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So, despite it being years since the term was coined, the phrase "friend zone" is still ridiculously popular among men and boys who believe that women should date them just for being a decent human being. This disturbs me.

For starters, let's title the phrase as what it actually means. At best it should be titled "pine away after unrequited love forever zone", and at worst it should be titled "stalker zone". Because let's be honest. In most cases the person in the zone has either not explicitly made his feelings clear, or he has, and has ceased to be part of an easy friendship and become more of an obsessive. Here's the thing men. You cannot expect women to just want you because you're not a jerk. It doesn't work that way. Women will tolerate a rather large amount of bad behavior from the men you think are jerks, for the simple reason that those men typically have things about them that make them interesting or appealing. If you just hang out with a woman all the time, and treat her like a queen, you'll still lose out to the man who talks to her only on occasion, but owns a nice car, has a good job, speaks a second language, plays two instruments (interesting ones), and knows how to tell her he's interested. Why does that seem so unfair to apparently the majority of males on the Internet? It makes sense. If she's a traditional woman, she'll like it because he can support her. If she's more modern-minded (which is better in my opinion), then she'll like it because it means she won't have to support him. You can't expect a woman to be impressed by nice deeds and non-skills. Yeah, you bought her lunch and helped her change a flat, and yeah, you're pretty great at Mass Effect. That doesn't make you the most eligible bachelor in her life. For one thing, it's high past time a girl knew how to change her own flat, and you'd be surprised how many know how to if a guy isn't there to do it. For another, being good at video games isn't a skill. I see it listed as a skill all the time. For God's sake, I saw a CV that listed that as a skill once. Again, it's not.

Women want men who are interesting, can pay for dates, have a social life and friends, have future plans, understand basic hygiene, and have an air of confidence about them. You stammering your way through admitting your feelings to her didn't come across as sweet and didn't melt her heart. It came across as begging and pathetic, especially if you've invested a lot of time into building a friendship with her first. If you find yourself talking to a girl on a regular basis for more than two weeks without asking her out, trust me, that ship has sailed. She exclusively thinks of you as a friend, unless you are one of those outgoing interesting confident men I was speaking of a second ago. And a man like that knows to ask a girl out before two weeks, because he knows what he wants and that he doesn't want another friend.

Side note: No woman is going to be even slightly interested in you if you sweat when you move, pant when you think, have grease flowing from every pore, and have your zits and neck beard groomed together. Get in shape. I'm not saying look like a model. I'm overweight myself. Just don't look like a guy who would die from a heart attack while sleeping with a woman. Do some cardio, take a shower (every day, and wash your bloody hair), get some zit cream, and if you're gonna have facial hair at least style it. A soul patch or a goatee, douchey as they are, are preferred over a patchy ungroomed neck beard.

So what should you do if you've fallen hopelessly in love with a girl, confessed your feelings, but instead of her immediately jumping on your lap, you heard the whole sad terrible demoralizing "just friends" speech? It's very simple. Very painful and slightly awful, but very simple. You break your own heart. You stop trying with that particular woman. You take your heart out, crush it in your hands, shove it back in your chest, and work on moving on. Her feeling about you more than likely will not change if you keep hanging around. It's more likely that she'll start to think of you as creepy and feel uncomfortable around you. Trust me, I've gone through it.

My wife and I had a long history of the "friend zone" before we ever got together. I first friend zoned her when we met. Not long after, I realized I had made a mistake, but it was too late. See, most women stop being interested when they're friend zoned. So, when I became interested, she friend zoned me. After six months or so, I explained my feelings to her, and got the "just friends" speech. I became determined to win her back. I texted her over one hundred times a day. I made plans every day with her. If she wanted to hang out with someone else, I became jealous, and I made sure to cancel plans with other friends if she wanted to hang out with me. I was, in short, a stalker. And she knew that. She thought of me as being creepy, possessive, and obsessive, about a relationship that didn't actually exist. She eventually told me that, prompting me to have a life-changing realization.

She friend-zoned me because I was too familiar.

I was being creepy.

I was being a bit of a stalker.

I could end it by adjusting my methods and leaving.

So that's what I did. I broke my heart and quit hanging out with her so much. I concentrated on my music, my friends, and above all, on other girls. We didn't stop being friendly, but for a bit at least, we were no longer inseparable. It was working much better actually. She didn't get disgusted by my presence, and I didn't feel like an obsessive creep. I started dating a girl who liked that I was a musician, that I knew how to work on cars, talk to women, and make money, and who was most importantly only a casual acquaintance who I had known for very little time. But then a weird thing happened. My wife became jealous. She realized she liked those things about me too. She missed having me around all the time, and hated the fact that other women could be interested in me. She wanted me back. So we got together, and four years later, I'm happily married.

So, it seems that I'm saying, "hey, keep trying you'll get out of the friend zone eventually!" I'm not. You'll note, that I only did when I quit trying to be with the woman who later became my wife. You can't expect a woman to be into you if she knows literally everything about you. There's no mystery, no interest.

So the message is to adjust and try again with another girl. What you have isn't actually love. It's the love of an idea, of a concept. It's not something real.

Love is something almost holy, that must be worked out between two people who both want it to happen. It is the highest pleasure that man can attain in this life. True love doesn't happen at first meeting, and you don't "just know" when it's right. On some level, it will be easy, but not in the way you think. Love is to be equated with truth, and when one person lies about their intentions, love cannot be had.

"Friend zone"... what a crock.