Many people believe in the so-called "ladder theory" or the "friend zone" that supposedly exists in women's thinking. According to the theory, once a guy is placed by a girl on the "friend ladder" or the "friend zone", he will never be able to be more than friends with the said girl. Some have even claimed that if you are, say, "good friends" with the girl for months or years or anything along those lines, you aren't ever getting her. I'm wondering what your opinions are about that. Strongly believe? Maybe? Dunno? Not at all?

Tomorrow if I feel like it I may want to share my own recent story which, I believe, highly relates to this "ladder theory", and no, it does not have a sad ending.

This post has been edited by mTk: Aug 20 2012, 09:12 PM

Haha my intention of the post wasn't actually to "analyse" any theory, but to see how many people in this forum still subscribes to it. Personally my own stand is pretty much the same as DavalPrestor's. I really don't believe in the said "zones" either, sometimes it's just a matter of time and circumstances, as in DavalPrestor's 2nd case.

I've got plenty of friends who still defend the so-called ladder theory, and insist that "once you and the girl become good friends, don't even hope for anything more than that." I found that hard to believe at times because my logic is that relationships where the couple truly understand each other would stand a good chance of working out instead of two people who haven't known each other very well, less "unknowns in the equation" in that sense. Turns out I was right after all.

I'll post the story later today (or when I feel like it, heheh).

I guess you can say "friend zone" exists in a sense that you don't exactly consider the huge majority of the people you meet as potential partners. I.e it's far more normal to be in a friend zone just like it's far more normal to have a lottery ticket that does not have the winning numbers. Though again my point is that I don't believe that two people of the opposite sex cannot upgrade from being "just friends/good friends" to something more (unless one/both of them swings the other way of course, but that's a totally different story ).

As for hinting things out, it really depends on the girl too. Some girls take hints more easily than others. Some are very perasan. Others can appear to just take things for granted thinking that many people can really be nice just for the sake of being nice and without any intentions (my girl actually belongs in this second category).

Anyway, tl;dr version of my story:

Girl (let's call her M) and me met in 2008 through uni. She was attached back then. We became good friends in 2009 onwards. She broke up with the previous guy early 2011. We spent more time with each other especially towards the end of 2011 and beginning of 2012. I realised how attracted I actually am to her and how I enjoy spending time together. I've had a few platonic (as in, just friends) close friends who are girls before (you can say I "friendzoned" them too) but I thought this was really different.

Long story short, after about 5 months of my "pursuit", M initially rejected me and apparently was caught totally off guard. She's not the kind of girl who gets "hints" easily. Strangely for the following 3 weeks or so we became more and more intimate. The one time we had a serious talk to "draw the line" and remain friends instead, it only ended up in things becoming more physical. Then we finally decided to be together. Only then she explained the initial "rejection": it wasn't because she didn't have the same feelings for me, but because at that time she couldn't really decide whether it was right for us to enter a relationship. Changed her mind later I guess.

So yeah, years of being good friends then suddenly upgraded, which just convinced me of my stand that the ladder theory is bullshit.

This post has been edited by mTk: Aug 21 2012, 04:59 PM

Well I guess I did get really lucky, am so thankful for that.

That being said, attractiveness and preferences are unique to each person and they can change over time. Of course, I have to admit, if a guy continues pursuing the same girl for many months without the girl returning the interest, chances are he's not gonna get out of the "zone".

As for those of you arguing what people desire in their partner, I wouldn't consider myself to be good looking or remarkably fit nor rich, probably average in those 3 aspects. Nor am I tall; in fact my girl is almost my height (one to two cm difference at most!). Some, in fact, most girls actually look past appearance. Most of my guy friends who are taken do not look like K-Pop idols or whatever.