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Join Holly as she searches Auckland for love and connection.
In which Holly contemplates friendzoning…
I was recently chatting with a man on a dating site. He seemed nice enough, so when he asked to meet, I said yes.
I clarified that I don’t get physical on first dates, so it would just be a friendly, casual coffee… right?
“Forget it,” he wrote back. “I’ve got enough friends. I don’t let women friendzone me anymore. You birches are all the same, just out to waste my time. Fig you, birch!”
Reader, I may have substituted a couple of tree names for some colourful language there, but I trust you to understand my consternation at receiving this little digital tantrum.
You might have heard of the term ‘friendzoning’, but have you heard of ‘figzoning’?
Of course you haven’t, because once again, I replaced a certain F word with ‘fig’.
Let’s start with friendzoning, which is not to be confused with friendship.
Friendship is a freely co-created state of connection. It’s reciprocal and respectful. It sustains us in hard times and amplifies our joy in better times.
It’s a space where we can be challenged and celebrated. True friendship is a miracle.
With friendzoning, someone’s pretending to be there for the miracle, but in reality, they’re just waiting for the relationship to turn intimate.
They’re not brave enough to risk rejection and ask for the relationship they actually want, so they hang around, playing nice, hoping things will change.
Can romantic love grow from friendship? Absolutely! Some of the happiest couples I know started as mates. Intimacy didn’t replace their friendship, only added to it.
The caveat is that true friends are too busy enjoying each other to ever complain about being stuck in the friendzone… and they’d certainly never disrespect their friend by putting them in the figzone.
Figzoning is when someone wants to fig you and is willing to abandon the so-called friendship if they don’t eventually get their way.
When stuck in the figzone, you’re inevitably left wondering whether your ‘friend’ really cares about you at all. Spoiler: they don’t.
They objectified you by putting you in the figzone. They tried to lure you into a transactional dynamic without your consent.
They kept you in the dark about how they really felt, and when those feelings do come to light, it’ll likely be via gaslight.
Nicole Snow described this with indignant accuracy when she wrote, “Girls are not machines that you put kindness coins into until sex falls out.”
(Of course, figzoning could happen to any gender, but anecdotally, it’s more common for women and girls.)
As I ponder all of this on the eve of International Friendship Day (July 30), I feel a strange sort of ruth for the guy who sent me that rude message, because I suspect that when he said he had enough friends, the poor guy was lying like a rug.
Email holly@times.co.nz
Yours in love,
Holly
