Is This Your Friend-Zone Speech?
What you should do if a woman you are dating has recently given you the friend-zone speech.
In this video coaching newsletter, I discuss an email from a viewer who was referred to my work by his friend who saw how he was struggling with women and dating after his ex-girlfriend of eight years broke up with him. He says he has read and listened to my book for a total of twenty times combined. He describes what he did and said that led to him getting the friend-zone speech from his latest romantic interest, after he made the mistake of treating her like a girlfriend and over-doing it.
It’s a great cautionary tale of a real world example of how doing a little too much too soon can lead to rejection and the dreaded friend-zone, so you can learn from his mistakes and avoid making the same ones in your own life. My comments are in bold italics like this below in the body of his email.
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Hi Coach,
I have been following you for a few years now. I was introduced to you by a friend who saw me struggling with women after my ex of 8 years broke up with me. I started by watching a few videos, and it wasn’t long after, I bought your book. I have probably read your book and listened to your audio book for a combined 20 times or more.
I dated around, but nothing too serious happened, as I was going back to a community college while working a full-time job in property management.
It’s okay to be single. It’s okay to take your time. It’s okay to focus on your mission and your purpose for awhile, and not be too involved with dating. The idea is, when you encounter women in your life, you at least want to interact with them and practice the things you’re learning in my book, so when you are ready, willing, able and open to dating somebody, you’ve been practicing. It will be much easier, as opposed to reading and studying it, but never interacting. Knowledge only becomes potential power when you actually apply it.
I’m 32 years old, so the majority of the other students are roughly 10 years younger than me. I go to class to do what I have to and get out. However, one night this girl walks in and completely takes my breath away. I can tell she’s closer to my age, and my radar told me she was single.
Women that are ready, willing, able and open to dating and are not tied up with anybody else will make direct eye contact like that, and on top of that, if they like you, they will smile. Women that are married, are in a relationship or their mind is just off somewhere else will avoid making eye contact. They’ll tend to look away, and they’ll walk right by you like you’re invisible. When women like you and are interested in you, they’ll make eye contact and smile.
For somebody who’s just starting to apply these things, obviously approaching women can be really scary for a lot of guys. My book teaches a lot of low risk ways to read a woman’s attraction level. By the time you get around to asking her out, you already know she’ll say yes. It takes away most of the fear of getting rejected.
We struck up a conversation, and it wasn’t long before we went on a date. We kissed on the second date, and it seemed like things were going well. After a few more dates, I took her to Disneyland for her birthday. Looking back at it now, it was probably too soon, as we were only still dating and she wasn’t my girlfriend.
You made the mistake of treating this girl you were just kind of casually dating like your girlfriend. You didn’t say anything about hooking up with her, so it doesn’t sound like it got really physical. There wasn’t enough time spent together for an emotional bond to form.
Also, most women are going to sleep with a guy by the third or fourth date, and you didn’t go for the kiss until the second date. That tells me you were either holding back or you were too afraid to go for what you wanted. That communicates something subtly, especially if the girl was really into you, which it seems like she was.
The way you looked at her, she could tell you really liked her, but she also probably picked up on the fact you were holding back, and maybe you were afraid. Maybe you were a little fearful. Then you got a little too gung-ho, taking her to Disneyland for her birthday and doing something kind of extravagant, when you really hadn’t been intimate with each other yet.
While at Disneyland, I was walking on clouds. We acted like a couple, held hands, gave each other little pecks in line, etc.
Why little pecks? Why not making out passionately? That’s also going to communicate you’re either not experienced, or you don’t have the confidence to go for what you want.
After I dropped her off at home, I listened to your audio book on my drive back to my apartment. I told myself I wasn’t going to make the same mistake your other followers did. I wasn’t going to be a cautionary tale.
I got a text from her that same night thanking me for a wonderful birthday. I replied, letting her know I was glad she enjoyed it and wished her a good night. Two days later, she texted me again asking for the photos we took at Disneyland. I took this as an opportunity to ask her out again. She mentioned she was “too busy,” and that we should try for something next week.
You could have said, “Great. What’s your schedule like next week? What day are you available?” There’s a little rust here, maybe because you haven’t dated too much, but these are little, subtle things here that you’re communicating. You think they don’t mean anything, but from her perspective, she is picking up on it.
If she’s attractive and in her mid to late 20’s, a little closer to your age, then she has interacted with enough guys to know the betas from the alphas, and she’s not going to be satisfied with the betas. She wants a mature man that knows what to do.
The next week came, and I got another flakey response. I thought it was strange, but I followed your teachings and backed away, giving her the space to miss me. Sadly, she never did. I waited two weeks instead of the one to finally reach out to her again. I told myself if I got another flakey response, then I would have my final answer, but we ended up scheduling a coffee date.
You were at Disneyland, and now you’re on a coffee date. That’s the kind of thing you do on a first date. Your job as a man in the courtship is to create an opportunity for sex to happen — to hang out, to have fun and to hook up.
On the phone, it doesn’t sound like you were really direct, decisive and getting right to the point, because she said she was busy when you wanted to get together. The idea is to say, “When are you available?” but you didn’t do that, and that again communicates some weakness on your part.
At the coffee date, I could feel her being distant, but after joking around and catching up, I felt her open up. At the end of the coffee date, I went in for the kiss goodbye, and I got the full-blown cheek. I looked at her confused and said, “I thought we were past this.” Her response, “I think we should talk.”
That sucks.
I felt an uneasy pit in my stomach. She started off by saying how she was busy with school and work, and it wasn’t the right timing for her. As I listened to her tell me these things, I knew what was coming, and my heart was just sinking deeper and deeper as she listed her “reasons,” but I knew they were just excuses because, at the end of the day, she wasn’t as attracted to me as I was to her.
No matter what you do, when you’re interacting with a woman, you’re communicating things subtly. I pointed out a few things here and there you didn’t notice or didn’t think were that big a deal, but to me it was obvious.
I looked her straight in the eye and asked her, “Is this your “let’s just be friends” speech?” Hesitantly she replied, “yes.” That absolutely crushed me.
I guarantee you, she could see that in your body language and your physiology. She probably saw your shoulders droop down, your head go forward a little bit and you kind of slumped in your chair, which communicates more weakness.
I was trying not to show too much emotion, and miraculously my body went into auto-pilot and responded with, “I like you. I like you a lot, and I am romantically interested in you. I don’t think I gave you the impression that we should be boyfriend and girlfriend right now, but I am curious to see where this can go in a non-platonic way. If you ever change your mind, feel free to give me a call or text.” Her face said it all. She probably never had anyone tell her something like this before.
That part you did perfect. You did that textbook.
She admitted that I never gave her the pressure of trying to lock her down,
Well, what’s she going to say? Remember, she’s trying to let you down easy without hurting your feelings. The reality is, her attraction level went the wrong way. Instead of going up, it went down,
and also said she was disappointed, because she valued my “friendship so much.”
That also tells you, you probably gave off too much of the friend vibe and not enough of the lover vibe. A woman who’s busy and has her shit together is like, “I’ve dated enough guys to know, this guy is going to get all hung up on me and get clingy, thinking I’m going to be his girlfriend, and I might as well just nip that in the bud.” So in other words, she didn’t feel safe and comfortable to come and go as she pleased. Your game was not tight dude.
I told her, “It might sound selfish, but friendship with you is not what I’m looking for. I want something more than that.”
We said our goodbyes, and I let myself feel the pain for the rest of the weekend, with pizza. This was the first girl since my ex that I was seriously interested in, and it didn’t go the way I thought it would.
Repetition is the mother of skill. You’ve got to practice. You’ve got to interact with more women. What happened was, you waited for the unicorn to show up, but because you didn’t really practice with anyone else, the unicorn showed up, and your old conditioning came back.
Because you hadn’t really practiced enough with other women, you had not gone through the progression of pickup, dating and transitioning the relationship. It sounds like this is the only girl you’ve really practiced with, and obviously your game was pretty rusty.
I am incredibly grateful for your material, because if I didn’t study it as much as I did, I probably would have lost my center, confessed my undying love, like in the movies, and accepted her “friendship.”
Although it didn’t work out for me with this girl, I did learn a lot from this experience, and l wanted to thank you for giving me the tools to have this experience and for the experiences to come.
I think it’s great dude. At the end of the day, it’s a win. You got to go out with a girl that knocked your socks off. It’s also possible there was an ex-boyfriend that came back into the picture or some guy she was maybe a little further along with than you. But you did everything right to set yourself up for her to potentially come back a few weeks or a few months later, when she finds guys way less prepared than you were.
She may reach out at some point in the future, and when she does, invite her to your place to make dinner together. Just as I discuss in “7 Principles To Get An Ex Back,” make her come to you. Make her earn another chance to spend time with you.
If she wants you to meet her out, just say, “It’s been a really long week, and I’m just in the mood to hang and have a nice, quiet, romantic evening at my place. If you don’t want to do that, just give me a call in two or three weeks, and maybe I’ll meet you out for something more formal,” and withdraw the offer.
I will take what I learned with her to the next girl I meet, and I know it won’t be long before I find someone that’ll like me as much as I like her.
I will continue to read/listen to the book and polish my skills to be another step closer to a 3% man. Thanks again for all you do, I eagerly await your next book. You have a fan for life.
Best Wishes,
Bob
The biggest takeaway from this is, you’ve just got to practice more. You can’t follow me for several years and then only interact with one woman that you really like. I commend you for the fact that, at the end when she tried to friend-zone you, you were like, “I don’t think so. That doesn’t work for me.” You handled everything textbook.
My suggestion for you is to brush up on what’s in “7 Principles To Get An Ex Back,” so you can invite her to come to your place to spend an evening together. If she’s not willing to do that, then withdraw the offer and tell her to call you if she changes her mind. You took this girl to Disneyland and spent her birthday with her. It’s not like you’re a fucking stranger, so there should be no reason for her to not to come over and make dinner at your place.
The strongest negotiating position is being able to walk away and mean it, so you need to get to know the “7 Principles To Get An Ex Back” backwards and forwards, and stick to it. If she does come back, she does reach out and she agrees to come over to make dinner with you, hang out, have fun while you’re hanging out, and then hook up when the signs are there. When you make a date at your place to make dinner together in the evening, usually when she likes the guy, that’s typically going to lead to sex.
You either get what you want, or you withdraw the offer. You’ll get better. It’s just one girl.
“Having emotional self-control is hard to learn and maintain when you are in a fearful state and are trying to overcome a lifetime of emotional conditioning and doing things the wrong way. A man who becomes overly emotional, instead of being centered in his masculine energy and not attached to his outcome, makes women feel unsafe and uncomfortable in his presence. This display of weakness leads to rejection and friend-zone. Being centered in your masculine energy means speaking your mind, unapologetically going for what you want, standing up for yourself and walking away from any personal or professional interaction where what you’re being offered is not what you want or are willing to settle for.” ~ Coach Corey Wayne
