On the Friend Zone

Ah, the 'Friend Zone'... At some point, the enemy of almost every guy out there – although thinking about it, I've never heard a female who has cursed being parked in the Friend Zone. It doesn't happen. [The picture has no relevance at all to this post. I just rather like it.]

Guys, I'll tell you how you get placed there. Three ways.

1) You know the theory that if you're kind and understanding and always available with a shoulder to cry on, that eventually a woman will realise you are just so darn sweet she needs you in her life? Oh so wrong. Chicks want all that – but preferably in a package that suggests excellent and regular ravishing. We might not be so keen on the genuine 'bad boy', but a hint of subdued 'badness' is always welcome. Why on earth do you think that ridiculous creation, 'Fifty Shades of Gray', has taken the world by storm? All those readers are probably dating or married to Beige Boy, a bland creation who believes a candlelit dinner with a violin scratching away in the background is ideal for 'getting her in the mood'.

2) If the chick has any morals whatsoever, you'll be automatically Friend Zoned if she meets you when you're married or in a serious relationship. You will be mentally designated a 'no go area'. It's well nigh impossible to ever leave the Zone if she is friends with your wife or girlfriend: she'll know every detail about you. Everything. Women are vicious and have no qualms at all about discussing the most intimate details – particularly when a relationship is heading towards the rocks and they're trying to justify the Drop Off point.

3) The final method is the biggie, because it is entirely self-created and self-perpetuating. Girls know it is hard for a guy to make a move: it requires a modicum of courage and more than a touch of self-belief, and that's partly why we leave it up to you. There is also that thing of chicks being automatically branded a Tart if they so much as hint at making the first move. In a nutshell, we expect you to put in the effort. We are more than happy to provide you with ample opportunities and drop hints here and there, but remember: hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. We'll regard it as 'scorning' if, after all our efforts, you still don't make a move – and promptly throw you for all eternity into the Friend Zone.

It seems to me that in the initial stages of a relationship, the girl holds all the cards. She has something the guy is after – something the guy probably doesn't get anywhere near as much he likes to convince his buddies he does – and has total control over where and when that is made available. Unfortunately, after a certain point (could be weeks or months or years), the guy has something she wants: the offer to look after her forever; the chance of a family; security and dependability. And there we have it, the guy now has control. Bham.

Only when guys are ready to play that role will they do so, and there's not a damn thing any woman can do to make them change their minds. All these people who speak of 'the one that got away': if you're a chick, the guy would have run no matter what you did so stop beating yourself up. And if you're a guy, chances are you are entirely responsible for ending that by determinedly staying in your Child Zone and not migrating to Adult Territory.

On another note, and something I'll perhaps delve into with slightly more determination on another occasion than this particular posting, I actually think it is possible for any guy to get any girl – he must just play his cards right. But for any girl to get any guy? No, it doesn't work both ways. Hm. I'll think about that one.

*This blog posting was brought to you by the letters A and M: Appalling grammar, Minimal editing, Morning not-really-awake-yet-ness.

- “It's easier to say you've been friend-zoned than admitting you're too shy to take the initiative.”

Into the living sea of waking dreams -

I don't know about you, but I have the tendency to re-evaluate everything at the start of a new year (or, in this instance, half way through the first month of a new year). And I've had a few conversations recently that have left me wondering who I really am.

Which led me to thinking about writing some kind of blog post about that – which in turn led me to thinking about the line in John Clare's poem, 'I am – yet what I am none cares or knows.' So then I thought it would be beyond self-indulgent for me to figure out what I am through a blog post that I then inflict on you poor readers, before it struck me that you don't have to read the dratted thing if you don't want to so, darn it all, I'll write it anyway.

I don't fit into any conventional pigeonholes. My nomadic lifestyle sees people automatically assume I'm something of a hippy – and perhaps I am in a way, just without the dreads, the dope, and the tie-dyed tshirts. I'm vegetarian (and have been for fifteen years now), have dreams of one day having my very own vegetable patch, I try to buy products that haven't been tested on animals – but you won't often catch me banging a bongo ever-so-slightly out of rhythm on a beach while a few guys dance with fire in the background.

I wouldn't classify myself as a high-achiever – but I'm the sort of person you'd expect to find in that category. My sport of choice is rowing, and any boat club around the world is invariably filled with some seriously successful individuals. Some of my closest friends are unbelievably smart people; I love the conversations I have with them that are a constant test of mental agility. It's unusual to find people who can keep up with me, and I love that I know some people I have issues keeping up with – there's nothing as satisfying as making them laugh. But a rapier wit needs to be constantly used or it becomes dull, and I readily admit I don't make the effort.

I am constantly dissatisfied with what I have, hence always moving on incase the grass is greener elsewhere. I find it difficult to be content in a place for long: what if somewhere else is even better? This means I have mastered the art of turning up in a random location and making something of it within a matter of weeks, but I have no staying power. I'm terrified of finding a comfortable rut and, while sinking gratefully into it, the world moving on without me.

Being readily addicted to anything and everything is handy in that I've focussed my attentions on a huge variety of arbitrary information over the years. But it means I am, what is that expression?, a jack of all trades but a master of none.

I have grand ideas for the world, but too healthy a dose of realism to do anything about them. As a teenager I had notebooks plastered with the words of Gandhi and Martin Luther King – 'Be the change you want to see in the world' I had pinned above my bed, and back then I meant it. Now I just figure if you can get to the end of the life without harming too many people, you've played your bit-part well.

A year ago I held a beautiful baby girl, barely 24 hours in this world. Her perfect little fist clutched onto my finger as I looked down at her, transfixed. I don't think it was until that moment I'd fully realised that we are born with infinite possibilities, with an infinite capacity to love and be loved, with infinite dreams to forge and follow.

I have some idea that 2013 is going to be a significant year for me – just a feeling I have. I'm not quite sure how, but I think it might be the year I'm finally okay with being me. I've always worried about not really fitting into any predefined niche, and always felt that people are disappointed in me in some way because I'm neither one thing nor another. Enough of that, though.

“To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not be false to any man.” (Shakespeare, of course)

On loving, losing, and learning

I've never mastered the art of a dignified heartbreak. I remember sitting in a cafe in Oxford crying at a table and repeating over and over that I just didn't understand. It's possible to become foetal sitting on a small stool in the corner of a bar – I know, I've done it. You can stare at a gently swaying tree for a day without moving, without realising a day has somehow passed. One moment you're crazy about each other and then they say something which makes it appear as if you've never known them.

You spend your time playing games with your willpower. 'If I can manage to not check my phone for text messages for the whole day, there'll be one from him in the evening', you say to yourself. If you deprive yourself of that last chocolate, if you go to the gym one hour longer, if you leave everything in the room exactly the same – just perhaps, it'll all be okay. Just perhaps, it will never have happened.

And there are times when it seems your body has given up the fight entirely. It's not a conscious decision, but you can't bear the thought of eating – all you want to do is sleep, sleep for an eternity.

All the comments your friends make fall on deaf ears because, at that time, you're still in love with the guy. You know they are right but you refuse to acknowledge it. All that revolves in your mind is a never-ending reel of images: laughing together in a bar; curling up close at night; sitting on a park bench watching the clouds go by. The little things. At some point you know more about the guy than you do about yourself – 'you' have somehow become lost in the 'we' of a relationship, however brief. All your points of reference are to that guy: what you would have bought for him in the supermarket if you were going home to him; what programme you'd have watched if he was beside you on the couch; what clothes he'd have wanted you to wear for an evening out.

And it's all taken away, and you have to set about reconstructing – resurrecting - yourself.

Perhaps it gets tougher as you get older as your expectations change. At eighteen, you look forwards to a weekend together; at thirty, you have started planning a lifetime. It hits harder to have everything taken away. Children become faceless, and a house is taken apart a brick at a time. The morning goes from perfecting tea and toast and scrambled eggs to slugging juice from the bottle and scooping yogurt from the pot.

You know that you'll get through it. At some point you'll realise you have had a whole day without thinking about them and your heart will lift a little. A stranger will flash you a glance on a train and your inward smile will start to feel alive once more.

No, I've never faced heartbreak well. Perhaps because I don't see any shame in having loved and lost. But I will always admire those who can maintain a dignified silence, confining their feelings behind tight smiles until an evening alone comes along.

Perhaps loving someone shows us who we are, and a broken heart shows us who we can be.

I'm still waiting for the fairytale – not because I have been blinded by a Disneyfied world, but because I am human. Being accepted by another person, who isn't obligated by familial bonds, is a blessing by the universe. It shows you've done something right, that you deserve to be who you are. And so, we stumble around looking for that other person who validates us.

"It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.... And one fine morning — " ['The Great Gatsby', Scott Fitzgerald]