I hear women of all different ages and ethnicities say all the time that it’s hard to find a good man and I must disagree with this sentiment.  I know for a fact that there are plenty of good men out there.  My father is one, my brother is one, my hubby is one and I have met some recently that have all the makings of a good man.  The problem as proposed to me by She Hate Me is that women find all the qualities they want in a mate, plus some but yet they will look him over and automatically throw him into The Friend Zone.

We all know about the dreaded FZ.  A dude will hang around you, listen to your endless rants and raves about your current man, take you out as if he is actually dating you; yet he will be left with nothing but fantasies of the two of you holding hands, falling in love, fucking or whatever he intends to do with you.

This was a pretty tough question for me to answer because I had to be honest with myself.  As a woman, I am guilty of throwing dudes into the FZ but I believe that this was done so after careful consideration.  Some women will use it to their advantage if they know a guy is feeling them.  They may try to use them or they may be totally unaware. They may be seeking that thrill in the so-called bad boy.  Some women just need a challenge.  Men aren’t the only ones that find discontent at being too available.

But me, I’m different.  I enjoy the company of men. I like being around them, I like the comfort I feel when around them.  They aren’t as hard to please as women, not as judgmental, you get to see the world from a different set of eyes and you are always bound to learn something new.  But at the same time I have always been boy crazy.  Even my mom knew it.  When my grades slipped a little bit in junior high, she scolded me by shouting, “If you weren’t so worried about those stupid boys, your grades would be better!”  So I can honestly say that I have had my fair share of boy friends and boyfriends.

For me, there’s a pretty thin line between letting a dude cross over into my threshold or forever holding him contempt in the boundaries of being BFF and there are two main reasons why:

One is the lack of attraction:

A really good friend of mine ended up in the friend zone and remained there until the untimely demise of our friendship nearly 5 years ago.  When I met him, we were 10 years old and we were at a party playing spin the bottle.  I spinned, the bottle pointed at him and immediately I thought “No way.”  At the age of 10 I knew that I was not attracted to him at all.  We became close friends immediately, so close that he was part of our family.  We went through junior high and high school sharing classes and even having to be separated in our classes because we couldn’t stop talking and laughing.  Everyone always swore up and down that we were dating or that we liked each other.  And I’ll admit that everything we did qualified as dating and being in a relationship.  We talked on the phone for hours on end and when we weren’t on the phone we were always in each others presence – going to the football games, the movies, sitting at the house drinking or hanging out with this friends, going to the club, etc.  When we got to college, my boyfriends never liked him.  They thought we spent too much time together but I didn’t care what they thought of him.  He was my best friend and there was no way I was going to cut him loose for them.  During our sophomore year of college, he went back home but we still talked all the time.

Then it happened – the confession.  He mailed me a Valentine’s Day card in which he declared all the feelings for me that he had tucked away after nearly a decade.  We didn’t really talk about what exactly was in the card.  I think he pretty much knew what the situation was.  So our friendship continued unharmed until I got married and got pregnant.

The funny thing is that years after he admitted everything I would often ask myself why I wasn’t into him.  I felt as though he was so perfect but that one thing was missing.  Although it’s not the most important quality to me, the power of attraction is strong and can not be ignored.

I believe that he is the only one who failed to crossover for that reason though.  I’ll give a dude a chance as long as he doesn’t blow it in the first 5 minutes of us meeting each other.  You do know that most women know in the first 5 minutes whether or not they can fuck with you, yes?

That being said, most others fell into the category of bad timing:

So me and ‘Taurus’ had been friends all throughout high school.  He would walk me to and from classes, we would talk on the phone occasionally, he would give me compliments all the time and he was just all around cool.  Then we ended up going to the same college.  But for me, college was a completely different ballgame.  There are dudes from everywhere and not just your neighborhood and it was like the ultimate high for me.  One of the first dudes I started liking stayed in the same dorm as Taurus.  So one day when Taurus invited me up to his room to chill, I unknowingly made the mistake of asking him to take me to my new crush’s room (it was an all male dorm and you couldn’t walk around unaccompanied).  I guess this was his breaking point.  He said to me “What the fuck do I look like taking you to see some other dude and I’m trying to get with you?”  At this point it honestly had not occurred to me that he was feeling me.  I think for me, I was just far too busy looking at all the other dudes that were out there to really take notice.  So while me and Taurus didn’t hook up right away, we did spend about 5 years in an on again, off again sort of relationship.  So for me and him, and most others, it was all about timing.

So that’s my take on The Friend Zone.  And it also has me wondering…

What makes a dude put a chick in the FZ?  People always argue that men and women can be strictly friends so I’m really curious to know what the process is like….