{"id":221,"date":"2013-02-20T17:33:23","date_gmt":"2013-02-20T17:33:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/?p=221"},"modified":"2013-02-20T17:33:23","modified_gmt":"2013-02-20T17:33:23","slug":"the-friend-zone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/?p=221","title":{"rendered":"The Friend Zone"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to date anymore.\u201d <\/i>He said.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019ve decided I just want to build a community of friends and work from there. Y\u2019know, find a friend in Pineville, one in Uptown, one in University. .<\/i> .\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA girl in every port?\u201d<\/i> I asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cNaw, why you gotta be like that?\u00a0 I just mean that I don\u2019t see the point of dating.\u00a0 If you find a girl you like, and she\u2019s cool, and you meet her friends, and they\u2019re cool, and then you date and decide to break up . . . you lose all that.\u00a0 And I\u2019m just not willing to give any friendships up<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\n

I understand where he\u2019s coming from. One of the hardest things about ending a relationship is the unavoidable strain it can put on those friendships and associations you made through your partner.\u00a0 The division of material things is never as difficult for me as the division of your heart.<\/p>\n

That being said, I think if you shy away from dating because of a fear of loss, you\u2019ll never give yourself the opportunity to gain something either.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But I get it.\u00a0 Last week, I took a chance and finally asked someone out that I\u2019ve had a crush on for months. There were all sorts of reasons why I originally held off:\u00a0 I was too recently broken up and still in recovery mode, I wasn\u2019t sure if he was actually single, I\u2019m the girl and I was hoping he would ask me out instead, etc.\u00a0<\/p>\n

One of the easiest justifications I told myself was this:\u00a0 \u201cWell, I met him because he came to events I organized. \u00a0If I ask him out, and he\u2019s not interested, then he might feel funny about coming to events, and I don\u2019t want to put anyone in that position.\u00a0 And I would never want anyone to think that I\u2019m using my group as my personal dating pool.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

Sounds great, doesn\u2019t it?\u00a0 Very noble of me and all that.\u00a0 Reality?\u00a0 Bwawk, bwawk \u2013 big fat chicken.\u00a0 It was so much easier to just keep them in The Friend Zone and pine away semi-silently like a Victorian novel.<\/p>\n

Three Days.\u00a0 It took three days before he replied back.\u00a0 And during those three days, I kept wondering if it would have been better to stay in The Friend Zone rather than risk it all. His response was positive and we are going to grab a drink when our busy schedules permit.<\/p>\n

But even if he hadn\u2019t answered back, I\u2019m glad that I didn\u2019t zone out.\u00a0 Because you are never going to win the lottery if you don\u2019t occasionally take a chance. No matter what the outcome, the only loser is the one who doesn\u2019t try.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI don\u2019t want to date anymore.\u201d He said.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019ve decided I just want to build a community of friends and work from there. Y\u2019know, find a friend in Pineville, one in Uptown, one in University. . .\u201d \u201cA girl in every port?\u201d I asked. \u201cNaw, why you gotta be like that?\u00a0 I just mean that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[9,38],"class_list":["post-221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dating","tag-dating-2","tag-the-friend-zone"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2UnPK-3z","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}