In my naive early days, whenever I mentioned the term "friend zone" to a chick, she blew a gasket. Now it's common parlance – in the New York Times, no less. Of course, the term is okay, once it's applied to a man.
A Single Mom Escapes the Friend Zone, One Non-Date at a Time
*gags*
My interpretation: it didn't work out with the other chick. So he called her back up. Maybe I'm a cynic.
A Single Mom Escapes the Friend Zone, One Non-Date at a Time
Quote:Quote:
The nicest thing I own is the first thing you see when you walk into my house: a red handmade rug bought in Tehran, haggled over in Farsi and delivered, in person, to the Brooklyn apartment of the man who would become my husband.
Back then, James told me the woman who gave him the rug, a woman he had recently dated, was by then “just a friend.”
I didn’t believe men and women could be “just friends.” At least not if they were single, with one or both actively seeking a romantic partner. Yet I also agreed to be “just friends” with James, at first.
I was the one who contacted him. We had both joined a dating service called, pretentiously enough, The Right Stuff, after seeing an ad for it in The New Yorker. “I liked your profile,” he wrote in his first email, “but didn’t contact you because you have a child.”
At least he didn’t write, as several others had, “Thank you for being so honest.”
...
He was JamesNYC125. I was RedWeather. He responded to my first email: “A redheaded editor in Brooklyn — what could be better? But dating a woman with a child would be complicated, as I’m sure you know.”
*gags*
Quote:Quote:
“Let’s not date,” he suggested. “Let’s just get together as friends.”
That summer we both had travel plans, so a whole month passed before our first date — or our first “playdate,” I guess. In the meantime, we emailed every day. I sent him poems. He sent me music. Even while discussing academic publishing, from my side as an editor and his as a researcher, we couldn’t help flirting.
...
Later, we found ourselves in bed. Finally. And that’s when he confessed, “I’m dating someone else.” She was a fellow economist he had met at a conference around the same time he met me, an Iranian-American who lived in Washington, D.C.
“Now you tell me?”
“You knew we could only be friends.”
“You have sex with all your friends?” I removed his hand from my belly. “I bet she doesn’t even know about me.”
I told him we had to either date or not see each other again. We were both traveling for Thanksgiving, so we decided not to email or phone until we returned home. Then he would call and tell me which woman he chose.
...
Minutes after I arrived home, James called. “I choose you,” he said.
I dropped the phone and fell onto the bare floor.
...
Time passed, and I asked James if he ever wished he had chosen her.
“No,” he said. “You’re perfect for me.”
My interpretation: it didn't work out with the other chick. So he called her back up. Maybe I'm a cynic.