The Friend Zone – as seen by Harriet Sugarcookie

The Friend Zone is infamous. It’s that place we’ve all been to, despite our hardest attempts to avoid it. It provides a comradeship between inhabitants and we applause those that manage to leave it’s suffocatingly sweet streets. But when I hear people talking about it, it’s nearly always from a guy’s perspective. So this is just how I see it, as someone who has put and been put, in the zone.

 Do girls get put in the friend-zone?

Yes. Yes we do. Just from the top of my head; My friend in 6th form who I really liked because he used to sneak me lemon drops, my friend from my media club who I’d have office chair races with,the hot barman who I did a photoshoot with one time and was beautiful like a model, a friend of a friend who actually liked our mutual friend the whole time.

There’s also this thing I call “The Sister Zone” where guy friends have told me they think of my like a little sister. I think this is because guy friends feel instinctively protective of female friends hence putting them in a position of sibling.

Why would she put me in the friend zone?

Because she’s not attracted to you. That’s the simple answer. She may like you a lot, but she doesn’t want to have sex with you. Sometimes I tell guys there’s other reasons, like our friendship means too much for me to jeopardise, or that I’m still getting over my ex. The truth is (for me) if I found you really attractive, those things wouldn’t matter.

But attraction isn’t something we can control! So it’s not your fault. Or her fault. It’s because the little chemicals inside our heads are telling us that we wouldn’t enjoy it and it would produce weird offspring.

Can I get out of the friend zone and if so, how?

People have been known to leave it. How though I have no idea. I said that you get put there because lack of attraction, but then you can become more attractive over time. If you spend a lot of time with a girl and chances are you’ll become emotionally close and sometimes that leads to things like falling in love and whatnot. There’s no set formula though.

But remember guys: being in the friend zone is also a compliment. Because it means you’re a friend. It means your important enough hat she won’t just ignore you, or use you, but she’ll depend on you for support and she trusts you. There’s worse places to be. Like in jail for stalking.