My apologies – is ‘Bless your heart’ the downvote in these parts? If so, how do I go about removing it? I actually meant to click whatever the equivalent of ‘like’ is.
I did the same thing as a guy at uni. I had two older sisters, was rather good-looking (I can say that because I’m now 20 years old, and 30 kilos heavier) and between having frown up in a female-dominated family, and the way that even people with ZERO interest in you romantically/sexually will authentically enjoy your company more, and flatter you LOTS more, despite also being genuine friends, made me feel much more comfortable around girls that guys.
It wasn’t because I was some ‘player’, sleeping with all of them – quite the opposite (I was the definition of ‘serial monogomist’. We were – and in many cases still are – genuine friends.
Of course, I ALSO did the ‘friend-zoning’ thing a LOT. It’s weird how so many guys throw that term around to speak negatively of women, as though guys never friend-zone women (hint: we do it ALL THE TIME, at least when young). I was particularly assholish, until I was 21, when I met the first of a series of truly wonderful, funny, intelligent, beautiful inside and out, long-term girlfriends (and 1 wonderful guy I dated for 6 months) that continued through to meeting my darling wife (I genuinely believe that I’m the luckiest person I’ve ever known when it comes to my relationships – out of those 4 pre-marriage relationships, there isn’t a single one I don’t look back on fondly, and they and their families remain good friends of mine).
Prior to then (15 to 21), I did all the things that I see guys accusing women of doing – pretending to be interested in casual sex so that I could get a girl to buy my drinks and give me a lift home, deliberately acting like I was interested in dating someone right up to the point where they’d expect me to make a move and then pulling back to cold-shoulder them, then flirting with them again to keep them as sycophantic ‘friends’ who I’d use to get the notes for classes I skipped, pay for my rave tickets by acting like going to that together might be the start of ‘something’, you name it. The most horrible thing I did was lead on a lovely girl I met backpacking in Scotland, until she paid for me to come with her to Netherlands and Belgium afterwards.
I don’t want this next part to be an excuse for my terrible, terrible behaviour – it’s not like I’ve any means of knowing that I wouldn’t have been just as big a douche anyway. But (and this is something I talk about freely and often on the internet, but have never told anyone IRL, other than the handful of people who saw it happen, and apologised years later for not stepping in – I don’t blame them, the concept of ‘female on male’ rape simply didn’t exist then – I don’t understand why people blame feminists for not talking it, because frankly if it wasn’t for feminism I’d never even have known that ‘rape’ is the proper word for the thing that left a shadow over my teenage years, and that at it wasn’t just my fault for drinking too much and passing out; and frankly, to hear them just say that it was clear to them as witnesses,even at the time, was enough to bring tears of relief after assuming for so long that I was a freak for feeling that way. It was around the same time that I found out I wasn’t the only one – that the same woman did the same thing in the same cicumstances to a friend of mine – by then 20 when he was 15,
I’m not trying to compare this to what female survivors go through, or that it’s as ‘bad’ as when a guy does it to a woman – how could I even know that? I don’t even know what’s the proper ‘male’ reaction to having that happen to them, I only know my own reaction. And yes, like most 14 year old boys, I would have LEAPT at the chance to have sex with an attractive girl 5 years older than me (a friend of one of my sisters). But NO 14 year old guy wants to lose his virginity with a stranger in a public park – on the ground in a fucking PARK, with people watching and laughing you. No 14 year old boy wants their first time to be too passed out to move or push her off, but not quite passed out enough to not know what was happening (please, nobody start that crap about not being able to get an erection when passed out drunk – surely nobody who has ever lived with a guy, seen our ‘wake up at 5 with an involuntary erection that’s been there long enough to be painful, bladder at bursting point, and most definitely NOT interested in sex right then’ daily routine could possibly believe that). No 14 year old guy wants to spend the next 12 months utterly terrified that the sociopath who did that to you might have got pregnant and that you’ve got a kid with someone you loathe.
From then until 21, it wasn’t that I lost interest in sex – just all interest in being sexually attracted to someone, while utterly obsessed with having power over women by them being sexually/romantically interested in me. Some of the girls I did that to where ones I actually really liked, and wanted a relationship with – they were genuine friends, who liked the things Iiked, who laughed at my dumb jokes and were attractive, what more can you want from a girlfriend?
Again, I’m not justifying my behavour – for all I know, I could have been just as big an asshole anyway. But guys, next time you accuse a girl of serial friendzoning, you might want to think about WHY they are like that, about how nobody male or female, truly wants to treat their friends like crap, or to deny themselves the opportunity for a good relationship with someone they already respect and have fun with. Is it 30% that’s the current stat for what proportion of women have suffered some sort of sexual assault by the time they’re 25? Do you really think that you, the guy whose only problem is that he got rejected (not de-friended, just rejected romantically), are the biggest victim in this? Or do you take the time to think that the girl you’re accusing of friendzoning might have had something happen to her as that which invaded my brain like a hostile takeover of my personality,and left me with a burning, self-loathing,need to feel powerful, even at the cost of hurting my friends and myself?
My apologies – is ‘Bless your heart’ the downvote in these parts? If so, how do I go about removing it? I actually meant to click whatever the equivalent of ‘like’ is.
I did the same thing as a guy at uni. I had two older sisters, was rather good-looking (I can say that because I’m now 20 years old, and 30 kilos heavier) and between having frown up in a female-dominated family, and the way that even people with ZERO interest in you romantically/sexually will authentically enjoy your company more, and flatter you LOTS more, despite also being genuine friends, made me feel much more comfortable around girls that guys.
It wasn’t because I was some ‘player’, sleeping with all of them – quite the opposite (I was the definition of ‘serial monogomist’. We were – and in many cases still are – genuine friends.
Of course, I ALSO did the ‘friend-zoning’ thing a LOT. It’s weird how so many guys throw that term around to speak negatively of women, as though guys never friend-zone women (hint: we do it ALL THE TIME, at least when young). I was particularly assholish, until I was 21, when I met the first of a series of truly wonderful, funny, intelligent, beautiful inside and out, long-term girlfriends (and 1 wonderful guy I dated for 6 months) that continued through to meeting my darling wife (I genuinely believe that I’m the luckiest person I’ve ever known when it comes to my relationships – out of those 4 pre-marriage relationships, there isn’t a single one I don’t look back on fondly, and they and their families remain good friends of mine).
Prior to then (15 to 21), I did all the things that I see guys accusing women of doing – pretending to be interested in casual sex so that I could get a girl to buy my drinks and give me a lift home, deliberately acting like I was interested in dating someone right up to the point where they’d expect me to make a move and then pulling back to cold-shoulder them, then flirting with them again to keep them as sycophantic ‘friends’ who I’d use to get the notes for classes I skipped, pay for my rave tickets by acting like going to that together might be the start of ‘something’, you name it. The most horrible thing I did was lead on a lovely girl I met backpacking in Scotland, until she paid for me to come with her to Netherlands and Belgium afterwards.
I don’t want this next part to be an excuse for my terrible, terrible behaviour – it’s not like I’ve any means of knowing that I wouldn’t have been just as big a douche anyway. But (and this is something I talk about freely and often on the internet, but have never told anyone IRL, other than the handful of people who saw it happen, and apologised years later for not stepping in – I don’t blame them, the concept of ‘female on male’ rape simply didn’t exist then – I don’t understand why people blame feminists for not talking it, because frankly if it wasn’t for feminism I’d never even have known that ‘rape’ is the proper word for the thing that left a shadow over my teenage years, and that at it wasn’t just my fault for drinking too much and passing out; and frankly, to hear them just say that it was clear to them as witnesses,even at the time, was enough to bring tears of relief after assuming for so long that I was a freak for feeling that way. It was around the same time that I found out I wasn’t the only one – that the same woman did the same thing in the same cicumstances to a friend of mine – by then 20 when he was 15,
I’m not trying to compare this to what female survivors go through, or that it’s as ‘bad’ as when a guy does it to a woman – how could I even know that? I don’t even know what’s the proper ‘male’ reaction to having that happen to them, I only know my own reaction. And yes, like most 14 year old boys, I would have LEAPT at the chance to have sex with an attractive girl 5 years older than me (a friend of one of my sisters). But NO 14 year old guy wants to lose his virginity with a stranger in a public park – on the ground in a fucking PARK, with people watching and laughing you. No 14 year old boy wants their first time to be too passed out to move or push her off, but not quite passed out enough to not know what was happening (please, nobody start that crap about not being able to get an erection when passed out drunk – surely nobody who has ever lived with a guy, seen our ‘wake up at 5 with an involuntary erection that’s been there long enough to be painful, bladder at bursting point, and most definitely NOT interested in sex right then’ daily routine could possibly believe that). No 14 year old guy wants to spend the next 12 months utterly terrified that the sociopath who did that to you might have got pregnant and that you’ve got a kid with someone you loathe.
From then until 21, it wasn’t that I lost interest in sex – just all interest in being sexually attracted to someone, while utterly obsessed with having power over women by them being sexually/romantically interested in me. Some of the girls I did that to where ones I actually really liked, and wanted a relationship with – they were genuine friends, who liked the things Iiked, who laughed at my dumb jokes and were attractive, what more can you want from a girlfriend?
Again, I’m not justifying my behavour – for all I know, I could have been just as big an asshole anyway. But guys, next time you accuse a girl of serial friendzoning, you might want to think about WHY they are like that, about how nobody male or female, truly wants to treat their friends like crap, or to deny themselves the opportunity for a good relationship with someone they already respect and have fun with. Is it 30% that’s the current stat for what proportion of women have suffered some sort of sexual assault by the time they’re 25? Do you really think that you, the guy whose only problem is that he got rejected (not de-friended, just rejected romantically), are the biggest victim in this? Or do you take the time to think that the girl you’re accusing of friendzoning might have had something happen to her as that which invaded my brain like a hostile takeover of my personality,and left me with a burning, self-loathing,need to feel powerful, even at the cost of hurting my friends and myself?