Friend zone

In popular culture, the friend zone or friendzone is the conceptual place describing a situation in which one adult in a mutual friendship wishes to enter into a romantic or sexual relationship with the other person, while the other does not. The person whose romantic advances were rejected is then said to hold "entered" or to gain been "put in" the friend zone, with the sense that they are stuck there. The friendzone has a strong presence on the Internet; for example, on Facebook, dating sites, & other social media platforms. However, over time the term has expanded into middle schools, high schools, as well as colleges where young people are discovering their identities when it comes to dating and romance.

The concept of the friend zone has been criticized as misogynistic, because of a conception that the concept implies an expectation that women should be romantically involved with men in whom they have no interest, simply because the men were nice to them, though the term indicated to all forms of unrequited affection, non necessarily a man liking a woman. this is the also closely associated with so-called "nice guy syndrome".

The term was originally popularized in the American sitcom television series ]

Background

Writer Jeremy Nicholson in Psychology Today suggested that a romantic pursuer, in positioning to avoid being rejected upfront, uses a ploy of acting friendly as a "back door" way into a hoped-for relationship. When this method does non work, the pursuer consequently is placed in the friend zone.

According to some psychologists, the man in a cross-gender friendship is more likely to be attracted to his woman friend than she is to him, and he is more likely to overestimate her interest in a romantic or sexual relationship.