody can be close friends with thousands of people, there isn’t that tiny a limit!
Works that way for some people; not for others.
I wasn’t trying to suggest that my writing was describing your POV. I’m sorry if I gave that impression.
You just did a nice job in the paragraph I quoted of introducing the two contrasting POVs. Since you’d expanded on the one, I expanded on the other. Or tried to.
In the months leading up to meeting Ms. P, I was hanging out with a female friend a good bit. I didn’t see any interest on her part of it being anything more, and I was fine with being friends (although I would have been interested in trying and seeing how it went). Ms. P and I met at this friend’s birthday party, and began dating. I found out that our mutual friend was a little disappointed, because she’d thought about us dating. We stayed friends, though, and are still friends 25 years later (all three of us).
My thought process when I was trying to figure out if I had romantic feelings for Sr. Weasel was something along these lines. Our friendship was intense. I saw it continuing for some time, but I knew eventually he would find a partner, get married, and move on, and that I would come secondary to that partner. I absolutely could not stand the idea of losing him that way.
That said, he has lots of female friends and I have lots of male friends. We spend a good deal of time alone with the opposite sex and jealousy has never entered the picture. Even in extreme cases like the time I developed feelings for one of our oldest, closest friends, it was all out in the open with no hard feelings.
But there are a lot of men and women who believe that “taking it to the next level” is a logical step when friendships and romantic preferences align. When your friend doesn’t want to go there, it’s easy to believe they see the term “friend” as a placeholder for “not interested.”
FTR I have a number of women friends, some of whom predate my meeting Mrs. Clark, and others I met later. I have no problems with entanglements since I only have one girlfriend slot, and that position has been filled for the last 40 years.
Not if they’re behaving as a friend, and continue to do so. At least IMO.
Somebody who’s only using it as a placeholder won’t follow up on the friendship even if it’s accepted.
– of course for some people it probably is a placeholder for ‘let’s keep hanging around with the same group of people / going to the same places without anybody acting all upset about it.’