It’s even worse when you start dating someone else but you want to stay friends with the guy! What are you supposed to write? “I think you’re really cool but I want to date this guy over here. Can we still hang out?!”
I feel like staying friends with someone you went on dates with should be much better than never wanting to see them again ever.
It isn’t: if you’re romantically interested in someone, seeing that person going out with someone else, or hearing about how happy/unhappy s/he is with the significant other, is extremely painful, and usually vastly more so than the benefit of a friendship.
This of course assuming that the offer of friendship is honest, which in my experience (which could be heavily biased) is almost never the case.
There’s also the not vanishingly small chance that offering friendship is a test for which the correct answer (that is, the answer that leads to a date) is “No thanks, I’ve already have plenty of friends.”
It isn’t: if you’re romantically interested in someone, seeing that person going out with someone else, or hearing about how happy/unhappy s/he is with the significant other, is extremely painful, and usually vastly more so than the benefit of a friendship.
Replace “you” with “I”. You’re probably generalizing from one example/other-optimizing.
He is generalising, but it isn’t from one example. It is hardly an uncommon phenomenon, even if it is not universal. (Inserting ‘often’ would be a suitable alternative to limiting to “I”).
You’re probably generalizing from one example/other-optimizing.
Omega forbid!
I realize the phrasing is miscalibrated, I only inteded suggesting that it’s not always the case that the friendship is much better than no relation at all.
Although I do believe that it’s often the case that friendship is the losing option...
It isn’t: if you’re romantically interested in someone, seeing that person going out with someone else, or hearing about how happy/unhappy s/he is with the significant other, is extremely painful, and usually vastly more so than the benefit of a friendship.
It depends. At university I remember having a crush on a guy. He started dating one of my friends. I was a bit jealous at first, but I got over it, we became good friends and the crush faded over time. By the time we shared a house in second year I was no longer romantically interested at all.
I guess It’s possible that I’m unusual or that this sort of thing doesn’t happen to men as much as women.
ETA: Thinking about this, I don’t think I’ve successfully ended up being close friends with a guy that I’ve turned down, though I remain friendly acquaintances with a lot of them.
It isn’t: if you’re romantically interested in someone, seeing that person going out with someone else, or hearing about how happy/unhappy s/he is with the significant other, is extremely painful, and usually vastly more so than the benefit of a friendship.
That’s not been my experience at all. Probably, people differ.
True, but in the contest for your romantic attention, there was one winner and it wasn’t him. Is hanging out a decent consolation prize? Possibly, but there’s a name for people who get consolation prizes.
I don’t think the contest model fits this situation very well. As I understand, a contest is designed to measure aptitude along only one axis (like who can run faster or play chess better) and it’s the job of the contest organizer to keep the other conditions as equal as possible. Meanwhile, things like dating or job/roommate interviews or college admissions are really attempts at selecting people you’d prefer to be around and get along with, so you’re choosing from a set of points in a nebulous region in human-qualities-space that doesn’t linearize nicely. For example, if I say that I’m going to hire the candidate that’s objectively faster and more accurate at filing papers (which is easy to measure), then according to the contest model, I’m committing to overlooking other qualities like loudness or disagreeableness or smelliness or tardiness, which are also important factors to consider when hiring someone. These are also things I might not even consider until the pool of applicants is available!
This is why rejections from these types of places tactfully say “We had a lot of promising people and a limited number of spots so we couldn’t accept all of them,” because if they write, “We thought you were too tardy,” then next time you apply and be super-punctual, that still won’t guarantee you a spot. Because other factors!
I think the contest is tempting because it’s simple and it makes you feel like you’re more in control of the outcome than you really are (“All I have to do is be less tardy!”) but generally I think modeling these blobby types of interactions as contests creates unnecessary pain, because it needlessly creates losers when there aren’t … really any. You weren’t that in control to begin with (which can be hard to accept), so don’t be so hard on yourself for the result! You might get to date Alice but not Barbara and you might get accepted to Berkeley and rejected by UCLA.
It’s even worse when you start dating someone else but you want to stay friends with the guy! What are you supposed to write? “I think you’re really cool but I want to date this guy over here. Can we still hang out?!”
Give him a big L-shaped “I’ve been friend-zoned again” bumper sticker.
Why is wanting to hang out with a cool person so loserly for the cool person* ?! Noooo!
I feel like staying friends with someone you went on dates with should be much better than never wanting to see them again ever.
It isn’t: if you’re romantically interested in someone, seeing that person going out with someone else, or hearing about how happy/unhappy s/he is with the significant other, is extremely painful, and usually vastly more so than the benefit of a friendship.
This of course assuming that the offer of friendship is honest, which in my experience (which could be heavily biased) is almost never the case.
There’s also the not vanishingly small chance that offering friendship is a test for which the correct answer (that is, the answer that leads to a date) is “No thanks, I’ve already have plenty of friends.”
Replace “you” with “I”. You’re probably generalizing from one example/other-optimizing.
He is generalising, but it isn’t from one example. It is hardly an uncommon phenomenon, even if it is not universal. (Inserting ‘often’ would be a suitable alternative to limiting to “I”).
Omega forbid!
I realize the phrasing is miscalibrated, I only inteded suggesting that it’s not always the case that the friendship is much better than no relation at all.
Although I do believe that it’s often the case that friendship is the losing option...
It depends. At university I remember having a crush on a guy. He started dating one of my friends. I was a bit jealous at first, but I got over it, we became good friends and the crush faded over time. By the time we shared a house in second year I was no longer romantically interested at all.
I guess It’s possible that I’m unusual or that this sort of thing doesn’t happen to men as much as women.
ETA: Thinking about this, I don’t think I’ve successfully ended up being close friends with a guy that I’ve turned down, though I remain friendly acquaintances with a lot of them.
That’s not been my experience at all. Probably, people differ.
True, but in the contest for your romantic attention, there was one winner and it wasn’t him. Is hanging out a decent consolation prize? Possibly, but there’s a name for people who get consolation prizes.
I don’t think the contest model fits this situation very well. As I understand, a contest is designed to measure aptitude along only one axis (like who can run faster or play chess better) and it’s the job of the contest organizer to keep the other conditions as equal as possible. Meanwhile, things like dating or job/roommate interviews or college admissions are really attempts at selecting people you’d prefer to be around and get along with, so you’re choosing from a set of points in a nebulous region in human-qualities-space that doesn’t linearize nicely. For example, if I say that I’m going to hire the candidate that’s objectively faster and more accurate at filing papers (which is easy to measure), then according to the contest model, I’m committing to overlooking other qualities like loudness or disagreeableness or smelliness or tardiness, which are also important factors to consider when hiring someone. These are also things I might not even consider until the pool of applicants is available!
This is why rejections from these types of places tactfully say “We had a lot of promising people and a limited number of spots so we couldn’t accept all of them,” because if they write, “We thought you were too tardy,” then next time you apply and be super-punctual, that still won’t guarantee you a spot. Because other factors!
I think the contest is tempting because it’s simple and it makes you feel like you’re more in control of the outcome than you really are (“All I have to do is be less tardy!”) but generally I think modeling these blobby types of interactions as contests creates unnecessary pain, because it needlessly creates losers when there aren’t … really any. You weren’t that in control to begin with (which can be hard to accept), so don’t be so hard on yourself for the result! You might get to date Alice but not Barbara and you might get accepted to Berkeley and rejected by UCLA.
Sorry, I meant the guy is the loser.
I did too! Edited.