Why Do Men Keep Putting Me in the Girlfriend-Zone?

literaryreference:

You know how it is, right, ladies? You know a guy for a while. You hang out with him. You do fun things with him—play video games, watch movies, go hiking, go to concerts. You invite him to your parties. You listen to his problems. You do all this because you think he wants to be your friend.

But then, then comes the fateful moment where you find out that all this time, he’s only seen you as a potential girlfriend. And then if you turn him down, he may never speak to you again. This has happened to me time after time: I hit it off with a guy, and, for all that I’ve been burned in the past, I start to think that this one might actually care about me as a person. And then he asks me on a date.

I tell him how much I enjoy his company, how much I value his friendship. I tell him that I really want to be his friend and to continue hanging out with him and talking about our favorite books or exploring new restaurants or making fun of avant-garde theatre productions. But he rejects me. He doesn’t answer my calls or e-mails; if we’d been making plans to do something before this fateful incident, these plans mysteriously fail to materialize. (This is why I never did get around to seeing the Hunger Games movie. Not to name any names, but thanks a lot, Tom.) Later, when I run into him at social events, our conversations are awkward and lukewarm. This is because the moment we met, he put me in the girlfriend-zone, and now he can’t see me as friend material.

I must say that I find this really unfair. I mean, I’m a nice girl. I have a lot to offer as a friend, like not being a douchebag and stuff. But males just don’t want to be friends with nice girls like me. They can’t help it, I guess; it’s just how they’re wired, biologically. Evolution conditioned our male hominid ancestors to seek nice girls as mates and form friendship bonds only with the other dudes that they hunted mammoths with. It’s true—I know this because I studied hominids in my fifth-grade science class.

So what’s the answer? Should I take up mammoth-hunting in an attempt to appeal to the friendship centers of men’s primal lizardbrains? Should I keep making guy “friends” and then prevent them from making a move on me by subtly undermining their self-confidence? Should I just give up on those manipulative, game-playing, two-faced bastards once and for all? I don’t know. I mean, I’d really like to have a true friendship with a guy someday, but it’s so hard to trust and respect them when they never say what they mean—and you never know when you might be relegated to the girlfriend-zone.

(via theteratophile)

Source: literaryreference

thesargebag:

It’s amazing how many Tumblrs are specifically designed for people who want to go on feeling heartbroken about relationship problems.

Guys.

Spoiler Alert: relationship stuff that never gets easier no matter how old you get. In fifteen years, when you get your heart broken, you’ll still feel like your intestines have crawled through your stomach in order to beat the shit out of the muscle that sits right below your throat (you know the one).

The only difference is you’ll know that everyone else has gone through the same thing. It’s not a special feeling. It’s part of being a person.

Knowing you’re not alone makes it easier. Dwelling on it doesn’t.

Right. Back to jokes.

When my husband died, because he was so famous & known for not being a believer, many people would come up to me — it still sometimes happens — and ask me if Carl changed at the end & converted to a belief in an afterlife. They also frequently ask me if I think I will see him again. Carl faced his death with unflagging courage & never sought refuge in illusions. The tragedy was that we knew we would never see each other again. I don’t ever expect to be reunited with Carl. But, the great thing is that when we were together, for nearly twenty years, we lived with a vivid appreciation of how brief & precious life is. We never trivialized the meaning of death by pretending it was anything other than a final parting. Every single moment that we were alive & we were together was miraculous — not miraculous in the sense of inexplicable or supernatural. We knew we were beneficiaries of chance… That pure chance could be so generous & so kind… That we could find each other, as Carl wrote so beautifully in Cosmos, you know, in the vastness of space & the immensity of time… That we could be together for twenty years. That is something which sustains me & it’s much more meaningful…

The way he treated me & the way I treated him, the way we took care of each other & our family, while he lived. That is so much more important than the idea I will see him someday. I don’t think I’ll ever see Carl again. But I saw him. We saw each other. We found each other in the cosmos, and that was wonderful.

Ann Druyan on her husband, Carl Sagan.   (via milktree)

(via bookworm-chic)

Source: jukeun

nadiaaboulhosn:

aparticleofdark:

exhi-lara-tion:

“I would encourage anyone who has a crush on my character to watch it again and examine how selfish he is. He develops a mildly delusional obsession over a girl onto whom he projects all these fantasies. He thinks she’ll give his life meaning because he doesn’t care about much else going on in his life. A lot of boys and girls think their lives will have meaning if they find a partner who wants nothing else in life but them. That’s not healthy. That’s falling in love with the idea of a person, not the actual person.”


Thank you, Joseph Gordon-Levitt. 

This is so so so very important. 

Such a good explanation 

(via nchl)

hypervocal:

Why is marriage important? Why are these Prop 8 and DOMA oral arguments before the Supreme Court so damn important? Don’t listen to all the noise — just listen to the lead plaintiff in the DOMA case, an 83-year-old woman named Edie Windsor, who lost her lifelong partner and ended up in a hospital with “broken heart syndrome,” only to wake up and realize the “federal government was treating us as strangers.” This is an everyday hero.

(via waywire)

Source: hypervocal

fishingboatproceeds: isnerdy: fishingboatproceeds: Seriously. Welcome to Happily Ever After, Rosaline. You live in a united and prosperous Verona. And you don’t have to hang out with people who get married within hours of meeting. You won the freaking Shakespeare tragedy lottery. p.s. I hear that Paris guy ain’t half bad. Oh, he’s dead, too? YEAH MAYBE YOU SHOULD JUST COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS THEN. Clearly the only man in that play for me is Mercutio.  Oh, he’s dead, too? Might I recommend Benvolio?
View Separately

fishingboatproceeds:

isnerdy:

fishingboatproceeds:

Seriously. Welcome to Happily Ever After, Rosaline.

You live in a united and prosperous Verona. And you don’t have to hang out with people who get married within hours of meeting.

You won the freaking Shakespeare tragedy lottery.

p.s. I hear that Paris guy ain’t half bad. Oh, he’s dead, too? YEAH MAYBE YOU SHOULD JUST COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS THEN.

Clearly the only man in that play for me is Mercutio.  Oh, he’s dead, too?

Might I recommend Benvolio?

Source: imnotan-option

carlosbaila:

Marina Abramovic meets Ulay

“Marina Abramovic and Ulay started an intense love story in the 70s, performing art out of the van they lived in. When they felt the relationship had run its course, they decided to walk the Great Wall of China, each from one end, meeting for one last big hug in the middle and never seeing each other again. at her 2010 MoMa retrospective Marina performed ‘The Artist Is Present’ as part of the show, a minute of silence with each stranger who sat in front of her. Ulay arrived without her knowing it and this is what happened.”

“En los años 70, Marina Abramovic mantuvo una intensa historia de amor con Ulay. Pasaron 5 años viviendo en una furgoneta realizando toda clase de performances. En 1988, cuando su relación ya no daba para más, decidieron recorrer la Gran Muralla China, empezando cada uno de un lado, para encontrarse en el medio, abrazarse y no volver a verse nunca más. En 2010 el MoMa de Nueva York dedicó una retrospectiva a su obra. Dentro de la misma, Marina compartía un minuto en silencio con cada extraño que se sentaba frente a ella. Ulay llegó sin que ella lo supiera, y esto fue lo que pasó”

(via wilwheaton)

Source: carlosbaila

jayparkinsonmd: Are you in your twenties? Are you an entrepreneur? Have you been told by your friends, your advisors, and your professional peers that now is your time to build your own life and not worry about things like settling down and having children — especially if you’re a female entrepreneur? It makes sense, right? This is the only time in your life when you have no ties, no mortgage, no kids to support. This is the only time you can really do something ambitious, if you’re being practical… This is a noble cause. There is nothing more professionally satisfying as building something. Something you love. Something you can “get behind.” But… There was this girl. This guy. Eh, fuck it. You’re busy. You have more important things to do. Changing the world is a full-time job and if you don’t do it now, when will you?  As with coding and management and matters of finance and marketing, relationships have a learning curve. You learn the basics of “relationshiptiva” (note to copyed: yes, I made up that word): How to deal with sexual etiquette, mundane everyday things, scheduling, and appropriate meetings with close friends, and some equitable plan for who’s supposed to pay for dinner or wash the dishesthis time. These are basics. And if you’re learning them in your thirties, it’s going to be much harder. But that is not the point. The point is that thirty (or thirty-two, or thirty-five) is not the age when you want to be practicing serious relationships for the first time. Because learning how to develop a meaningful, sustainable relationship and keep it healthy takes some extended practice. You have to get beyond the basics — the sexual negotiations and the decisions about whose clothes go where and how to talk about exes. You have to figure out how to fight well, how to negotiate major value conflicts (if you can — some are impossible), and how to deal with theinevitabilities that come your way. Relationships are too important to learn how to face those issues at the last minute. You have to go through a few of them to know how to properly conduct one. You have to fail. You have to date a few terrible people. You have to be the asshole yourself sometimes. You have to learn how not to be the asshole. You have to spend tons of time together — so much time that sometimes you feel indistinguishable from each other and you find that both reassuring and disturbing. You have to have a vicious fight and know it’s not ending you and that you’re going to have to work to repair it and that the effort is worthwhile. These things take time. I think it’s fair to say — with no scientific evidence — that deathbed wishes rarely include, “If only I had put another twenty hours a week in at the office! That slightly cleaner product release would have made all the difference.” But that guy, that girl? You might regret that. Thank you Elizabeth. More people need to listen and understand this. (via Why Developing Serious Relationships in Your 20s Matters)
Pop-upView Separately

jayparkinsonmd:

Are you in your twenties? Are you an entrepreneur? Have you been told by your friends, your advisors, and your professional peers that now is your time to build your own life and not worry about things like settling down and having children — especially if you’re a female entrepreneur?

It makes sense, right? This is the only time in your life when you have no ties, no mortgage, no kids to support. This is the only time you can really do something ambitious, if you’re being practical…

This is a noble cause. There is nothing more professionally satisfying as building something. Something you love. Something you can “get behind.” 

But… 

There was this girl. This guy. 

Eh, fuck it. You’re busy. You have more important things to do. Changing the world is a full-time job and if you don’t do it now, when will you? 

As with coding and management and matters of finance and marketing, relationships have a learning curve. You learn the basics of “relationshiptiva” (note to copyed: yes, I made up that word): How to deal with sexual etiquette, mundane everyday things, scheduling, and appropriate meetings with close friends, and some equitable plan for who’s supposed to pay for dinner or wash the dishesthis time. These are basics. And if you’re learning them in your thirties, it’s going to be much harder.

But that is not the point. The point is that thirty (or thirty-two, or thirty-five) is not the age when you want to be practicing serious relationships for the first time. Because learning how to develop a meaningful, sustainable relationship and keep it healthy takes some extended practice. You have to get beyond the basics — the sexual negotiations and the decisions about whose clothes go where and how to talk about exes. You have to figure out how to fight well, how to negotiate major value conflicts (if you can — some are impossible), and how to deal with theinevitabilities that come your way.

Relationships are too important to learn how to face those issues at the last minute. You have to go through a few of them to know how to properly conduct one. You have to fail. You have to date a few terrible people. You have to be the asshole yourself sometimes. You have to learn how not to be the asshole. You have to spend tons of time together — so much time that sometimes you feel indistinguishable from each other and you find that both reassuring and disturbing. You have to have a vicious fight and know it’s not ending you and that you’re going to have to work to repair it and that the effort is worthwhile. These things take time.

I think it’s fair to say — with no scientific evidence — that deathbed wishes rarely include, “If only I had put another twenty hours a week in at the office! That slightly cleaner product release would have made all the difference.” But that guy, that girl? You might regret that.

Thank you Elizabeth. More people need to listen and understand this.

(via Why Developing Serious Relationships in Your 20s Matters)

thedailywhat:

Gay Announcement of the Day: Josh Weed is a devout Mormon, happily married to a woman — and gay.

The Washington therapist came out in a post on his blog last week:

Some might assume that because I’m married to a woman, I must be bisexual. This would be true if sexual orientation was defined by sexual experience. Heck, if sexual orientation were defined by sexual experience, I would be as straight as the day is long even though I’ve never been turned on by a Victoria’s Secret commercial in my entire life. Sexual orientation is defined by attraction, not by experience. In my case, I am attracted sexually to men. Period. Yet my marriage is wonderful, and Lolly and I have an extremely healthy and robust sex life. How can this be?

This video reveals the reactions the couple has received since he broke the news: “We feel loved.”

[thedish]