Friend zone
It's been some time since Chris has been able to even form a casual friendship with a woman. Nevertheless, his single-minded focus on going all the way and getting laid has led him to view the concept of the friend zone with disgust. Friendship, in Chris's mind, is merely a tactic women use to avoid giving guys like him the china they deserve.
The friend zone defined
Nowadays the "friend zone" is a common topic in discussions of romantic relationships. From one perspective, the friend zone is where guys wind up when they spend too much time getting to know a woman without trying to make a move towards a more serious relationship. Eventually, the woman views them as "just friends" (or "like a brother," to use one variation on the theme) rather than a potential lover.
From another perspective, a woman might value her friendship with a man too much to take the risk of advancing to a more serious commitment, which could lead to an ugly breakup and the end of any sort of relationship with him.
It's possible for a woman to enjoy a man's company without wanting to go to bed with him (and for a man to likewise feel the same way about a woman). Most people are capable of accepting this fact, even if it's a bit difficult to deal with when one has been "friended" by the object of one's affection. Chris, of course, has other ideas.
Chris on the friend zone
Like many other supposed "rules" related to sex and dating, the friend zone is in fact a pretty nebulous concept. Chris, unable to think about relationships except in the most rigid, inflexible terms, characterizes the friend zone as a law, a hard and fast rule that he apparently believes has been forced upon him by some unspecified authority. (This is similar to his interpretation of the three-date rule.)
In Mailbag 4, a correspondent asked him what law he would change if he could change a single one. (His intention was probably to bait Chris into discussing the "dumb laws" preventing teenage girls from taking off their clothes in public.) Chris responded with a tirade against the friend zone.
| “ | I would remove the "Law" of the "Friend Zone", because I feel that it is just wrong to not even attempt to have anything beyond friendship, especially if the man and the woman are both comfortable with each other and are close. | ” |
| Chris, failing to understand women as usual. | ||
Later, he expanded his opinion somewhat in the Common Questions section of the Mailbag. In this case, a correspondent quite reasonably asked, "What happened to a woman's right to choose who she wants to be with?"
| “ | Nothing has happened in Women's Rights; the "Friend Zone" is only the LOUSIEST EXCUSE EVER to give to someone the woman deeply cares about and trusts so she could get out of sex or a relationship. I do not take kindly to that Excuse at this time. | ” |
| Chris, as delusional and entitled as ever. | ||
Chris's characterization of "we're just friends" as an "excuse" is revealing, both in regards to his ideas about women and his view of himself. He cannot imagine a rational explanation for why a female friend would not want to have sex with him. Instead, he believes that women have invented excuses like this one because for some reason they fear a sexual relationship. If he is attracted to her and wants to sleep with her, he feels that she is obligated to return his interest and help bring his degenerate fantasies to life.
Megan and the friend zone
His comments about the friend zone shed a bit more light on Chris's relationship with Megan Schroeder (and its spectacular collapse). While Megan was happy to enjoy an ordinary, platonic friendship with Chris - which, most observers would agree, is far more than he could ever have reasonably hoped for - he clearly couldn't get his mind around the notion of a woman who didn't mind his company, but didn't want to have sex with him. From his perspective, she was "making excuses," since there's no way she could have been sincerely interested in nothing more than a good friendship. Hence his refusal to quit subjecting her to physical pressure, his assumption that only sexual inexperience prevented her from wanting to fuck him, and so on.