Here is traditional Friend Zone theory:
You approach someone for a romantic relationship. They say “no” but they also say that you should be friends. However, there is little chance you will move from friend to romantic partner.
It turns out the Friend Zone is disputed. For example, this popular article claims that the Friend Zone does not exist. Rather, it is simply a face-saving device used by fragile men to deal with rejection.
The question remains, is the Friend Zone real? I will list different Friend Zone theories and then we’ll turn to the evidence.
Classical Friend Zone Theory: You have no rizz, you are sent to the Friend Zone.
Friend Zone Skepticism: People move in and out of the zone so often that the Classical Theory can’t be right.
Friend Zone as Face-Saving Move: You aren’t really X’s “friend.” Rather, it’s a conversational move to save you from embarrassment. [Ed. I thank Maggie Lawler for providing the hypothesis.]
What evidence do we have for these theories? The Friend Zone wiki does note that people seem to believe it’s real. From a study of college undergrads:
The study found that 65.7% of exclusively heterosexual males have friend-zoned someone while 92.6% of exclusively heterosexual females have friend-zoned someone. The study also found that 75.2% of exclusively heterosexual males have been friend-zoned before while only 41.2% of exclusively heterosexual females have been friend-zoned before.
Aside from that study, there is little establishing the existence of the Friend Zone until a 2022 article in the journal Imagination, Cognition, and Personality by LeFebrve et al. called “Conceptualizing the Friendzone Phenomena.” LeFebrve et al. 2022 survey 787 people and ask how often they were moved or moved people into the Friend Zone and how often that change.
After doing a lot of number crunching, they do indeed find it is hard to transition from friend to romantic partner. I quote their conclusion in detail:
Minimal scholarship has explored the common vernacular distinguishing the prevalence and importance of unilateral disagreement about the friendzone. This study sought to concretize the friendzone with a clear definition, and used analytic induction to discover friendzoning types, communication strategies, reactions, and changes. The friendzone constitutes a failed transition for initiators and restricting the relationship to only friendship for respondents. Unfortunately, escaping the friendzone and successfully transitioning into a romantic relationship only occurs in very rare cases.
What have we learned? First, the Skeptical hypothesis (theory 2) is clearly not correct. The Friend Zone is real and escape is hard. Then, the real question is: are people really friends or is it just a face-saving ritual (theory 1 v. 3)? In LeFebrve et al. 2022 (Table 4), suggests that Friend Zoning leads to friendship destruction - 53% percent of Friend Zoned people report friendship termination or decreased friendship. Another 39% report still being good friends. It then appears that Face-Saving accounts for over half of Friend Zoning and Classical Friend Zoning is about 1/3 true. Only 2.7% of people in the Friend Zone graduate to boyfriend or girlfriend.
Bottom Line: If she says," “let’s be friends” then you should accept that’s she’s just not into you and respectfully move on.
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