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By Jennifer Hamilton, October 24, 2011 6:00 am

Photo by Instant Vantage via flickr.com

My husband and I have a German friend, Gunther—late 30s, good-looking, smart, funny, and a genuinely nice guy.

Of course, he’s single.

A few weeks ago, we were hanging out together, pondering his romance woes over a few glasses of wine. But it wasn’t the preposterous fact that he was still unattached that lingered in my mind. It was an observation he made based on his visit to San Diego a few years ago.

“I think it must be difficult to make friends with a woman in the United States,” Gunther said.

Immediately, I became skeptical. What exactly did he mean by this?

Gunther explained: “My friends were out of town for a few days, so I went–alone–to a bar for a drink. There, I struck up a conversation with a woman. We talked for a while, and at the end of the night, I walked her home. She wasn’t my type, but I enjoyed her company, so I asked her to meet me the following evening at the bar.”

I thought I saw where this was going. So, I asked, “Did you buy her drinks?”

Gunther couldn’t remember, but admitted that it was a distinct possibility.

He met the girl the next night, walked her home after a few hours, and again asked her to meet for drinks the next day. By the third night of seeing each other, after they got to her house and he started to leave, she became angry.

“What’s wrong with you!” (According to Gunther, this was not a question). She followed up her statement with some colorful language and a few choice accusations. Naturally, Gunther was offended. But that quickly turned to bewilderment.

“What was her problem?” he asked us.

My husband and I shared a look and giggled.

“Third date. Sex,” I explained.

Continue reading 'Desperately Seeking The Friend Zone'»

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By Dennis Hong, December 6, 2010 6:00 am

Image by minifig via Flickr

I have no problem with the Friend Zone. The Friend Box. Friendship Island. The Vortex of Platonic Optimism….

Whatever you want to call it, I think opposite-sex friends are splendid. They can be an arsenal of insight when we need help understanding, well, the opposite sex.

What’s not so splendid is the opposite-sex friend who desperately wants to be more than friends. Especially when the opposite-sex friend who desperately wants to be more than friends is….

Me.

Oh, how I hate Me when Me gets Myself into that rut.

Years ago, I had a classmate, “Holly.” She had just moved to Southern California, and I was one of the first friends she made here. I think she gravitated towards me because I was already familiar with the city. That, and I also threw parties. Lots of them. If friends were crack, then my apartment was her pipe, and she’d show up at my place whenever her social life needed a fix.

One night, a group of us set aside our rampant partying and went out clubbing instead. Late in the evening, Holly and I found ourselves separated from everyone else. In a fit of drunkenness, we somehow started making out.

Over the next few days, I realized that I wanted to be more than just friends with Holly. So, I did what any rational non-eunuch would do: I asked her out.

Unfortunately, she confessed that while she enjoyed our impromptu kissing session, she wasn’t interested in dating me. Pretty brutal rejection, right?

Still….

Continue reading 'Wasting Away In The Friend Zone'»

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By Jasmine Curry, November 22, 2010 6:00 am

"Please, oh please, let me out of this box!"

I admit it. I have a lot of boxes. A box for friends, and a box for enemies. A box for frenemies, one for family, another for lovers. I even have a box for barely tolerable coworkers. I put the people I trust into one box, and the people I’d like to throw out the window into another box.

And once someone is read, stamped, classified and packed away into a box, it’s almost impossible for them to get out of it.

Take my friend, Greg. We worked together and hung out all the time. And early in our friendship, he dated a friend of mine. He was also younger than me, and our politics did not match up. So, he was in the Friend Box.

A few months later, as we were hanging out and having a great time, he implied that we should date. I informed him that he was off limits since he once dated a friend of mine. This was only partially true. The real truth was that he was in the Friend Box, and I wasn’t going to let him out.

Greg and I may have been incredibly compatible. Or we may have completely ruined a perfectly good friendship if we dated. We’ll never know. Once in the Friend Box, always in the Friend Box.

I was so good at pigeonholing men into “datable” and “not datable.” But, aren’t we all? Doesn’t everyone have some way of categorizing the opposite sex?

My system was working just fine. Until one day I discovered it wasn’t. Continue reading 'I Put Men In Boxes'»

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By Meg Pierce, July 19, 2010 8:00 am

Photo by Wettly via Flickr

Tell me if this sounds familiar. You’re at a party and find yourself talking to a friend’s friend. He seems really cool and makes you laugh, but honestly, you don’t find him all that attractive. Later, he asks if you want to hang out sometime. You agree… hesitantly. Then you make an excuse to leave before he can ask for your number.

Been there, done that? Then, like me, you’ve suffered from a type of romantic tunnel vision, where you lose all interest in hanging out with someone you don’t immediately see as romantic potential.

The problem with this behavior is that we need friends of the opposite sex. They help us see life from another perspective. That guy asking to hang out may be looking for something more, but he could just as well end up becoming a friend.

I go to my guy friends for their unbiased (or sometimes totally biased) opinions on everything from dating to whether I’m too fat to wear a bikini. Unlike the girls who will undoubtedly answer, “no you look great, really,” the guys will give me their honest opinions and often offer a fresh point of view.

It’s hard to explain the differences between relationships with your girl friends and relationships with your guy friends without getting into stereotypes. But it is a unique relationship I’ve learned to value as I’ve gotten older.

The most obvious example? When I need to know all the stats on the new Padres’ pitcher or an update of the Charger’s season, I get my guy friends to give me the Cliff notes version.

But more than just for sports, guy friends can be like cultural translators. Thanks to my brother’s friends for example, I can totally speak “geek.” Continue reading 'In Defense Of The Friend Zone'»