Some male friends of mine in an anime group would bitch and moan about girls that they would ask out and would get the reply of “Let’s be friends.” Their main complain was that while they were ok with that concept it always turned out that the girl would then start avoiding them and not be a friend. The guys would bitch and moan about why the girl couldn’t just say what she meant, that she didn’t want to be around a guy anymore once she found out the guy was romantically interested in her.
So this came out as “Let’s be friends” is a lie and should never be said. I felt bad about this because I was a girl and friends with these guys and I would want to continue to be friends. I felt that due to their anger (which was justified) they were painting things with too broad a brush.
Then, years later, a friend told me he was interested in me. He is from out of the country and so I went out of my way when he would visit the area. He took this to mean I was possibly interested in him. I had no interest in him beyond being a friend. And so Let’s be friends was the solution. And I thought I was good with that. I had no problem being a friend. At that time.
And after he left and time went on, I thought about it. I looked back over the couple of years of our friendship and saw things in a different light. He would send me things from his home country and that was fine for a friend but they felt wrong if they were because he was interested in me. Things started feeling uncomfortable and when I thought of him I would get uncomfortable. I started being very careful about what I would say or do in regards to him.
I stopped wanting to be a friend because I was no longer comfortable. He really didn’t change or do anything different. It was all in how I perceived things.
I turned into one of those girls that said Let’s be friends and then wasn’t. I wanted to explain to the anime guys that the girls weren’t lying to them. When they said it they meant it. They weren’t saying a little white lie so as not to hurt the guy’s feelings. But over time, it turned into a lie. And there doesn’t seem to be any way to bring it up latter on that isn’t just a smack in the face.
“Oh by the way, you know how I said Let’s be friends? Well I have changed my mind. I am too uncomfortable around you and can’t be friends anymore.” This is not something anyone wants to start a conversation with or hear. There was a time for it and it passed when the feeling of friendship was still there.
I am sad to say, I ended up drifting away from this friend without a word. I honestly don’t know how I would handle it differently with him. He wasn’t a close friend, more like part of a circle of friends I saw at cons. I stopped going to those cons and had to drop a lot of those friends.
I have a theory to try. When an occasion comes up where I am aware that this might be a possibility, I mention it and say it is ok to have a change of heart on either side. I am thinking this leaves an opening for later discussion and a peaceful parting instead of just disappearing. Or maybe even letting the other person know that disappearing will be interpreted this way. Kind of an agreement on how to handle it if it comes up.
I have still to test this theory. I had one guy that admitted he was interested in me and said it was his problem because he knew I wasn’t looking for a boyfriend. That made me feel safe and good and ok to do stuff with him. Two weeks later we were dating. Turns out I am a sucker for being cared about and this guy was on my list of possibilities. That wouldn’t happen with the guys that don’t make the list.
I have been on the other side where I was the interested party. When I would check in with him on if we could still be friends (because his friendship was very important to me), he would say he liked me and wanted me around and to know give up on him. Over the next two years since I haven’t heard from him outside of running into him at con when he is working, I think I have finally figured I have been Let’s be friends-ed and have started the process of letting go of wanting that friendship.
I did have another male friend that I was somewhat gaga over that wasn’t interested in me. I wasn’t his type, but he enjoyed my friendship. We would talk about it now and again but we were able to remain friends. That blew up for different reasons I believe since it was over 8 months later when things went down hill.
A lot of how my theory will work will have to do with how honest you can be both with others and with yourself.
Huh. I don’t think I have any experiences with the “not interested in the first place” kind of “let’s be friends.” Only the post-breakup “let’s be friends”. When I’m not interested in people I just tell them no. Whether or not we become/stay friends depends on circumstances. I mean, it’s not like I start friendships with non-crushes with “let’s be friends!”. Well, not since grammar school
“will you be my friend?” is something my first-third grade self said a lot 
The problem with the “let’s just be friends” is that anyone over about 21 has had the experience that it’s really unlikely to work out that way.
However, the problem is not directly that “let’s just be friends” is a lie. The problem is that it’s the second lie. The first lie is “I want to be friends first”. That statement actually means, for most people, “I want to know enough about you that I feel ok dating you, but not so well that if things go badly I’ll regret losing your friendship”. Some large number of men don’t understand that, and take it seriously. When they meet a woman they want to date, they become her friend; then they ask her out. She naturally rejects them, because they’re a good friend, and she doesn’t want to lose that friendship because she knows her breakups end badly. The man, having invested a lot of time and emotion into becoming friends with the woman, feels that his investment has been wasted, and turns away from her, or, alternatively, thinks that perhaps he’s just not been a good enough a friend, and tries to step up his involvement, which then seems creepy or stalkerish to the woman, who freezes the man out.
I only have anecdotal evidence for this, but in my dating history, I’ve only once had sex with someone I’d have considered an actual friend before the sexual relationship started. However, almost everyone I’ve dated/had sex with was what I would consider a “friendly acquaintance” – we both knew something about each other, and there were positive feelings which weren’t just lust going on, but we were only “friends” in the LJ sense, not in the usual sense.
I think you are talking about a different category. What I am referring to is the one where the girl only ever wanted to be friends and was never romantically interested.
You are talking about the category of the beginnings of romantic interest. I don’t think I have ever gone through the lets be friends first path. I do need to know a guy a little bit before dating them and that usually works well by having overlaps at parties and/or cons or hanging out with friends. I do not take well to being asked out by someone I don’t know hardly at all. Those have never worked out because I am just way too defended at the beginning. When a guy asks me out and he isn’t on my interested list, I try to politely decline. I don’t ever start with let’s be friends first.
Actually the way I work, I seem to manage to not get asked out. Sometimes this makes me sad and I feel like I am a loser. Other times I so appreciate not needing to deal with the awkwardness. My “dates” tend to come from just gravitating towards guys that are starting to be my friend that have shown an interest without overwhelming me.
I have had friends that have turned into lovers and later back into friends. I am grateful for this sort of thing in my life.
And I still say that the “let’s just be friends” isn’t a lie. It is correct at that time and then changes. I will admit there are girls that use it as a polite lie but those are not the types of people I hang around. Those would be more “normal” or “mundane” types of people.
What I am referring to is the one where the girl only ever wanted to be friends and was never romantically interested.
So am I. What I commonly see, both in my own experience and in others’, is that the woman has said, offhandedly, or otherwise, that she prefers to be friends with someone before she dates them. The man, being interested in dating the woman, decides to become her friend, for the explicit purpose of dating her. (The friendship is thus also a lie. There’s a lot of deception in this field.) During this process, he never makes his romantic/sexual interest explicit, and so she never feels a need to tell him that she’s not interested in him. Perhaps she’s also not decided whether she is interested at first. Eventually, he forces the issue by asking her out, at which point she turns him down, and he becomes bitter, or a stalker.
It seems to be much more effective for a man to let his interest be known without pushing it right away, in the way you describe happens to you. However, many men don’t learn that lesson until they’ve had a number of bad experiences believing various myths about dating.
shipofools99: What I am referring to is the one where the girl only ever wanted to be friends and was never romantically interested.
terpsichoros: So am I.
But in your initial comment you said:
terpsichoros: She naturally rejects them, because they’re a good friend, and she doesn’t want to lose that friendship because she knows her breakups end badly.
Perhaps this is just a semantic issue, but those don’t sound like the same thing to me. “not interested” and “interested but afraid it will end badly” are clearly different. In the first case there’s just plain no point to pursue dating. In the latter case it’s just up to the guy to either convince her that it won’t end badly (he’s friends with all of his exes so why will she be different?) or that it will be a good enough relationship as to be worth the chance that it will end badly (and who knows maybe it won’t have to end at all!)
Personally I’ve never understood the “I don’t want to date you because I’d lose you as a friend” thing. I’ve never had a friendship so amazing that I wasn’t willing to risk it over a chance to get laid
. But I get that it happens. I guess some people are just not as good at being friends with exes as I am. Or think they’re not.
It is a semantic issue, and I was sloppy. I think that both situations are similar, and that it doesn’t make much difference to the man’s perceptions of the issue if there was any interest from the woman or not.
I don’t understand the “I don’t want to date you because I’d lose you as a friend” thing, either, but that’s because I’ve ended up remaining friends, or returned to being friendly acquaintances with almost everyone I’ve dated. I didn’t understand it much before I had that track record, but that was because I was rather naive at the time.
Personally I’ve never understood the “I don’t want to date you because I’d lose you as a friend” thing. I’ve never had a friendship so amazing that I wasn’t willing to risk it over a chance to get laid
Heh, wheras I’ve never had a relationship end so badly we weren’t still friends. But then I don’t think drifting apart means not being friends anymore when we do see eachother.
–Ember–
Then I don’t see it as a lie on her part but more of a deception on his part. Or a misunderstanding on what is the definition of friend.
I don’t think I want to say that want to be close friends with someone before I date them but I do want to know them before I decide if I am romantically inclined towards them.
I to take exception to the model of a guy getting burned because he hasn’t learned proper lessons and then claiming it is because the girl lied. That is what started my thought process on this topic. My point is there isn’t a lie. Not a first one or a second one. Miscommunications and assumptions are what cause the problems. When one party blames the other by saying there was a lie, then there can never be a solution.
What I have done on my side is pay attention to why it seems like there is a lie to see where the miscommunication is and try to clear it up. But the other side to that is the guy has to be willing to own up to his own part and not place the blame all on the girl.
As to how to handle the problem, I think that the best way to handle it is to not tie friendship to dating verbally.
Just tell other interested men that you are unavailable or not interested in them romantically/sexually. Don’t presume that there already is a friendship, or that one may or may not develop.
Alas, neither part of that dichotomy is always easy. That, the sometime divergence between what we intend, and what actually happens. The best we can do is try to communicate as best we can with the tools we have, and the tools we’re building every day.
well, there’s another aspect to it as well…
what does “be friends” mean?
I have many friendships that don’t resemble one another at all – because level of involvement, boundaries, and frequency of contact are specific to each friendship.
I didn’t use to say “let’s just be friends” – I said instead “you know, thank you, and that’s very flattering, it’s just not where I see us headed – and you deserve someone who does see that as a possibility…”
I didn’t say ‘let’s be friends’ because it seldom works that way unless you both have the same desire for the friendship
Thankfully I don’t think that happened to me very often — I usually ask someone out as soon as I am interested, most often while I am first getting to know them, so when the rejection occurs (and it did often), there was seldom any “let’s be friends” dynamic to have go awry. I have pursued and maintained friendships with women despite those setbacks, but more of those failed connections simply failed to yield a lasting friendship of any sort.
Only once can I really remember remaining friends with somebody, motivated in part by being part of the same program in college, but also by anticipation of a possible future change of mind, a possibility which she had diplomatically failed to discourage, but always managed to find other boyfriends.
I’m not especially proud of it, but I eventually mustered enough courage to explain that so long as there was even a glimmer of hope that something more would come, I would try, and that if she had no intention of ever giving me that chance, then she had to reject it outright so I could get over it. She did, reluctantly, and so I relaxed my entreaties, settling back into a friendship which ended up fading away when I stopped going to school and joined the workforce.
The thing I find is that I do have the desire for the friendship at the time. It is later that changes because the dynamic has changed and I didn’t have time to experience the differences. I was naive.
So now I say that I want the friendship but acknowledge that things might change depending on how it feels going forward.
BTW: I love the icon. When I ran into those pictures I think I saved them off somewhere. It never occurred to me to turn them into icons.
then again, most friendships don’t last, due to changes in one or both people… it’s not like saying “let’s just be friends” is some sort of iron-clad contract…
Just Friends dilema
I have a simmilar issue with a friend of mine. He wants someone special in his life, and the last few potentials said they dont see him that way and what to be ‘just friends’. Because he is the ‘everybody’s friend’ type of personality, he always responds that ‘just friends’ is okay.
The problem is I don’t see why he should settle for less than he wants.
If you want a romantic relationship, why can’t you say “I want to date you, and if you don’t want to date me then being platonic when it’s not what I want is cruel to me.”? because, at some level, isn’t it cruel to expect someone not to want you just because you don’t reciprocate?
Re: Just Friends dilema
If you want a romantic relationship, why can’t you say “I want to date you, and if you don’t want to date me then being platonic when it’s not what I want is cruel to me.”? because, at some level, isn’t it cruel to expect someone not to want you just because you don’t reciprocate?
No. What’s messed up is expecting someone to want you just because you want them.
If I am not interested in someone, and I say so, I am not “expecting” them to change their feelings in any way. I am simply expecting them to accept that we’re not going to have a romantic relationship. If I offer friendship in its place, they are free to accept or reject that offer as they see fit; I am not “cruel” to offer them that choice. Why should I assume that anyone who asks me out is going to have your attitude and think it’s wrong to “settle” for friendship, when some of my best friends have been people I wanted to date but didn’t have a chance with, and I’d've missed out on a lot if I hadn’t been willing to value the friendship independent of any romantic potential?
Not to mention, if someone chooses to not be my friend because they can’t fuck me, then we would never have had a good relationship anyway.
Re: Just Friends dilema
I think you’ve taken it too far.
If I ask you out, and you say “let’s just be freinds.” Do I have a right to say, “no” without being thought of as a jackass?
I think so.
Re: Just Friends dilema
Of course you do. What you do not get to say without being thought of as a jackass is “being platonic when it’s not what I want is cruel to me.”
Re: Just Friends dilema
isn’t it cruel to expect someone not to want you just because you don’t reciprocate?
In what way is offering friendship an expectation of the want going away? I’ve had years-long friendships with people I was interested in but couldn’t have. The want didn’t just vanish. If it became too much to deal with I was always free to exit the friendship at any point.
If someone asks for something you can’t give there’s nothing cruel about offering the lesser alternative that you CAN give, if it is done sincerely. Cruel would be “No! And I never want to see your face again – get out of my sight”.