Female "friends:" the comprehensive statement.

The "can men and women be friends?" discussion is boringly common but also prone to stereotype

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. Girls respect guys who make the 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.

With girls I was a little bit attracted to, I was an unconscious game expert, dribbling out just the right amount of attention to hook her. I wasn't concerned about how good I was in bed, which made me better in bed because I wasn't worried and became focused on the moment.

With hot girls, girls I considered "top tier" (a stupid thought: no girl is out of my league), I'd do the opposite: timid, scared to make the move, worried about offending her, worried about being told "no." It took me too long to realize "no" is great. A firm "no" tells me I can give up on that girl and go find a girl to say "yes." A firm "no" from a chick who means it is advantageous to guys.

To guys who are into smashing hot chicks, that is. To guys who are afraid of being rejected, "no" hurts. Most guys who are attracted to their female "friends," aren't friends with the woman.

If I'm not f**king her... chances are someone else is. Most chicks are being f**ked by someone. Hot chicks, medium chicks, even ugly chicks. If that hot chick is going to f**k someone, it might as well be me... if I wait long enough it'll be someone else.

When a guy propositions a girl for sex or starts kissing her and she says no, he doesn't need to make a big deal about it. The less big a deal he makes, the better. She's been honest with him, and that is good. He doesn't have to have a "friend breakup" talk. He merely needs to direct his attention in more useful directions. Stop texting her, stop the unsolicited contacts. If you see her around, say hi and be cordial, without increasing intimacy. Don't do one-on-one hangouts. When you find a girl you can bang, you won't remember why you had it for some girl you couldn't. You'll naturally lose interest in the unavailable chicks, because you're too busy being deep in a chick who is available.

Friendship thrives on mutual interests. For a lot of guys, their female "friends" are girls they'd really like to fuck, and, if they remove the horny from the situation, or realize they're not going to fuck her, and what's the basis left for the friendship?

Right.

Nothing.

Your time is finite 

Every guy has 16 waking hours in the day. Time spent with female "friends" is usually not time spent getting laid or being in the gym or hitting on chicks or otherwise improving a guy's life. Most guys who are "friends" with hot girls, are merely providing value to the girl while getting nothing in return, so the equation is unbalanced. If the guy demands equal value in return, the girl hops to the next male "friend." This kind of behavior becomes bad for women over time, as older women will eventually lose the beta males who provide free attention, but for women in their teens and well into their late 20s, using one kind of guy for attention and validation and another kind of guy for sex is common.

Telling a 20-year-old-girl that she won't be able to get away with this when she's 34 is not going to work... or mean anything to her.

In my last two years of school, I got in with a couple of party girls who'd get tons of party invites, and, although I wanted to f**k them, they were genuinely good sources of other leads. I've seen guys say, "Girls look at me differently when I'm out with a hot girl!" But do you bang those girls? Putting your dick inside a girl is the real test of anything related to the game, like profit and revenue are the true tests in business. In business, many people will say, "Oh that sounds like a cool product / service." Do they pay for it? Then they mean it. Do they think someone else might pay for it? Then they do not. Talk is cheap.

Being "friends" with a hot girl seems to get most guys very few lays, from what I can tell. Yes, it might be easier to get warm intros, but most of the time a hot girl trying to pass off her male "friends" to other chicks is not going to succeed. Other girls are like, "If he's so great, why aren't you dating him?" The main way a guy can be "friends" with a hot girl is if he's f**king so many other hot girls that he doesn't care about the lay... which is great... if he has that life.

With those two girls towards the end of school, I wanted to bang them, but I didn't... and I didn't care that much... this was a rare circumstance where being the hot girl's friend led to me getting laid. But by then, I'd also gotten used to meeting chicks and escalating. Meeting chicks at college parties is the easiest thing in the world. Eventually I started dating one, and that was around the time I really got over my fear of "no."

Anyone old enough will remember ladder theory from the earlier days of the Internet. It's kind of stupid but gets the basic idea that women by and large put men into two categories, one for potential sex and one for everything else, including "friendship." Men mostly want women for sex. I have some female friends, but they're women I've either had sex with before or don't want to have sex with. If a guy genuinely doesn't want to have sex with a woman... and she brings genuine skills or insight to the table... then being friends is fine. Being friends because you don't have the balls to try and f**k her is bullshit.

Weak ties and random reinforcement schedules 

Despite all that, I'm not opposed to guys having loose connections with, or to, attractive women in relationships. Most guys figure out that chicks keep a stable of possible boyfriend alternatives in silent reserve (high-quality guys learn to do the same thing). When a chick is ready to leave boyfriend #1, or when she gets dumped by him, she'll often leap, or "branch swing," to a new guy. So it's not an absolutely terrible idea to put yourself in place to be that new guy.

Thing is, you don't need to spend hours and hours with a chick to be that guy. Being cordial to her when you see her is enough. A very occasional coffee. Invite her to stuff you're already planning to do, like going to the gym or a (normal) party / drinks. A little time goes a long way. If she's hot and has a boyfriend she won't cheat on, you can position yourself to be next in line. But "less is more," and if you get too close to her you'll be a feminized "I see you as a brother" friend.

This kind of weak-tie situation is not a total time suck and it might not be a total waste of time. You can cultivate a lot of weak ties without a lot of time spent. These strategies shouldn't be part of your primary effort to get chicks, but it can be part of the background effort. Some hot chicks spend very little time being single, just like high-quality guys. They have backups in mind. When her breakup hits, you can hit her up for a drink, even as most of your mating energy goes into finding, cultivating, and banging new chicks. Girls like my friend "Katie" are heavily k-selected and do few if any hookups. So being loose "friends" with a girl like her could be useful when she breaks up with her current boyfriend, since she spends little time being single.

Chicks like social proof. If a weak-tie chick sees you banging hotties, she'll know that you're in the hottie-banging business and will hit you up for that service when she's ready. If she sees you desperate for her, desperate for what she's not going to give you, you're demonstrating lower value and turning her off.

Guys who moan about their time in the "friend zone" usually spend hours and hours with an attractive chick, not realizing that all those hours are decreasing his overall attractiveness. A little distance and mystery will do more for him than being her emotional tampon. Some guys also seem think "Don't cultivate women you find super attracted as close friends" means that you have to be rude to women, or cut them out entirely. You don't, not necessarily. But they should not be a primary social outlet for you. They should at most be a secondary or tertiary social outlet.

Social media thrives on random reinforcement schedules,

We begin with the first force: intermittent positive reinforcement. Scientists have known since Michael Zeiler's famous pecking pigeon experiments from the 1970s that rewards delivered unpredictably are far more enticing than those delivered with a known pattern. Something about unpredictability releases more dopamine.... Technology companies, of course, recognize the power of this unpredictable positive feedback hook and tweak their products with it in mind to make their appeal even stronger.

(This is also why you should avoid social media.)

So: if you're going to be in loose contact with that hot chick, be intermittent. You don't need to reply to her right away. You're a busy guy. You don't need to view her stories or whatever. Maybe you'll shoot her an occasional message to get a coffee, a drink, hit the gym together, etc. But keep it very occasional.

One theme of this blog is that different strands and techniques in game feed into each other. Work enough strands and something will come through. Plus, work enough strands and they'll work together to make a rope. One strand is weak. Several together can be strong.

As I've gotten older, I've observed some of the "friend zone" in reverse, in which women will maintain friendships with men in hopes of getting the man to invest in her fat self and especially her fatherless children. This isn't a great look for the woman, and it reflects the way male sexual value frequently peaks later than female sexual value. It seems that younger guys have problems with female friends, and older guys learn 1. what true friendship is, 2. not to hide our dicks, and 3. if she isn't f**king me, she probably isn't important to me.

With all that context, however, it's possible for high-value guys to have female friends, if they're already getting all the sex they want from other sources. I have (had? can't tell right now) a lover nicknamed Ms. Slav, and I would not be surprised if we shift towards a friend/mentor role. I like her in a lot of ways, but I have other lovers who are in some ways more compatible than she is. The age gap, combined with her interests and proclivities, mean that we might not be suitable as lovers. Like the girls I knew at the end of college, she is an interesting person AND I am getting about as much sex as I want, so we wouldn't be "friends" with me quietly hoping she comes around to sex with me. We've already been lovers, and I'm not accepting a fake "friendship" as a second- or third-best option.

In my own life, the highest-value guys have very rarely had problems with "the friend zone." If a chick won't f**k them, they move on. Lower-value guys should do the same thing. Attention is the only tool modern guys have, and most guys waste it. No guy needs to be rude to a woman who rejects him, so it's not like he can never say hi when she passes on the street, but he should withdraw attention. She's not his friend. We all have internal mechanisms that make us want to lie to ourselves about all sorts of things. Being true to yourself and accepting the Red Pill is about not lying to yourself (this is hard).

When you don't lie, you can assess your own weaknesses, assess how to fix them, and assess what you really want (as opposed to what you think you're supposed to want). You may not entirely know what you want, or you may have multiple, conflicting desires. I have that problem right now. But I also acknowledge it and am aware of it. Not all problems can be solved. The female "friend" problem? That one's easy to solve.

Most women also make for terrible friends. There are exceptions, of course, but most guys with female "friends" are lying to themselves about what's really going on.