Dudes, Stop Putting Women in the Girlfriendzone

Many an internet whine has been wailed over women who, for some ungodly reason, do not reward the men who are nice to them with sex. It’s because girls only do sex with Bad Boys, reason the complainants, and they’re always putting Nice Guys in the ~*friendzone*~, a terrible space where these hapless, lovestruck Nice Guys wonder, over and over again, Why won’t this stupid bitch fuck me? I’m such a nice guy! I did the Nice!? Now where is my Sex? Now, thankfully, the days of the friendzone may be numbered.

Enter the girlfriendzone, a clever way some Redditors have discovered to turn the grating “friendzone” label on its head. To understand fully what the girlfriendzone is, one must first grasp what the friendzone is.

The most popular Urban Dictionary definition of the “friend zone” is,

What you attain after you fail to impress a woman you’re attracted to. Usually initiated by the woman saying, “You’re such a good friend”. Usually associated with long days of suffering and watching your love interest hop from one bad relationship to another. Verb tense is “Friend-ed”.

Other crowd sourced definitions don’t gloss over the Hurt Feelings as much, describing the friend zone as “a very frustrating and shitty place,” and a “myth” girls tell their “ugly male friends” to spare their romantic feelings. Examples of the famously Friend Zoned include Ron Weasley (although he eventually “escaped,” and by “escaped” I mean tongue kissed Hermione), Duckie from Pretty In Pink, Toby from The Office, and the dude from Love, Actually with the signs who kisses his friend’s wife and we’re all supposed to feel good about it.

Friend zoning, is, in broader terms, something bad that a guy who is not getting laid decides that the woman won’t fuck him is doing. It’s an incredibly self centered and self-pitying way to externalize one’s own mistakes or shortcomings, to blame the complex mystery of fickle human attraction on a woman’s agency, and makes about as much emotional sense as showing up to pick up your dry cleaning at 3 am and becoming so enraged that they’re not open that you throw a brick through the window.

But should something that originates 100% in the feelings of a man (note: women can be “friendzoned” too, but, according to The Internet, this happens much less often) perception be attributed to a woman? Probably not. That’s why, months ago, the ladies of Reddit came up with “girlfriendzoning” in the first place — it’s when guys “only see a girl as a potential girlfriend and not as a friend (or a human, really, in my opinion).”

Girlfriendzoning is not when a man is interested in a woman and is disappointed when her interest is not reciprocated; that’s a normal human way to respond to rejection. It’s the word for the pining blame men place on women for their own unrequited feelings, or for how some men completely lose interest in women as people once it’s clear she’s not interested in them sexually. It’s something done by a man who was never interested in anything but a sexual relationship in the first place, and tried to use faux friendship as a way to achieve sexual ends.

Will “girlfriendzoned” get the traction it deserves? It seems like there’s a little momentum in spreading the word, as noted by Cooper Fleishman at The Daily Dot. Now, Reddit threads where guys lament their inability to level up with the women they’ve decided they’re perfect for but just don’t know it are occasionally peppered with fiery responses from women chastising the dudes for projecting things onto their girl friends that the girl friends didn’t ask for.

But this concept has a much wider application than Reddit. This should be a word at the disposal of any lady who feels guilt tripped by a male friend who was never really a friend to begin with. It should be the rebuttal for any woman accused of leading someone on for going to lunch with a coworker, or by studying for a mutual final in a classmate’s dorm room, or accepting a friend request from a new acquaintance on Facebook. It’s the word we’ve needed but never said. Use with impunity.