Comments on: Annotated 23-18

By: tlhonmey

tlhonmey — Thu, 11 Jun 2020 23:06:45 +0000

I don’t know… Having seen quite a few people of both sexes pass up potential relationship opportunities with good friends they already had a solid bond with merely out of fear of “ruining it” only to then go hook up with total losers who were totally wrong for them and obviously never going to work out simply because the inevitable failure of that relationship would hurt less than the potential failure of an attempted relationship with their good friend.

I was always under the impression that it was this kind of thing that “friendzoned” referred to. No sense of entitlement, just despair that something potentially wonderful is being deliberately overlooked out of fear and lack of trust, and the alternative chosen is something doomed to cause pain and misery.

lesswrong.com has several articles about the short-circuits in human reasoning that cause the underlying phenomenon. Certainty of small pain being seen as preferable to tiny chance of large pain, and the potential benefits not being properly factored into the equation is a common failure mode in our instinctive reasoning.

By: Zak McKracken

Zak McKracken — Sun, 07 Jun 2020 23:37:02 +0000

The way the term is mostly used is by people who wanted to get a little closer than friendship and then realize they can’t. It’s based on some people’s observation that once you’re friends with someone, all romantic options are off the table. The conclusion from that, of course, is that if you want to start a romantic relationships, you should avoid becoming friends, which in turn opens the door to bad behaviour.

I, for my part, have been pretty good friends with several romantic interests of mine, and it _was_ occasionally difficult to bear, but how would I ever sustain a relationship with someone I’m not also friends with? I ended up marrying my best friend, and so did my wife. Can recommend. Turns out that knowing and respecting each other is way more important for a trustful relationship than the ability to seduce fleeting acquaintances. Not that the seduction part was useless, but it’s just not as relevant if you’re serious about long-term relationships, and if it’s being hindered by mutual respect, then maybe you have the wrong technique.

By: Keiranhalcyon31

Keiranhalcyon31 — Sun, 26 Apr 2020 07:39:46 +0000

Regardless of her choice of words, I thought Frigg’s inference of events based on E-Merl’s line – in the middle of a fight, no less – was remarkably, even uncharacteristically, empathetic. Perhaps evidence that she had an eye on E-Merl already at this point.

By: TxGator

TxGator — Thu, 23 Apr 2020 19:23:29 +0000

True, but we do live in a culture that currently tends to favor verbing nouns (ex. “I Googled the term ‘verbing'”).

I suppose someone could just as easily say “Dude, she friended you?” But I’m not sure if that carries the same bias or not.

By: Andreas

Andreas — Thu, 23 Apr 2020 11:46:51 +0000

There’s a term for being friends. It’s “being friends”.

“Being friendzoned”? Not a neutral pseudonym for “being friends”.