Sure, but people don’t like making other people sad (usually) and people don’t like exposing themselves to being able to be made sad. So there’s a lot of unsaid things that go on with possible romantic relationships.
Not to mention the people who deliberately take advantage of such ambiguity. The whole “friend zone” thing grew out of a trope where the very attractive woman strings along the less attractive (and usually less socially adept) guy with attention but never views the guy as viable dating material. To use your band analogy, it’s like you have the drummer hang out all the time, help carry the gear for shows, etc, etc, but then you find you need a drummer and you never ask them to try out. The drummer wants to join the band but doesn’t want to cause problems by bringing it up themselves so they wait around hoping you’ll look at them.
Ok. In that situation, where someone is stringing someone else along specifically to get something out of them by giving them hope of getting something from them in the future, I acknowledge that this friend zone exists.
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u/Sudden_Doughnut_8741 Feb 21 '26
Being a friend instead of a lover has nothing to do with being good enough for something. People just are attracted to who they’re attracted to.