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The proximity with this is important, I met my wife by getting set up by a friend of hers that I met on a dating app but didn't hit it off with. But the idea that single men who are serious about making a partner should settle for a friendship with women they meet is just an absurd delusion some women harbor who haven't ever seriously thought of the logistics of single men dating. I'd need to have maintained literally hundreds of female friends by the time I met my wife for this to have been a plausible strategy, it just doesn't really work. I'm sorry but if it doesn't work out you can't expect him to stay friends with you, it just doesn't scale. It's not personal, it's just that forming a strong attachment, getting stuck in the friend zone as it were, and then getting rejected in the end eviscerates a portion of your soul each time.
I've basically resorted to telling any women who suggest mere friendship "I literally have all the good friends I need or want." Nicely, but making it clear I'm not that guy who will remain in orbit indefinitely.
Now, if I know them as part of an existing friend network or through work or because I happen to run into them on semi-regular occasions, fine. I can pop by, be friendly and engaging, and see where it goes. I just won't be fielding long, emotional text conversations or helping them move heavy objects.
The effort required to put up even the facade of friendship with multiple women doesn't seem worth it unless she is actively wing(wo)manning for you. And maintaining mere 'facades' of friendship is way too manipulative/dishonest for my taste.
And my experience with women wingmen is laughable. They'll bring this one friend who is "single and super nice that you should meet" to a gathering. And she's 50+ pounds overweight or a major butterface and usually poor social skills to boot (i.e. there's reasons she's single). So you have to politely reject without either insulting your friend or the referral.
Happened to me 2, maybe 3 times in the past 5 years? And if you're out and about they'll suggest the most insane approaches to you. "You should talk to that 45-year-old cougar-looking lady with the back tattoo!"
Yes, having female friends is important so you can have a some social proof you're not a creepy loser and have access to her potentially single friends, but don't expect them to be that big a help in landing one.
I totally agree. The two exes ago girl (last girl I was probably in love with) begged me to stay friends with her after she broke up with me, despite the fact the first time I had hung out with her we had fucked. The entire relationship was completely romantic (we had sex 80+% of the times we ever hung out), but she seemed to think that somehow the relationship had a strong platonic foundation that we could maintain. I initially agreed because I thought I could change her mind back. That obviously didn't work out, and I learned that this woman was a terrible person to be friends with because her extreme dogmatism combined with terrible mental health. I ended up terminating the friendship after a couple months because I realized she was never going to get back together with me, and that I didn't really want her to anyway.
On the flip side of the coin, I think having female friends who you have no intention of sleeping with ever is perfectly fine and perhaps even good. Women are just as diverse as men when it comes to platonic personality, and it seems crazy to remove 50% of the population from the friendship pool solely because someone might get feelings. I have few very close female friends from college/work that I have absolutely no feelings for and I'm very glad they're in my life. I would never be open to a relationship with any of these women, and unless you plan to get married, I think the friendship->lover boundary should never be crossed, because unfortunately you can't really go back.
Been there.
Its odd that I used to (and somewhat still do) believe that there was a specific sequence of words I might be able to utter that would 'fix' things and get them back to where I wanted.
But attraction really don't work that way.
Also been there. Had a really awkward Friends -> mutual crush -> 'breakup' -> friends -> FWB -> breakup/blocked sequence with one girl. Took me like 5 years to realize she was irretrievably messed up in the head and she was happily using me as a psychological crutch, which was causing a drag on my mental health. She reacted poorly to my attempt to create a boundary, which confirmed that cutting her out was the right choice.
I've got a solid handful of such friends, and the thing they have in common is I have negligible levels of sexual attraction to them (like, I wouldn't turn down an offer, but I get no arousal just from being around them) and they're usually partnered to someone and thus I mentally sort them as 'off the market.'
I think you can, but in my experience you need like a solid 18-24 months of virtually zero contact and of course lingering feelings can flare up so you have to keep a boundary in place on how often you hang out.
Me, I am loathe to give up a connection with someone I share a lot of pleasant memories with.
I honestly can't blame anyone they get into a relationship with from being antsy about it, though.
Romance is just a messy thing, tied in with our baser instincts. Even having a fully intellectual comprehension of how it works you'll still be susceptible to the standard traps and pitfalls.
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Based. “Thank you for reaching out, but all available positions have been filled. I’ll keep your resume on file and let you know if any openings emerge.”
And even when women attempt or “attempt” to wingwoman for a male friend, oftentimes they can’t help but still accidentally or “accidentally” throw the male friend under the bus: “This is @faceh, one of my besties. He’s a total sweetheart and like a brother to me, always there to listen and lend a hand.” In which case at most a friendzone just +1’d in terms of the population size.
One of the best wingwoman experiences I’ve had was from a girl I had maybe met once in person before then. I don’t know if it was intentional or not. She introduced me to a female friend of hers and was like “teehee this is [my first name], he’s the one hooking up with [hot chick they both know].” Cut right to the chase with the most value-add information she had. Female mate-choice copying FTW.
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In the long-ago pre-covid times, a female friend of mine tried to set me up with one of her friends, and was describing her. I pointed out a glaring red flag that was obvious even in my friend's super-glowing description, and the response was "well, if you're going to have standards like that [i.e. any standards], prepare to die alone." She couldn't have created a better summary of the dating market if she tried.
Its very fair to ask a friend "this person sounds great... why are they single?"
There's a few fine answers to that question.
One of my buddies got his GF from our friend group b/c the current GF asked her friend, who is close friends with my buddy, if he was single and looking and then had the friend nudge him in her direction, and things worked out well because the friend was a good intermediary and could vouch for both parties.
But they'd had a decent amount of time to assess each other from somewhat afar. It wasn't a cold/blind introduction.
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I think it's more a case of "one of your 20 friends is a woman from work you met 4 years ago. You were in a relationship when you met, but today you're both single. You go for your usual coffee catch up and decide to do it again next week instead of the usual next month. You begin dating organically after this."
I don't think the play is to maintain a friendship circle of hundreds of prospective girlfriends. Meeting people through friend groups or work does seem to be some great mechanism for finding the love of your life.
Right, having some women who are friends is definitely useful in a number of ways. Maybe I misread the OP and they weren't suggesting it as a main strategy, but there really is a strain of thought among women that a man who would be interested in dating but not becoming friends is some kind of contradiction. "why would you date someone you wouldn't want to make your friend?". It makes a kind of sense from the perspective of the selective sex but it just isn't workable.
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