 Recently, I was asked, can a man fall in love with you if he puts you in the friend zone? And I thought this was a great question because my initial reaction was no. And I'm gonna explain why. However, it occurred to me that in some ways, my sweetheart, Marie and I, we started off as friends and then it developed into something deeper. So I wanna lean into this conversation and let's have some fun with it. So first off, I believe if you've been dating someone, you've been physically romantic with them, you've had intimacy, you've had sex, and then he put you in the friend zone, it's gonna be incredibly difficult to turn that around unless this happens. However, what tends to happen more often is something like this. And this is where I really want you to explore your own feelings when this happens. So something happened to me right before I met Marie, about three months before I met Marie, I connected with a woman through a dating app and we were also social media friends. And we decided, and she basically implied, I'm not a fit for her, but I wanted to just explore a friendship with her. So we met for dinner and we had a really good time and then we just began speaking most every day. And it turns out she moved from Los Angeles to Utah. Okay, we spoke most every day. What happened was we were developing a friendship with one another. We were talking every day. I mean, in fact, it almost seemed like these text messages and talking was almost feeling like she was my girlfriend. We were sharing our days with each other. We were talking about personal development. We were talking about spiritual work. We were talking about self-help work. What happened was I found myself becoming incredibly attracted to her. And I even implied, does it even make sense to explore a relationship with her? And what happened next really was a jolt to my system because she basically said, Jonathan, I think you're a great guy, but I really only just wanna be friends with you. I mean, that's the Cliff Note version. She said it in a more diplomatic way. And I found myself going, you know what, this relationship wasn't healthy for me. In other words, I appreciate the friendship but that constant communication, and again, it was almost this expectation of being, it was almost feeling like boyfriend and girlfriend without any of the benefits of it. And I said, I'm emotionally attached and I need to detach from this relationship or this dynamic. And she understood and little by little, we just stopped, actually, it was almost cold turkey. We stopped communicating with each other. And quite frankly, I feel bad about that even though we're still social media friends, but we haven't spoken in over a year. Okay, why am I sharing this with you? When I let go of this dynamic, when I let go of this emotional sex I was having with her or emotional dependency, that might be a better way of saying it. The reason why I said emotional sex is it was I was getting some sort of, you know, fulfillment from this emotional dynamic. And I realized I was attached on an emotional level without really this person being a good candidate to be in relationship. Okay, so now let me differentiate what happened in my relationship with Marie. We connected through a dating site. Okay, we had a few phone calls and we realized because of the distance, she lived in Chicago, I live in Los Angeles, that it wasn't something I wanted to just jump on a plane and go meet with her, nor did she feel that way about me. So, and this was during COVID. So we spoke on the phone a number of times, I wanna say a half a dozen to maybe, seven to 10 times over the course of a year, we texted each other, we talked about our dating experiences. We just began a friendship and we were both on social media together. We were both Facebook friends. And occasionally she would post one of my memes and I'd go, oh, you know, like my insight says, she must like me if she's doing that. She would like a comment, I would like a comment. In fact, I think in some ways we were both teasing each other, not teasing that might not be the right word, but staying connected with one another through our likes, through our comments, through our shares, through social media. That went on for a year. Excuse me for slurping, it's hot. Went on for a year. And then when it came time, when it turned out that I had a reason to be in Chicago for a wedding, I reached out to her and said, would you like to connect? She says, great. Okay, why is this critically important for this conversation and how to understand how men fall in faster when this happens? Is that we took the romance out of the equation of meeting. We took the expectation of chivalry and romantic gestures and the man is planning the date because that's the chivalrous thing to do. And I can just sit back in my feminine energy. Okay, let me just be clear. She picked the restaurant. Mainly she picked a place that she was familiar with. I thought that was appropriate. She lives there. I've heard other people say, oh, if a guy can't pick a restaurant for us, well, because we were not going at it from a romantic perspective, she picked a place to meet. It was a nice upscale bar restaurant. And we sat out, the place we met was at a high-top table. Really nice place. Took out the, by approaching it from a friendship perspective, by approaching it from this non-romantic perspective, we felt comfortable with one another. In addition, we had built up some rapport prior to meeting so that when we did meet, and we gave each other a hug and a kiss on the cheek, it did turn more romantic because there was that initial attraction with one another. And at the same time we had built this rapport, we had built up this friendship. So then I invited her to be a guest at the wedding I was going to. First, she said, no, I don't wanna do that. I don't wanna be your plus one. I reached out with a little bit of a, not a desperate request, but I certainly didn't wanna go alone. So I made a plea, would she please come with me? And she agreed. And she joined me at the wedding. And we had a great time. Again, it was non-romantic. We were there kind of, I mean, even though there was some mutual attraction with one another, we still approached it from this friendship perspective. And that's the conversation I think is critically important. However, just like that scenario I shared with that woman that I was emotionally attached to, friendship can be a misleading thing because the fact of the matter is, a man will only fall in love with you if he feels like you're a really good friend. I want you to think about friendship for a moment. Friends are the people that you can say most anything to. You feel comfortable with, you feel that sense of trust. In today's dating marketplace, we're meeting total strangers. There's a lack of trust right from the very beginning. And this is the tricky part. When people date with their own motivations of wanting to get something for their benefit and not approaching it from a place of giving a lot of times, dating is a place of taking from one another. This is why I say to you, I've noticed that dating has become a really long drawn out version of friends with benefits. And what I mean to say, it's not even the friendship that's happening. It's just that minor emotional connection with one another to use that person in some cases like therapy. I've talked about this before as well. Do you realize that men use women as therapists in the dating practice? Now, when I say they use them as therapists, what I mean to say is this emotional dependency to share our problems, our issues, our woes with another person can create an emotional attachment to another human being. And that is not friendship. That's just therapy. See, a man will fall in love faster, you'll fall in faster when trust is built, when trust is built. How do you build trust? You have the harder conversations with one another. In my private coaching, by the way there's a link to schedule a discovery call with me in my private coaching, we talk about radical honesty. I call it pre-qualifying your prospect by being radically honest from the get go. Number two is laying your cards on the table. And what that means is to unpack your past experiences with one another, really unpack them from a therapy perspective. What I mean by a therapy perspective, I mean from a, oh, I mean, reverse that. Let me do a Willy Wonka, scratch that, reverse it. Not from a therapy perspective, from a human behavior perspective. That's laying your cards on the table. And lastly is your rules of engagement. What that means is your standards and your boundaries for exploring a relationship with one another. See, by doing this, we actually develop trust with one another. Because the reality is, is it's not the friendship piece that I'm talking about where a man will fall in love faster, it's actually when he trusts you and you trust him. That's what makes us fall in love faster when we've built trust. But today's dating marketplace is all about, how's your day going? Did you have a good day? I hope you had a good day. Marie laughs when I say this because she literally was in a relationship with a man and she went back to explore, for a couple of months she was with him. She went back to explore all the text messages and it was literally, how's your day going? And it ended with, did you have a good day? Literally, one text after another, after another, after another, okay? That's not how you build intimacy with one another. In fact, the reason why she wanted to end it with him is there was no intimacy built. Intimacy comes when you share from the heart. In fact, I wrote this in my book. What the heck is self love anyway? By the way, link below to get a copy of my book. Chapter one is speak your truth. Just do it from a kind place. That's what radical honesty is, is speaking your truth. Now, this doesn't mean that you share private things, you share secrets with another person. I'm a big proponent of being vulnerable, being authentic and being transparent. Yeah, but you don't have to share everything all at once. Now, some people will say, Jonathan, if you do too much radical honesty, there's no mystery in the relationship. Folks, it can take years and years and years to really know a person. There is no possible way in a few hour conversation even if you reveal X amount, okay? You would reveal this much. Believe me, a human being has this much 10 fold over to share. So this is crap about this whole, we need mystery. No, what we need more than mystery is we need trust. And how was that built? By being radically honest with one another. By exploring your past relationships to understand this. And again, the rules of engagement is establishing your standards early on. And the benefit to men, let me tell you this ladies, by you being the leaders in this capacity, by you being the leaders in this capacity, you're actually making the guy's job easier. Okay, I wanna end on this note one more time talking about if you find yourself attached to a man who has put you in the friend zone and you have been physically intimate with him, it is highly unlikely you will ever get out of the friend zone. And then you're not really in the friend zone. You are just merely attached emotionally to someone who isn't most likely gonna explore a relationship with you. And men also get attached to women because they can be dependent on that emotional connection as well, but it doesn't mean it's gonna turn into a relationship. And again, I'm gonna hedge my bet and say most likely it's not. Is this sinking in, is this resonating? Please let me know. Please post a comment below if it does. As always, if you find value in my group, please send your friends to my website, jonathanasley.com. Have them click the group coaching button so they can join our fantastic group, Midlife Love Mastery. And I'm gonna wrap up this video as I always do. First off, I've given myself a big, gigantic Jonathan Barrock of self love. I'm gonna reach into the camera and give you a hug of love if that's okay. I'm gonna ask you to turn to someone, a pet, a teddy bear pillow and give Iter them a hug of love because hugs are a great source of love. And let's face it, we could all use more love in our lives. Thanks a bunch. Bye-bye now. Bye.