Female “friends:” the comprehensive statement.

Experienced guys can quit this post right now, as it’s about an obvious topic, so they don’t need to read it. But the topic comes up with such frequency online, usually among young guys, that I want one, comprehensive discussion.

A guy on Reddit says, “Anyone else find themselves increasingly distant from female ‘friends’?”

Those scare quotes around “friends” are good. The guy goes on, “Have you guys also found it more and more difficult to have girls around who are only friends? I struggle to see how other guys have girls around only as friends (unless they’re ugly).” He’s right. If a guy is around a girl he finds attractive, he should make a move on her within the first week of meeting. Maybe slightly longer in some situations, like if they go to school together and will be forced into a lot of proximity. I don’t subscribe to the “three-date rule,” but I do subscribe to the “don’t fall into the friend zone” rule and “don’t hide your balls” rule.

One commenter said something smart,

Almost none of those women you call “friends” are friends, in the sense that they are loyal, caring, trusted people in your life. They are people who know you, and may occasionally hang out with you.

But you would be less than nothing to them the instant you start to be a social drag on them. Most people are that way, so it is not necessarily a woman thing. It is just that, in my experience, very few men are any good at being a friend, and almost no women are.

As a young and stupid guy, I liked being “friends” with hot chicks because it meant I hadn’t yet been told, definitively, “no.” So I’d grind away much of that initial attraction, if any existed, by hanging around the hot chick and not making a move. I achieved a paradoxical situation: I found it very easy to lay out girls I was a little bit attracted to, but very hard to get with chicks I was highly attracted to. With chicks I was a little attracted to, I’d do almost perfect push-pull, hot-cold game… without knowing what I was doing. I genuinely didn’t care, so I’d run great game and generate loads of attraction. With girls I was attracted to, I’d supplicate and avoid making a move, thus killing the attraction. I didn’t have the means to understand what I was doing wrong.