Today, I want to share with you a good answer to one of the most common questions that ever hits my inbox and that is —
how do I get out of the friendzone?
And what I have to say is that this is a question, quite frankly, that
I have no experience with; I've never been in the friendzone and I will never be in the friendzone.
That is a total lie; I've been in the friendzone more often that I would like to admit.
In fact, a lot of my young adult life was spent pining over girls that I had a crush on
and never really knowing how or when to show that interest in them
so I have complete empathy and understanding of this position
and I have actually had the experience of getting out of the friendzone in my life
so just know that while the advice I'm going to give to you
is going to be direct and it might sound a little bit harsh at times, it comes
from a place of wanting to motivate you to do better and to do the best things that I did rather than stay stuck there.
And the last piece that I'll say — before we get into the advice is that I am going to use the gender of a guy who is interested in a girl that he likes.
Now, this can come in all different configurations but quite frankly, 99% of
the messages that I get are this and this is what I have familiarity with.
If you are different, if you're a guy who likes a guy or a girl likes a guy or
whatever sort of configuration, this advice still applies to you; I'm just going to speak in that way.
So the first thing is a mindset thing and oftentimes, guys talk about
the friendzone as if it were a place that they got put in by a girl that they like.
They say, "She friendzoned me. She put me in the friend zone,"
and quite frankly this is a denial of responsibility.
You put yourself in the friend zone when you didn't make your honest interest in this person clear.
Now, there is good news to this which is that if you want to get out of the
friendzone, it's not something that she needs to allow you to do — it is something that you can do.
Now, you might get out of there one way or another and it might not be the perfect
way that you would like to get out of the friendzone but you do not have to stay
stuck there so just know that the friendzone is a place where you wind up and
when you prefer hiding your true feelings rather than being honest about them
and risking quote-unquote rejection and we want to move past that.
The second piece is this — the most common way in my life, and in the life of my
friends and clients, and of people that I've seen — people actually do wind up
dating a girl that they were very close friends with — is that they actually step back.
And they take some time to focus not on how-do-I-get-her-to-like me but they
focus on themselves for a period of weeks or even months.
And in my life, what this looked like was, in college there were plenty of girls
that I had crushes on, nothing ever happened, I was kind of friendly with them
and I went abroad and I spent a full year abroad in Spain and Costa Rica.
I studied Spanish, learn to speak Spanish, learn to dance, dated a Costa Rican girl
and really transformed the way that I behaved and felt about myself.
So that when I came back it was a common refrain that,
"Charlie, there's something different about you," and that resulted in me actually
having relationships, some of them were fairly short-lived, with people that had
previously friendzoned me or I felt like they had friendzoned me so
just know that this is a very common way and if you want to go this longer route
and you feel like, "I don't need to necessarily do it tomorrow or this week,"
which is advice I'm gonna give you in later steps, you can focus on yourself and quite frankly, I recommend you do this anyway — find genuine interest of yours.
Pursue them and you will find that women and men, whoever we're talking
about here, become more attracted to you for it.
So third step — let's assume that you do not want to do the multi-month thing
where you focus on yourself; you're gonna do that but you want a faster track to find out if you can get out of this.
The third step is going to be to steady your nerves
because we're gonna do something that requires courage and what I mean by doing that is there's two steps.
The first thing is to imagine the worst-case scenario of revealing your feelings — of going for it.
And what you might picture is that you sit down you tell her,
"Hey, I've liked you for a long time. How do you feel?"
and she bursts out in laughter, she ridicules you, she makes fun of you,
"How could you ever be so stupid as to think," that she says,
"I have no interest to you," when she walks out laughing, right?
That is about as worst-case as I can imagine. In fact, that is kind of comic book
villain worst case scenario for revealing to a friend that you have a crush on them.
That's, quite frankly, not a bad likely scenario but it's the worst case
and what you can realize about that scenario is that —
one — you're not dating them which is the position that you're in right now
and all that you would be dealing with is another person kind of mean to you.
In fact, there's nothing shameful in having a crush and being rejected.
There's something more shameful and being rude and mean about that
but it is the case all the time with the most successful people in the world
that they have chased what they wanted and not gotten it.
And that is a stepping stone to success in life and quite frankly,
something to be proud of even though it hurts in the moment
so just to realize the worst case scenario that isn't that bad is totally survivable.
And the second thing is to make really clear
what you are costing yourself by not going for it.
The first thing is that — I don't think a lot of people realize this — they're trying to minimize the risk.
They want to create a scenario where she kind of comes after them
and where they can deny the fact that they were interested so that they don't risk outright rejection; they could always play it off.
And what you don't realize is by minimizing the risk, you minimize the chances
that she's interested in you because, men and women alike, we are attracted
to people who go for the things that they want while knowing that they might
not get them because what that signals to all of us and what we are all attracted to
is people with high self-esteem which brings me to the next point in here
which is that the longer you spend not going for it, the more you're signaling
to yourself that you're not worthy of pursuing the things that you want,
that you can't handle someone else saying no to you, that you would rather say no
to yourself first rather than give them the opportunity to do that and that's going to decrease your self-esteem.
On the other hand, if you do pursue it, you go for it no matter what happens,
you're telling yourself, "I have faith in you to handle what the world throws at you.
I believe that your wants are worth pursuing. I believe that you can be honest about the way that you feel in this world,"
and that will raise your self-esteem so no matter the outcome, if you come and do
that with this mindset you're going to feel better about it afterwards
and I have to tell you I have gotten emails from guys who have done this kind
of thing, told the girl that they like them, it didn't go well and they email me
with so many exclamation points about how incredibly amazing they feel on the
inside just for doing it which brings me to the third point — no matter how it
turns out — say, that you guys wound up dating or that it's not the case —
the third piece is that there's oftentimes women in your life that, you are just not
realizing, could be a great potential match for you because you're so stuck on this one person and this was the case for me.
Back in high school, I spent probably the better part of my junior to senior year
focusing on one girl and we wound up at the end of this huge press
kissing I think one time and then nothing came of it.
In the meantime, there was another girl who was in one of my classes who was
very smart, very pretty, made an effort to hang out with my friends,
was constantly being bright and cheery and positive when the class was boring
and I was so obsessed with this one girl and it didn't even occur to me
to try to see what could be there and it was only in retrospect looking back years later that I was like,
"Oh, my god..." I don't wanna say her name but she liked me — that could have been a thing
and she was cool in all these ways; I just was incapable of seeing it.
When you're so focused on this one thing and you're not going for it,
not only are you blocking yourself for getting that thing but there's this whole world
of other people and other opportunities that are out there
that you could open your mind to and I don't just mean people to date;
I mean other ways that you could improve yourself; other things you could be doing that are exciting.
You've got all your focus on thinking this can make you happy and you miss the world for it.
So what I hope you realize is that in terms of studying your nerves,
you have so much more to lose by not revealing how you feel than you do
by going out and risking one person saying that they don't want to date you
which brings me to the final piece which is if you want to do with this today,
tomorrow, or this week, I fully encourage it and that is to reveal your feelings.
Now, I am not suggesting that you reveal your feelings and then ask this person to
be your girlfriend because quite frankly, a lot of guys spend a lot of time fantasizing
about what this relationship could be and they spent so much time thinking about
in their head they think they're on a playing field to be ready to date that person.
You don't know if that's the case; you've really not had any sort of romantic
relationship with them so what I recommend is not saying, "Do you want to be my girlfriend?"
it's just letting them know that you are interested in finding out if they feel the same
way so for that, if you're looking for something to say, what I recommend is find a
time when you're alone with this person when you could sit down maybe towards
the end of an evening or the end of a hangout together and just say something like,
"Hey. I know this is kind of out of the blue but there's something that I wanted to
get off my chest and tell you. I like you. I have liked you for a long time as more
than a friend and I have no idea if you feel the same way but I just had to tell
you because because life is short and because I would really regret it if I wasn't
honest about this," and then you can sit and just let them respond.
They might be shocked, they might come back and say I like you too... any number of things might happen.
If they do give you an indication and they say, "I feel the same way," or "I'm surprised but I don't know. Maybe there's something there; I'd be I'm open to it,"
a very simple way to bridge the gap from you're-friends to now you're-something-else is to say,
"Okay. Well, this has been a long time coming then," and lean it to kiss her.
Now, you do not have to make out and it doesn't have to be an intense
30-second French kiss but kiss her on the lips and what that does is that breaks this
pattern of okay-we're-friends to there's-something-else-that-is-quite-frankly-that- happened-and-we're-in-a-different-phase-of-our-relationship-right-now.
At that point, you can set up a time to hang out, maybe go on an official date...
whatever it is but you were out of the friend zone and of course if she does say,
"I'm not interested," a lot of guys say, "It's okay. So what happens?"
and quite frankly, what do you want to happen? Do you still want to be her friend?
If you do in that case, go, "Okay. Well, I'm really happy that I said this.
We can still be friends and still hang out but at least now I feel like
I've been honest with you and I can move on in other areas of my life and we can still hang out like we have."
You don't need to check in, "Is it all cool? Is everything okay?"
Quite frankly, a lot of people think it's awkward to go for what they want and not
get it and what I mean by going for what they want, that can be a job, it can be a person that they would like to date... whatever it is,
that is the way of life; you're going to desire things in your life and it's not going to work out.
You don't need to feel guilty or awkward about it or make sure that everybody else
is okay with the fact that you've revealed something that you would like to happen in reality and it didn't come true;
that is just part of life so I hope that this here in the friend zone has inspired you
to go out and find a way out of it, it is completely in your control one way or another
let us know in the comments and I'm really curious if you do go do this
because I hope that no matter what happens, you will feel that self-esteem raise
and maybe there will even come a relationship out of it.
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I apologize for not having had more breakdowns on my end; I'm going to get back
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