Stay In The Friendzone
Because marriage is a shadow dimension
“Jim, I’m stuck in the Friendzone. What should I do?” — Friendzoned Freddy
Freddy, if I’ve told you once I’ve told you a million times: love is bullshit and an illusion. The need for companionship, help raising kids, assistance paying rent and occasional sexy action: those are real. This does not require someone that makes your heart go pitter-pat. If you’re stuck in an elevator with someone you’re attracted to for 12 hours, you will probably fall in love with them. That’s not finding a soul mate. That’s just proximity and opportunity and elevators being crappy.
If I had to do it all again, I would go back in time and give back my worthless English degree. Instead I’d get an Escalator/Elevator repair license. Elevators and escalators are always broken. And it’s more difficult to get stuck on an escalator for 12 hours. Unless you’re ground up inside its guts.
It is nice to have crushes on people. Especially people you can never be with. You can write cute, lovelorn poems about them. You can build them up in your mind until they are absolute perfection. Yearning for something we can never have is kind of invigorating. I do this all the time. It is my preferred relationship. I get to feel all warm and floaty. And I never have to be in a real, adult relationship with someone I will eventually disappoint either as a lover or as a partner. I always forget to take out the garbage. I also don’t make any money. I also don’t watch anything other than Sports and I play Ween constantly on repeat as loudly as possible. If I weren’t attached to me I wouldn’t want to live with me, either. Living with people is kind of brutal and harrowing and you always have to pretend to listen to what they’re saying. That’s worse than being alone for the rest of your life.
At least when you’re in the friendzone with someone, you have a friend. Someone you like hanging out with, who likes the same dumb things you do and who makes you feel good to be around them. This is different than any other long-term relationship you can be in. After the first few years, it’s all eye rolls and that masturbation hand-signal whenever you’re not looking. Even the couples that start off the cutest end up acting like they’re in the third act of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? after a while. Because monogamy is nonsense and inevitably you end up blaming others for your own poor choices. Which is fine: you are attached to yourself. At the very least be on your own side.
Enjoy your time in the Friendzone, Freddy. You’re going to need friends if you ever do get into a serious relationship. Because people in serious relationships all vent about how crappy their relationships are. Then they go home and do nothing to solve the deep-seated problems of their relationships. Because bitching about them is easier. And being alone is so terrible. Also you’ll need friends to help you move out of your shared apartment when your serious relationship goes belly up. Friends that will help you move are the best kind of friends. Right up there with the friends that will have fun, meaningless sex with you for no particular reason.
The best way of getting out of the friendzone is just finding someone else. When you’re in the friendzone, you are like someone’s emergency back-up lover. If something should happen to the person they’re purusing, you might be up next. If you are no longer in a twilight stage of constantly doting and available, they may freak. I was once in the friendzone. I made up a new girlfriend. I called this girlfriend “The Furry.” The lady who friendzoned me saw right through my ruse and married some other dude and is now completely gone from my life. I don’t think she was the least bit interested in my furry scenario.
Happiness is mostly unattainable. If you weren’t almost constantly searching desperately for a better way to live and be, you’d be like a dog who caught the car it was chasing. Now what are you going to do? Who the hell knows? If you became the perfect version of yourself, solved all your problems and became truly satisfied you’d probably be as bored as hell. You’d have an affair just to keep things interesting.
Refuse, Freddy. Simply refuse to play along with the sick games the universe throws at you. The universe is a cruel enough place without you playing directly into the hands of the great puppet masters. Accept your fate in the friendzone. Marry someone you like less then you imagine you like this unattainable person. And live your life as a somewhat-satisfied still-always-searching desperado.
Everyone dies and only a very few people will actually care about our deaths. You know who will care the most? You will, Freddy. You will care a lot about your own death. I don’t think dying in someone else’s arms is going to make a hell of a lot of difference in the outcome. You will probably only be passingly aware that you’re dying in someone else’s arms before you are totally dead. Then you will care a lot less about having been alone when you were dying. You’ll be dead. You will care not at all. Like New Year’s Eve. A kiss the next morning means nothing.
Jim Behrle lives in Jersey City, NJ and works at a bookstore.