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Woman Explains The Difference Between How Men And Women View Friendship After Seeing A Humorous Definition For ‘Friendzone’
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Woman Explains The Difference Between How Men And Women View Friendship After Seeing A Humorous Definition For ‘Friendzone’

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Tumblr is full of thought, discourse, and discussion. While some of it is providing answers to questions that nobody really needed to know the answers to, like why do dragons have eyes on the sides of their heads if they are predators? (you’re welcome, by the way), there are also deeply rooted and thought-provoking posts considering all manner of very human things.

One Tumblr user had a eureka! moment regarding a tweet that comically described the act of friendzoning and in turn gave a very detailed explanation on how it all actually makes sense. Went viral along the way too.

Relationships are never easy, but that doesn’t stop people from explaining them to make them easier

Image credits: Matthew Bland (not the actual photo)

So, Tumblr user Alara J. Rogers (alarajrogers) stumbled upon a Tumblr post that included a screenshot of two tweets. One read “A woman’s idea of ‘Let just be friends’ is ‘Hey listen to all my problems and keep me company… while I have sex with someone else,’” (sic!).

The other tweet was presented in response to the first one, saying: “So a woman’s idea of being friends is being friends?” For most, this is a comical definition of the act of friendzoning someone, but to Alara, it was a lightbulb moment.

Tumblr user Alara J. Rogers saw this tweet about the friendzone and a light bulb moment occurred

Image credits: alarajrogers

She explains in her post that it all makes sense because it boils down to social and cultural conditioning: men are encouraged to not share their feelings, especially with other men. If anything, on average, they rely—more or less solely—on their romantic partners for that.

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Women, on the other hand, are not socialized in a way that forbids them to be expressive when it comes to emotions. Hence, they develop different kinds of relationships, ones that are heavily based on emotional support, i.e. “what friendship is is someone who listens to all your problems and keeps you company.”

She went on to explain how this comical definition of friendzoning and the response to it actually make sense

So, there is now a disconnect whereby men think that sharing emotions is part of a romantic partner package, whereas women think it’s part of a romantic partner, but more importantly, a part of the friends package as well. This thus fools men into thinking there must be something romantic when there isn’t.

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In turn, both parties end up confused and perhaps even hurt, at the very least. “So men suffer terribly from being trained in this way. But women suffer in that they can’t reach out to male friends for basic friendship.”

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Alara concludes that the only way to fix this is to teach boys it’s OK to show emotions, to love your friends, to express needs and share problems with friends. And once this social norm is eliminated, both genders will benefit from this.

Image credits: alarajrogers

It wasn’t long until the post went viral on Tumblr. It clocked in at over 425,000 notes—Tumblr’s way of registering likes and reblogs. You can find Alara’s post here, but before you go, why not let us know what you thought about this in the comment section below!

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parmeisan avatar
Parmeisan
Community Member
3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I was expecting this article to be sexist and only correct for a small percentage of men/women. But I think there may be something to this. Certainly, that's the societal expectation and it makes a lot of sense to explain why a guy like the Chef Nol might think/say something that seems so insane to me. It's worth thinking about, at least.

aliquida avatar
Aliquid A
Community Member
3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Yeah, as I was reading it, I was thinking "ok, here comes a bunch of superficial BS, lumping 'all men' and 'all women' into unreasonable buckets"... and then as I was reading it, I said "whoa, that's actually a good point"

Load More Replies...
bhowardmckinney avatar
Ben Moss
Community Member
3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Yet another reminder that sexism doesn’t just hurt women, it’s a bad thing for everybody and everybody has a reason to be against it.

archie_on_the_net avatar
Vincent Philippart
Community Member
3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Yep! "toxic masculinity" is wrongfully understood by some as "men are toxic", but it's the vision of masculinity we are raised with that is toxic to all who come in contact with it.

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mdif5150 avatar
Fin Diffenderfer
Community Member
3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I haven't seen anyone mentioning this, so I thought I would. While this observation is interesting, it is also very heavily based around cishet norms, which makes me wonder how or if it applies to LGBT people. We generally shed heteronormative societal expectations and behave however we see fit, so I'd imagine queer men are more likely to be emotionally available with their male friends and platonic female friends. I'm sure sapphic women are still emotionally available with their friends too. The more interesting question is how might this effect trans people like myself or nonbinary people?

archie_on_the_net avatar
Vincent Philippart
Community Member
3 years ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Cis gay guy here. I wouldn't say we are free of heteronormativity/toxic masculinity. We still have been raised in it, and tried really hard to conform to it. Obviously we actively question it, but still I find gay males can be very discreet too about our important feelings. We don't like showing weakness anymore than straight guys. Maybe even less has we often have faced a lot of hostility in our youth.

Load More Replies...
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parmeisan avatar
Parmeisan
Community Member
3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I was expecting this article to be sexist and only correct for a small percentage of men/women. But I think there may be something to this. Certainly, that's the societal expectation and it makes a lot of sense to explain why a guy like the Chef Nol might think/say something that seems so insane to me. It's worth thinking about, at least.

aliquida avatar
Aliquid A
Community Member
3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Yeah, as I was reading it, I was thinking "ok, here comes a bunch of superficial BS, lumping 'all men' and 'all women' into unreasonable buckets"... and then as I was reading it, I said "whoa, that's actually a good point"

Load More Replies...
bhowardmckinney avatar
Ben Moss
Community Member
3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Yet another reminder that sexism doesn’t just hurt women, it’s a bad thing for everybody and everybody has a reason to be against it.

archie_on_the_net avatar
Vincent Philippart
Community Member
3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Yep! "toxic masculinity" is wrongfully understood by some as "men are toxic", but it's the vision of masculinity we are raised with that is toxic to all who come in contact with it.

Load More Replies...
mdif5150 avatar
Fin Diffenderfer
Community Member
3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I haven't seen anyone mentioning this, so I thought I would. While this observation is interesting, it is also very heavily based around cishet norms, which makes me wonder how or if it applies to LGBT people. We generally shed heteronormative societal expectations and behave however we see fit, so I'd imagine queer men are more likely to be emotionally available with their male friends and platonic female friends. I'm sure sapphic women are still emotionally available with their friends too. The more interesting question is how might this effect trans people like myself or nonbinary people?

archie_on_the_net avatar
Vincent Philippart
Community Member
3 years ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Cis gay guy here. I wouldn't say we are free of heteronormativity/toxic masculinity. We still have been raised in it, and tried really hard to conform to it. Obviously we actively question it, but still I find gay males can be very discreet too about our important feelings. We don't like showing weakness anymore than straight guys. Maybe even less has we often have faced a lot of hostility in our youth.

Load More Replies...
Load More Comments
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