THE TRUTH ABOUT THE FRIEND ZONE
28 JUNE 2022 (14 MIN READ)
We’ve all been there, wishing for a friendship to develop into something more, but being too scared to reveal our desire due to fear of losing the person at hand or wounding our own self-esteem. During this period of a friend zone, we feel at deep odds with ourselves and the self-deprecating thoughts that come with that can flood our psyches. This feeling of being at odds is reflective of not honoring our truth. And when we do not honor our truth, we do not honor ourselves, leading to all sorts of mental deterioration when we go down that path. But why is the friend zone one of the most popular and easy ways to dishonor ourselves? And how can we push beyond this zone of constriction and into a zone of freedom?
In essence, the friend zone brings up four of the hardest things to deal with in our human experience: overcoming thoughts of insecurity, prioritizing our own needs, communicating vulnerably, and letting go of control over what we think something should be. The key to overcoming the “friend zone” is working our way through these four issues. However, it’s not necessarily the “friend zone” we have to overcome, but rather the zone we put ourselves in during the process of it. And this is the zone of frequent insecure thoughts, suppressing our own needs, shaming our vulnerability, and needing control over someone else’s feelings. If you learn to bypass this constrictive mental prison, the benefits go way beyond the friend zone itself, allowing you to find true freedom in any of your relationships, especially with the one you have with yourself. The gift of the friend zone is, however, to explosively trigger all of these feelings in your body, giving you the opportunity to overcome them and find personal freedom. And out of all the external triggers out there for personal freedom, I believe this one cuts the deepest, because it will accurately reveal how far your insecurities, neediness, vulnerabilities, and need for control really go.
ADDICTION TO THE MENTAL STORY
We tend to look for external situations that reflect the way in which we view ourselves. For instance, a man obsessed with power and viewing himself as worthy of receiving it can be drawn to male-dominated corporate environments, such as financial institutions. He’s drawn to this world because it reflects the world inside his mind: hungry for power and willing to do anything to receive it. Imagine if said man suddenly began to love art and became passionate about gender equality, would he still be drawn to working at a stock market? No, because that external environment would be at odds with his internal environment. Relating this argument to the friend zone, for those of us who continuously find ourselves in that dynamic, a part of our psyche finds the external environment of a friend zone deeply familiar, as it reflects our own internal world. A friend zone brings up feelings and mental narratives of unworthiness, neediness, and self-deprecation. For example, if you have a friend that you have felt romantic feelings for and you have not told them, then you have probably not told them because you do not feel worthy of their romantic love, you need their approval too badly, and you think of yourself as so much less than them that you cannot perceive them seeing you in a different way than you see yourself. However, these mental problems did not merely arise from this moment, they have existed in the psyche long before then—and probably serve as the default thinking patterns for the person in the theoretical scenario. Just like a power-seeking chauvinist could love banking, as it reflects his internal world, insecure, needy people love the friend zone because it reflects the default state of their psyche.
Showcasing the opposite state of mind, I once met this incredibly confident guy whose presence immediately shook up the room. When we got to talking about romantic dynamics, his answers did not surprise me. The topic of friend zones came up; he obviously said that he had never had that experience. His thought process as to why that was the case came down to two main reasons: he could not fake being friends with someone he saw as more than that and as soon as he felt some sort of attraction with a friend he would call it out. A strong state of confidence comes down to a high level of worthiness and non-neediness, leading to the understanding of why this guy did not feel the need to keep people in his life that did not align with his intentions and why he did not care to entertain thoughts of insecurity that would hold him back from saying how he felt. Since this man views himself as worthy of love, and does not require people to give it to him in order to feel good about himself, the external world will match that mentality, which is why he never finds himself in the friend zone. Although only some believe that one’s mental world will attract people, places, and things that align with it, everyone should believe that what we tend to accept in the external world is what we tend to accept in our internal worlds. And this could not ring more true for the friend zone. Thus, the only way to avoid the friend zone is to change your state of mind to possess a high level of worthiness and confidence. One of the best ways to do this is learning how to prioritize our own needs.
PUTTING OUR OWN NEEDS LAST
In terms of the friend zone, putting our own needs last plays out as us repressing our desire to have something more than a friendship with the person in front of us, opting instead for being in a platonic relationship that feels terrible because we are so scared of the potential of losing this person by revealing our feelings. Where does this pattern usually stem from? Most often, it comes down to our experiences as children, where we felt like communicating our needs to our parents would push them away and lead to them not loving us as much. Growing up with this type of parental dynamic puts the message in our brains that communicating what we need from a loved one makes them more likely to not love us, leading to a devastating habit of refusing to state our desires out of fearing losing the people we love the most. Furthermore, due to this dynamic, we can grow up thinking that what we desire is “wrong,” since when we speak up about it, it can push people away. This first step in healing this painful wound is feeling the inner child inside yourself who just wanted to be loved, but was so scared about communicating how they needed to be loved that they opted instead to completely settle for how someone else wanted to love them. Sit with the pain that is coming up when confronting this inner child and give yourself a nonjudgmental space to really feel it. Honor that pain that this beautiful child could not bear to handle, and with the adult body you reside in now, parent your younger self through expressing this pain. Even if you believe that the inner child is a figment of your imagination, understanding where this pain inside your body stems from—a wounded kid—can give you compassion, which is the most necessary component of the healing equation. Whatever part of ourselves that remains in shame will not be able to be healed, and it’s pretty impossible to be ashamed of ourselves as a little kid.
The next step in this process is learning to depend on the love we have for ourselves. As kids, we were not able to have that healthy level of independence, as we quite literally needed our parents’ love to survive. But now that you are a grown adult, that way of living is not justified; it’s merely a continuation of a childhood trauma. Sure, it’s nice to want to feel loved by those close to you, but needing them to love you to feel whole is a completely different story. Loving ourselves unconditionally is the way to overcome this neediness and taste personal freedom. This freedom is due to the fact that since we can provide the love we need for ourselves, we are less likely to compromise who we are to hold on to the love we previously needed others to have for us. And no, I’m not suggesting you can be a total asshole and live life smugly on your own, devout of any love, but I am arguing that by loving yourself, you will be more likely to communicate your vulnerabilities to others, since you will be less fearful of being judged and less scared of losing the person because you can provide for your own needs. When you have no fear surrounding opening up about what you feel and who you are, it suggests that you do not mind losing the person in front of you. Being ok with losing someone if they do not accept you for who you are is the key step in learning to be vulnerable. And this process begins by learning to prioritize your own needs, not the needs of others. You are no longer that hurt child. You have a say in the equation of what treatment you accept from those who love you. Just be kind and compassionate with yourself through this process, as it will not heal overnight. It will require consistent attention and work. Healing is always messy, never linear. It’s when we honor the messy that we make real progress.
And bonus, when somebody feels like you do not need their approval to feel good about yourself, they are much more likely to find you attractive. Thus, if you eradicate your neediness, your chances of getting in the friend zone become a lot lower.
COMMUNICATING VULNERABLY
Unsurprisingly, your ability to communicate vulnerably to others is reflective of how vulnerable you allow yourself to get when you are by yourself. In addition, the energy with which you receive your own vulnerability is important here. Do you shame your insecurities and pain points? Or do you welcome them with love and open arms? The former will lead you to become a closed-off ball of pain, while the latter will free you from shame and contribute to the healing process. This is where inner child work is so crucial—because if we trace our insecurities back to our childhoods and sit with the child in pain, we become less judgmental of our feelings. Once we are able to hold space for our vulnerabilities with love and no judgment, we feel more safe to communicate them to the external world, because we know we will have our own backs if someone does not accept our sensitive words. The opposite occurs when we find ourselves in the friend zone, where we feel ashamed about possessing a romantic desire for a friend, so we refuse to burden them with the same shame we feel about ourselves, opting instead for remaining in a painful silence. When we have feelings for a friend and we tell ourselves that we should not have them, who made that rule? You did. Your own shame for your desires made that rule. To break this, welcome the feeling and honor it both inside yourself and to the person in front of you. The real win in the friend zone is not having the person in question tell us they also have feelings, but honoring our vulnerability, especially when it feels fucking terrifying to do so. To make taking this leap a little easier, consider two key ways to ease your journey: stop lying and start stating your negative feelings.
When we lie, both to ourselves and other people, we unconsciously admit to ourselves that we are so ashamed with the truth of our lives that we have to make something up to live with ourselves. This feeling of shame towards our truth is the leading cause of not being able to be vulnerable. Thus, to break this feeling, stop lying, as it is the easiest way to keep shaming yourself without realizing it. This philosophy rings especially true for the friend zone, where most people lie to themselves about both having romantic feelings and also feeling like the person in question does not want to hear about them. You have the feelings, so stop lying to yourself, and you do not know if the person wants to hear them or not—you can only find that out by revealing the truth. Next, for stating your negative feelings, it’s a habit just like anything else, so start small and work your way up. Starting small looks like telling someone how you genuinely feel if they ask you, such as a friend asking you if you are nervous before a date and you telling them that you actually are. Slowly take off the mask of the person you think you want to be and start wearing the one of who you really are. By communicating how we feel in the present moment, we make that process able to occur. And just because we say we feel a certain way does not mean we have to act from that feeling. You can be nervous for a date and still put on a smile, while enjoying the nerves, not simply sitting there shaking while you shit yourself. Every feeling and every thought that arises in your body is yours, so start acting that way, instead of putting on a performance of someone with different thoughts and different feelings. Those thoughts and feelings are what make you you, even the terrible ones, so learn to live life fully accepting that they are yours and inviting people around you to witness them without feeling embarrassed.
By stopping yourself from lying and telling people how you really feel, you begin to remove the protective barrier of self-shame that disallows you from getting vulnerable. And since being comfortable with vulnerability is the secret sauce to overcoming the friend zone, this work is necessary.
LETTING GO
Although you may have hoped that this article would give you the magic formula to overcome any friend zone you encounter yourself in, that is not what I can hand you. Just like you, I cannot control someone else’s feelings or desires, nor do I desire to manipulate them into doing so. However, what I can hand you are the steps in properly communicating your desire to get out of the friend zone, both emotionally and verbally, as well as how to handle yourself when you do not get the outcome you want. As stated earlier, the prize should not be getting the romantic interest to love you, but rather allowing yourself to overcome your resistance to self-deprecating mental stories, prioritizing your needs, and getting vulnerable—because those are the barriers to self-love, and you cannot properly love someone without learning how to love yourself first. With this intention, if the person of interest does not reciprocate your feelings, you will not feel as crushed, as you stayed true to yourself. Also, since so much of the pain of staying in the friend zone is due to societal shame, by allowing yourself to feel proud of overcoming those interior barriers, you have nothing to feel ashamed about, just quieten down your erroneous perception about how others perceive you. All you have done is gotten one step closer to truly honoring yourself, and nothing should make you feel more proud than that.
In terms of the other side of the battle, learning to not desire controlling someone else’s feelings, this one takes time. Although a clichéd philosophical talking point since the dawn of time, most of the suffering we take on as humans is the desire to control the stuff we have no control over. Thus, a muscle that is required for strong mental health is constantly correcting ourselves when we desire to control things that we cannot control. It’s easy to flex this muscle when it comes to somebody getting our food order wrong, but much harder when somebody feels a certain way about us that causes us to feel ashamed or insecure. The truth is that those negative, shameful feelings have nothing to do with the person in front of you, and they are not responsible for them. You have to radically own these feelings, love them, and respect whatever feeling the person in front of you communicates. If they become a huge asshole and start name-calling you, then that’s a different story. But if it’s as simple as, “I love you as a friend and I am sorry I do not see you as more than that,” then you have no right to judge or get angry at them for thinking that way. You do have a right to heal yourself though, which means you might have to take some space from this person until you feel good enough to somatically accept them as a friend. When taking this distance, make sure you tell the person that your reaction has nothing to do with them and that it is fully yours to own and heal. People respect this way of communication deeply.
Nothing is worse than somebody who resents another person for not feeling the way they want them to feel.
Don’t be that person.
Let go.
