From friends to boyfriends: testing the limits of Friendzone

Is it possible to go from a beautiful friendship to a sentimental relationship?

There is an unwritten law that seems to establish an unbreakable principle of human relationships: lovers can be friends, but friends cannot be lovers.. This rule has become so entrenched in our collective imagination that it can even be labeled with a word that comes from the English language: the friendzonethat is, the framework of relationships in which two people know each other so well without having been romantically involved that they will no longer have the opportunity to date, have sex or let the relationship continue to develop into more intimate realms.

Exporting a new concept: the 'friendzone'.

In fact, in another article we asked a similar (or perhaps opposite) question to today's: can friendship exist between a man and a woman? That is, are we humans capable of being able to have sincere friendships with people of the opposite sex to whom we could potentially be attracted?

But, as far as today's topic is concerned? to what extent does this friendzone rule exist and work? Are we really prone to a hopeless lack of romantic or sexual interest in the other person when some time has passed and nothing has come of it?

If this is true, no relationship between lovers could work if some time had passed between the time these two people met and the point at which they started dating for something more, but in addition, that would mean that if one of the two parties wanted to deepen their relationship with the other they would be very likely to face rejection. rejection.

Is there any room for hope?

It seems that yes. A research whose results have been published in the journal Psychological Science seems to point to the fragility of the boundaries of the friendzone. The team that conducted this study analyzed the cases of 167 pairs of lovers (whose members could be married or unmarried). Specifically, they measured how long these couples had been dating, the length of time from the time they met until they started dating, and the degree of attractiveness of each partner. The latter they were able to measure by using a group of students as a jury to rate each person from 1 to 7.

Interestingly, the researchers detected a correlation between the disparity in attractiveness of each partner and the length of time between when they met and started dating.. In particular, couples whose partners were more similar in terms of attractiveness took less time to start dating, while the opposite was true in cases where one partner was significantly more attractive than the other: they took longer to start a more intimate relationship.

The cutoff seemed to be around nine months between the time when the first conversations began and the time when they began a relationship as lovers. On average, couples who had started dating before nine months had a similar degree of attractiveness to each other. had a similar degree of attractivenessThe opposite was true for the rest of the cases.

This finding, while it does not deny the possibility that there may be a certain tendency toward the maintenance of frienzone in a large part of the friendly relationships, it does show its chiaroscuro. In many cases, the friendzone may be nothing more than an expression of a lack of attraction at an early stage caused by a perceived difference in the attractiveness of the other person. However, deepening this friendship could compensate for this initial rejection and lead to a more intimate relationship once certain hurdles have been overcome.

The friendzone and its shadows

The conclusion of this study seems to be both an affirmation and a denial of the friendzone.. It affirms it because it shows an interaction between the amount of time spent with nothing more than a friendship and a variable related to mate search and the selection of potential sexual partners, but denies it by showing that this temporary wall can be broken.

Despite this, much research remains to be done on these successfully consolidated relationships that appear to have moved beyond the friendzone phase. It is not known, for example, what role prejudice and prejudices play in the first months of friendship, and whether these are a powerful brake on the creation of a relationship as lovers. It is also unclear whether this nine-month period should be understood as a stage in which one person intends the other and a clear rejection occurs, or whether at the beginning there is no intention to advance the relationship further by either party due, perhaps, to a lack of expectations because of the perceived difference in the attractiveness of each member of the relationship). In addition, it is doubtful that each party has similar criteria to the student jury used in this research when judging one's own attractiveness and that of the other person.

We also do not know very well whether whether this correlation is due to unconscious tendencies or whether they are part of a conscious strategy.. Perhaps, one of the two people takes some time before trying to take a step in their relationship with the other to try to reduce the chances of rejection.

The boundaries between friendship and love are very blurred.

In any case, the boundary between friendship and love relationship seems to be blurred.however much attractiveness may play a role in this. It is possible that what is popularly known as friendzone is just another component of those purely cultural norms with which we try to put some order in our style of relating to each other and, in fact, some surveys, such as this one, seem to indicate this.

For the time being, we should be cautious and not take this study as irrefutable proof of the logic that governs the transition from friendship to sex or romantic relationships. After all, that would mean taking as valid a principle, that of the friendzone, which has not yet been validated.

Referencias bibliográficas:

• Hunt, L. L., Eastwick, P. W. y Finkel, E. J. (2015). Laveling the Playing Field: Longer Acquaitance Predicts Reduced Assortative Mating on Attractiveness. Psychological Science, consulta online en http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26068893