It’s not news to us that men are bad at understanding what women need, in general, and especially when women say they want to be “just friends”. The immediate takeaway from a conversation like that is that the man has been “friend-zoned”.
Okay, we get it, pop culture is at fault here. Ever since Ross Geller (a character from the popular 90s sitcom Friends) was called the “mayor of the friend zone”, scores of millennials have clenched their fists up in the air and claimed their place in the hall of the dispirited. Remember how Ranbir Kapoor traumatised Anushka Sharma in Ae Dil Hai Mushkil just for friendzoning him?
While “friend zone” continues to ride the waves, a viral thread tries to debunk the concept and understand the mechanism behind a man’s brain.
The thread explains how men have superficial relationships with other men because it is not “manly” enough for a guy to display emotions in front of his bro, cue eye roll. It’s almost as if the modern man is still burdened with the fallacious idea that the man is a hunter, and therefore, must exhibit fierce qualities.
There’s a proven disconnect that men feel when it comes to relationships with their male friends. This makes them vulnerable, after a nasty break-up or a divorce because they put all their eggs in one basket – the woman in their life, who is, more often than not, a girlfriend or a wife.
The thread claims that the real problem is that men cannot wrap their heads around the idea of being just friends (and now we know why). They are averse to emotionally investing in a relationship where sex isn’t an option. More importantly, a man will, in most cases, not realise that he has been conditioned to suppress the emotional side, leading to a real negative impact on their emotional health. It could also adversely affect their thought-process and increases the chances of lashing out.
In conclusion, the thread asks men to love themselves and their friends more and to embrace that very human instinct that we cannot escape. We hope they pick up a thing or two.
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