Unmarried Relationships are not that important

This can be a tricky situation to find yourself in as a guy and is one of the easiest and quickest ways to get friend zoned. Hypothetically, let’s say there is a woman who is in a relationship with someone else but enjoys talking to you (the guy) for some reason usually its her complaining about her boyfriend or her job. Given everything society bombards people with about “boundaries” or “comfort zones” or “feelings” or “emotional intelligence” or “social awareness” etc. It can be the easiest thing in the world to categorize this hypothetical woman as non available and thereby friend zoning yourself and eliminating what you want.

If you as a guy have found yourself in this situation before it is best to remind yourself that you are awesome and this other guy who is in this woman’s life is really not at all important to your life and what you want to do with it. So she’s in a relationship with someone else. Then just stop talking to her, categorize her as someone who doesn’t like to have sex or eat dinner and move on with your awesome individual life. I guarantee if you say something like what you just read in this paragraph to her, she would be flustered, thrown off balance, confused, and also oddly turned on in some way she can’t explain yet.

There is ZERO chance of her ever feeling that way if you as a guy are constantly playing the “feelings, boundaries, emotional intelligence, whatever you want” game with her. It is better to change the rules and go after what you want which is obviously her. Adopt or fake the attitude that you are better than her boyfriend and could do better than her. Then go find someone else who actually is better.

Eventually she might end up just giving in even if you play the feelings game. But the only 100% certain way to not be friend zoned is to not be friends with her, not talk to her, not use her as an emotional crutch, or anything else. Just move on and make your life as great as you possibly can and find someone who actually cares about you and doesn’t just use you as free therapy sessions so she can talk out her issues to someone she doesn’t have any romantic feelings for.

Chances are you as the guy reading this is not a licensed trained therapist who has had professional training on how to deal with separating personal and professional feelings in both professional and non professional environments. As a normal guy, you are not trained for that level of intimacy, and it shouldn’t be expected of you to navigate those stormy waters of friend zone feelings. You are not her Mom, or her Dad, or her Priest, Best Friend, or Therapist, it’s not really your job.

Main Guy? Or Other Guy?

When it comes to relationships there is a balance of 4 similar but different situations that are constantly pushing and pulling away from each other. There’s a lot going on in our brains at different times in our lives and eventually people figure relationship things like this out.

There is a misconception that categorizing people into an arbitrary category or labeling someone as something is wrong and toxic and should be avoided. This is a common practice that men and women both engage in and have engaged in for a very long time, I seriously doubt that it will ever go away even with all of the bombardment from the media about how wrong it is. Realizing this is a barrier we should all learn to break and come to acceptance with.

In a relationship there are always two points of view, the man’s view, and the woman’s view. From the female perspective a man usually falls into one of two categories: A “Main Guy” or an “Other Guy” both of which has its advantages and disadvantages.

A “Main Guy” usually has all of their ducks in a row, is organized, healthy, works out, has a good job, a decent reputation, easily to get along with, nobody complains about his behavior, and is a solid 3.0 across all of the relationship checkboxes. He may not be the best of the best but is above average and solid across multiple areas of attractiveness. This makes for a relationship that is more or less drama free, communication that is good but not necessarily great, but also someone who has a good life in which communicating extremely difficult feelings and situations that life may bring is not really a scenario to deal with. All of this is fantastic.

But this guy can also be boring and and predictable. Everybody enjoys a solid 4 out of 5 star restaurant. But if you never throw in a clunker of a dining experience or an out of this world mind blowing dining experience from an unexpected place every now and again then you don’t get any good memories and stories out of it. This is where it is good to have in your arsenal of tricks as a guy a few of some “Other Guy” traits.

Here is a real life example of something I mean. Several years ago I had to take my Dad to the emergency room, he eventually had his gall bladder removed and had a very tricky surgery and luckily escaped death. But in the emergency room was also a male nurse who was also in the Navy. As we were in the emergency room and talking about what was about to happen the nurse made an astute observation about memories. He said that he remembers some great average days he has had with his wife and kids and at work. Even when he was in the military 90% of the time it was him doing his job and nothing major happening. But when he gets together with his buddies from his unit to reminisce, he said it was always the most difficult and bonkers situations they were in that they talk and laugh at the most. Stress and difficulty gives us memories that change our lives for the better more than the average 8.0 days.

Men who have some “Other Guy” traits can also be attractive, now there is a fine line sometimes between having an attractive “Other Guy” or “Not Relationship Material” quirk or two, and being a complete and total mess that nobody wants anything to do with. One situation can enhance your attractiveness to women, the other kills it for ever because it is mentally ill in the worst kind of way.

One stereotype that women have is that they enjoy “Fixing guys” the trope is that women can “shape him up” is as old as it gets. The movie Grease is a perfect example of a bad boy changing who he is for a woman because he wants to be in a relationship. This trope exists because it is often times a real life situation people find themselves in.

Exaggeration is a critical problem in trying to be solid enough in most things, excel in one or two, and sort of not be that great at one or two others. People tend to exaggerate both their strengths and weaknesses, chances are you are not as good as you think you are at your strengths, and you are not as horrendous as you think you are at your weaknesses.

There is a somewhat unofficial code to being a good “Other Guy”. If you find yourself sleeping with a woman who happens to be engaged or has a boyfriend, it’s important to realize you are engaging in an affair and you need to play that role. You are the added excitement or her trying to get in as much single fun as she possibly can before she gets married. Which means there is no space in this situation for how you feel about anything, there is no intimacy there is no balance, there is just you being an other guy who is there for her to have fun with. In the grand scheme of things, this situation is not a bad situation to find yourself in. But, what tends to happen is people catch feelings and it becomes a situation that usually ends bad for everyone involved. If you find yourself catching a cold of feelings, just pull back, remove yourself from the situation entirely, it is not good for anybody to let that cold turn into a flu and then pneumonia which can be fatal for every relationship involved. Stay healthy, avoid the case of the feels when being an “Other Guy” in a woman’s relationship she’s having an affair with.

The reverse is also important to realize. If a woman potentially sees you as “Relationship Material” or as a “Main Guy” it’s important to play that role well. Mainly, it’s important not to be an emotionless immature not competent asshole. Practice active listening, read some books on how to improve yourself, make sure you are tidy and practice solid manners. Be respectful of her boundaries and if you don’t know what her boundaries are, ask her, and if she doesn’t know what they are, be okay with not knowing and be relaxed. Slow and steady are main guy traits, taking the relationship as it comes without trying to force it are main guy traits, open communication and honesty are also hallmarks of a “Main Guy”. Conversely, quick and rough, big ups and downs, trying to sneak around and being stealthy, dishonesty, and emotionless encounters are “Other Guy” traits.

There is a Ying and a Yang to these two personality types in which somewhere in the middle lies a healthy relationship a few lucky people find themselves in.