How Men Put THEMSELVES In The "Friend Zone"

I'm curious, Dr. Glover, from your perspective, when we're dating and then when we're in a relationship, what can put us. What can put a man into that friend zone? What can push the relationship into that friend zone? What do we do? How do you start to deal with that? Because I think between dating and relationships, it might be a little bit different. But I'm curious to get your thoughts.

Yeah. Dating and relationships, probably exactly the same thing. Probably not a difference. You know, I've been telling men, like I said when I wrote no more Mr. Nice Guy, I've always been kind of, you know, serial monogamous. I've always been in relationships. I didn't learn to date until really I was in my late 40s and 50s.

And so I got, you know, acquainted with terms like shit test and friend zone again, all the terms we create to describe modern relationship dynamics. But one thing I've been telling men for quite some time is that women don't put us in the friend zone. We put ourselves there. We are the one that kill the emotional, sexual, physical tension, the polarity between us and another person. We either never create it, or we try to put it out as quickly as we can when it starts happening. And a core principle I've been teaching men around a concept I call positive emotional tension, is that women have to experience emotional tension. The feminine part of themselves needs emotional tension to be attracted to a man, sexually aroused by him, and to stay connected with him over time. In general, we men hate emotional tension, especially in our relationships. We want to lock everything down, have it secure, know they're not going anywhere. No. They're never upset at us. No that, you know. And so we do everything that's part of the masculine. The masculine wants to solve the problem so it can rest in nothingness for eternity. You know, we want to get the woman to like us so we don't have to put up with anything anymore.

And chill out and peace and ease.

And, you know, that doesn't exist in this life reality, Right? That's somewhere else in some other cosmic reality. So because men go seeking women's approval, typically we want them to like us. We want them to think we're good people. We want them to think well enough of us to take their clothes off at some point. And what men often do is actually hide their sexual intention. You know, in the work you do, you talk about getting down into our shadow, getting down into what's down there. And what's down there is all sexually driven, right? But we've been so domesticated. We gotta hide that. And it begins with Mommy, you know, as you know, from developmentally, every little boy wants to possess his mommy, wants Mommy's approval, wants to grow up and marry Mommy, wants Mommy to approve of his pee pee. And, you know, at some point, we start hiding that. And I think Freud was right, you know, we have this fear we're gonna get castrated by daddy, you. If we're too sexual with Mommy. So we put the good women of the world, the mommies, into one category. You don't be sexual with them. The women you want to approve of, you hide your sexuality. And then we create another category of women. There's been a name for this forever. It's called Madonna Whore. Right? The Madonna is the good woman. The Virgin Mother Mary, that's the good woman. And the whore is any woman we direct our sexual energy towards. And, you know, I don't want to use, you know, words have so much energy to them, but it's just an archetype, as you know, and for many men nowadays, that's the women in porn. It's the women, you know, that we follow on the Internet. It's the women we have fantasies about. It's the massage parlors, the escorts, it's the prostitutes. We can direct our energy that direction. And so it tends to all go there. But the woman whom we want to approve of the Madonna, the good woman, the woman who we. Yeah, we want that woman to be our girlfriend. We want that. We hide every bit of our sexual interest or energy or perversion or whatever from that person because we don't want them to disapprove of us. Just like we didn't want Mommy to disapprove of us. And so now we're going out there in the world, we go, you know, how come I can't get the women I like to like me back? Well, part of it is, is we're hiding so much of ourselves. Not just our sexual energy, but our needs, our wants, you know, our neuroses, our. We hide everything because we don't want to be found out, because we don't want to be rejected by the very people we want to approve of us. I love what Tony said, you know, and he put it just pretty bluntly. It isn't until you quit giving a fuck if people like you that they actually have a chance to start liking you. Right. You know, I'll tell guys, you know, the most powerful thing you can do to be attractive to a woman is be yourself. And you go, I've Been told that all my life. But me being myself doesn't seem to attract women to me. And I go, when is the last time you let anybody, anybody, especially an attractive woman, see the real you? You know, what you do behind closed doors, how you think, what goes on, how many people do you really see that? But it is that shadow of ourselves, the dark parts of ourselves, our flaws, our imperfections, our insecurities. That's what actually makes us interesting people. That's what actually gives people something to connect with. So this friend zone thing is we put ourselves there by hiding so much of ourselves from the woman, by trying to, you know, I call it putting the wet stuff on the red stuff. It's a firefighter thing. Ah, there's a fire. Let's spray water on it. She's upset. Let's get it back to good. Or, you know, she hasn't texted me back right away. I gotta. I gotta figure out what, you know, I don't like this anxiety. We're always trying to kill any tension between us. And is he a woman we're attracted to a woman, we're dating a woman we're in relationship with, and so we kill it. Now, you mentioned before we started recording Esther Perel, and, you know, when I read Mating in Captivity, I thought, fuck, I wish I'd written that book. That is such an amazing book. And I may misrepresent it a little bit because I'm going to really break that. She basically says, the more intimacy you have, speaking in terms of just knowing and being known by another person, person, in some ways, the less sexual passion you'll have. And she says that the sexual passion kind of has to do with a little bit of insecurities of, you know, the energy, the edge. And, you know, and she says, you know, as we're being taught, oh, go be best friends, you know, with your partner. This. Go be best friends and tell them everything and let them know everything about you and let them see everything about you and be available to them. 247 actually turns off that I want to fuck him, I want to fuck her. And I think she's right on with that. So I go back to guys, whether they're dating, whether in a relationship, have good guy friends where you're not depending on a woman to be your everything, your buddy, your best friend, your buddy with breasts, your emotional tampon, your therapist. Don't expect your woman to be all that. Have your therapist, have your coach, have your men's group, have your guys. Don't be so frigging available. That is one of the things I see with so many men, whether it's dating or in relationship, is they're there, they're at the beck and call of the woman all the time. Whether it's, you know, I'm messaging them all the time, always around and, you know, yeah, I love being with my wife, but I love being with her more when I haven't been with her for a while. And you know, and I know as a woman, she wants more of that fused emotional state with me, but if I give her as much as she, you know, just instinctually wants, it kills the emotional tension. We're too available. It's kind of, kind of like the Pink song. Go away and let me miss you when you come back I'll want to kiss you. That's actually a great song. If you want to learn how to create emotional tension, that song by Pink is really great. So, you know, there's so many dynamics in this thing about why we end up in the friend zone. But I'll just say that again. Women don't put us there. We put ourselves there by trying to be their friends and get their approval and get us to like us and be there at their beck and call every time they might need us or want us or. For example, you know, so many men I work with, well, you know, I hold space for her while she's doing her work and I go, stop it. You're not her fucking therapist. I'm a therapist, but I don't hold space while my wife does her deep work. And I'm not a trauma therapist, so I'm surely not going to do her good trauma work while she's projecting all of her daddy issues and abuse issues and abandonment issues onto me like I'm the asshole that caused them all. That is not at all productive to, to, to sit there and, and do that. Now, I do want to know what's going on in my, in my wife's life. I want to know the depths of what she's experiencing. But there's a difference to being there all the time. I tell men there's a direct inverse relationship between how much time a man spends listening to a woman talk about her problems and the likelihood that she's gonna fuck him anytime soon. What happens is when we become a girlfriend with a penis, we sit and listen like, you know, we're so deeply interested in all of her stories about all of her drama and internal emotional tension. And, you know, we're sitting listening, going, uh huh. We're thinking how Can I fix this? How can I get her to quit talking? How can I get her to quit being upset so we can have sex with. All we're actually doing is killing any ability she has to be sexually attracted to us. So I'm throwing a whole bunch of different stuff out there, but because. Because it isn't just one thing. But, yeah, it's usually. Bottom line is I want her to approve of me and like me so I'll do everything I think she really wants so she'll approve of me and like me and hide the rest.

You know, I think just comment on that last piece just so that people, you know, there's clarity there. You're not saying, don't ever listen. Don't ever.

I know we're talking to men. We have to clarify everything. I'm a good. Well, Tony knows me pretty well, actually. I'm kind of a crappy listener. You know, I'm a professional listener, but I'm not really that good at it once I understand what the person is saying. Okay, I get it. Let's move on. No, I want to tell you more about it. I don't really need to hear more about it. So, no, I'm not talking about don't listen. And for example, you know, I was the guy in therapy early on, 30 years ago. I told a therapist, a woman therapist, my wife just talks all the time. And it's the same thing all the time. It's the same story. And I said, I'm just bored. And she goes, well, you don't have to listen. I go, yes, you do. It's carved in stone. If a woman wants to talk, you have to listen till they're done talking. I know. My mother taught me that. I was her little helper. I was the listener. And this woman therapist said, no, you don't. If you're not interested. If you're not available, you can tell her I'm not interested, I'm not available. I go, that's going to go over well. And I go, you don't know my wife. This is my second wife. She goes, but it's more authentic if you're not interested. It's more authentic to not pretend to listen. Oh, my. So I. First time I tried it, this is really early in my, quote, nice guy recovery. I thought, okay, I'm gonna try it. I kind of weaseled out a little bit of it. But my wife started talking about the same old thing again. And I just said, hey, I gotta tell you, I'm tired. I don't have A lot of bandwidth. You know, I didn't come out and just say, this shit is boring to me. And I've already heard it 10,000 times.

I just said, I don't have enough bandwidth. And she goes, okay. I thought, okay, what's gonna happen now? And, you know, about 45 minutes later, she came back and said, thank you for telling me. You weren't available to listen. I went and called a girlfriend, and it all worked out. And I'm sitting there thinking, why the fuck didn't somebody tell me this years ago? You know that. So, yes, I want to know what is in the depths of my woman's heart and soul and what's going on with her. But I'm not her therapist, and I'm not her girlfriend. I'm her man. So a woman taught me years ago, say to the woman, I'm a guy, right? You want me to be your guy, right? You want me to be your man? Yeah. Okay. Okay, I'm a man. Give me the guy version. I want to know what's going on, but give me the guy version. And I've never had any woman in my life ask me for a definition. They know what that means, actually. They go, oh, Jessica was being a real bitch at work today, and it pissed me off. That's the guy version. I go, oh, good, I'm glad you told me that. But the girl version is. Well, all the details of what they projected onto that story and how it reflects their own story and their view of women and on and on, and. So, yeah, you want me to be your guy? Give me the guy first. Yeah. So.