How To Avoid The Most Common Mistakes Men Make To Get Friend Zoned

How to avoid the most common mistakes that men make to cause women to friend zone them.

In this video coaching newsletter I discuss an email from a 21-year-old viewer who has limited experience with women. He’s a virgin and never kissed a girl. He says he’s always been too nice to women and struggled with relationships as a result. He shares a recent encounter with a woman he met that put him in friend zone.

He thought they were in a relationship and she thought they were simply friends. My comments are in bold italics like this below in the body of his email.

This particular email is from a 21-year-old guy. He says he has limited experience with women. He’s a virgin still and he’s never kissed a girl. He realized after getting into my work, he’s always been really too nice with women and he struggled, so he tends to get put in the nice guy category and get friend zoned a lot. This guy is from Australia by the way.

He recently met a girl, I guess she was from Korea and she was visiting or in the country and met her I think through Instagram. I know he met her in person, got her Instagram. So he just made a lot of rookie mistakes like guys that don’t know any better, and is doing and saying a lot of things that communicate and give the nice guy friend vibe. That’s what ends up happening here, is this girl friend zones him. So he thought he was in a relationship with her and she thought they were just friends. Keep in mind, he never kissed or anything in the couple of months that they were interacting.

There’s a lot of things he does in here that is just kind of typical men in general. Even guys that are older and have experience, they do and say things without realizing it. They communicate the friendship vibe instead of the lover vibe. So let’s go through his email.

Viewer Email:

Dear Coach,

My name is Bob, a 21-year-old from Australia. I’ve been overly nice to women and have struggled with relationships, having had three short ones that lasted around two months each. I’m also a virgin and have never kissed a girl. I started reading your work in March as I began dating a Korean girl in February. I’ve listened to your audio-book four times and am on my fifth listen, reading the book halfway through.

So I assume that means his first time actually going through the physical book.

This Korean girl, looks top-tier, almost 25 and used to study at the same university as me. We met on a train, exchanged social media…

So one thing I want to say about that is the best form of contact is going to be to get a phone number, because oftentimes if girls aren’t really interested in romance, they’ll give you their social media and guys that take that are basically communicating that they’re OK being a friend and a fan. That’s one of the ways, especially if she’s not really interested, women will just give you their social media to get rid of them, especially if you ask for your their phone number and they say, “Hey, here’s my Instagram, or “Here’s my Snapchat,” or whatever. In other words, what she’s really communicating is, “I don’t like you enough to give you my number, but hey, you can follow me on social media.” It’s important if that does happen to you, you have some kind of response like, “I don’t have social media. I don’t use social media,” and just open your phone to the screen where you get to put a number in and just hand her the phone and say, “Put your number in there.” If she still won’t, then you can say, “Yeah, I’m not interested in following you on social media,” and then you can dip.

When you agree to that and then you keep interacting, typically what happens is it’s just a way that women are able to give something to the guy to get rid of them without cause. Oftentimes guys get upset or they get mad if the woman’s not willing to give them the information, so social media is a low risk way to make it seem like the girl’s interested, but in reality, they’re just trying to get rid of the dude. If you’re kind of borderline in her eyes as far as her attraction level towards you and you comply with, in essence, saying, “Yeah, I’m great to sign up as one of your fans and follow you on social media,” then that’ll cement in her mind that you’re just too nice to go out with anyways, and then you get stuck in friend zone.

The idea is to not do these little things like that that you may think are innocuous, because women want to be dominated and it communicates your lack of confidence in yourself. Guys who are experienced with women know if a girl likes you, she’s going to give you your number. She might also give you your social media, but she’s going to give you her phone number in order to contact her. So the more she kind of keeps you at a distance, typically communicates that her interest is low.

…And I asked her out directly, avoiding the friendship route. She initially declined due to being busy, but eventually agreed to meet on campus, bringing her friends along.

That’s another thing that women often will do, is they bring their friends. This is how they keep the guy from taking anything from platonic to romantic is by bringing their friends, the friends are the cockblockers and the clam slammers. You don’t agree to group dates. If she says, “Oh, I want to bring bring my friends,” be like, “I’m sure your friends are nice, but I’d like to get to know you first.” If she’s like, “No, not really. I’m too busy,” the other thing is if a woman likes you, she makes it easy to go out on a date. If her interest is low, she throws a lot of roadblocks in your way in hopes that she can discourage you and then you’ll just kind of go away and give up, or figure out that she’s not really interested.

It’s pretty clear this woman’s interest is, she’s just thinking of him as a friend or she’s being nice. He’s being persistent, which is good, but he still acquiesces to her demands. You could just tell she’s just not interested and he’s focused on his interest in her and is ignoring the fact that she’s not really into him.

Despite my good looks and conversation skills, I tend to show interest too soon and act needy.

The number one strength characteristic that women love in men is confidence. When you act needy, which is basically the result of not getting enough strokes from mom and dad, what happens is you try to force things, you call too much, you text too much because deep down you feel like you don’t measure up and you’re not going to be loved, so you try to force yourself to sustain the interaction as long as possible, because typically you always end up getting rejected. The problem is, is that you’re always communicating in your vibe, the tone of your voice, your words, that you lack confidence in yourself. You can get away with that if her interest is really high, but if her interest is already low to start out with and you act needy, it doesn’t take too many mistakes before she just ghosts you or dips on you completely.

Your book has helped change my perspective on women. I asked her for dinner, but she often cited busyness and family restrictions.

Again, she’s continuing to throw roadblocks. It sounds logical, “Oh, she just must be really busy,” but the reality is, she’s not making it easy to get together. A girl that really likes you makes it easy. A girl that doesn’t, says, “Oh, I got business. I got family restrictions. I got this. I got that. I got meetings to go to.” The bottom line is, she’s not making herself available.

We settled for lunch, despite knowing from your book that it’s not ideal.

Again, this is how she’s controlling the interactions. She’s keeping it platonic with the friends that she brings with going to lunch. If women agree to a date in the evening, typically sex is potentially on the table. She’s interested in romance as well. If she’s not interested in romance and she’s just trying to be nice, or she thinks you’re soft, compliant, she likes the attention and she doesn’t mind a free meal, then she’ll say, “Let’s go on lunch.” So it’s not really that we settled on lunch, it’s that you acquiesced and caved to do something that was platonic, and it just shows you don’t have the confidence to stay true to what it is that you want. If you’re interested in sex and romance, you’re not going to be going to lunches, especially after you’ve been talking to this girl for as long as you have.

So this is part of the problem. If deep down you don’t have confidence in yourself, you ignore a woman that you really like who’s not reciprocating interest, you ignore the fact that she’s not really interested, what happens is the longer you interact with her, you get denied the love that you want, because probably what happened is your parents didn’t hug you enough or say, “I love you,” enough. So trying to date somebody that’s not interested is you’re chasing after love from her, and she’s giving you nothing, or some scraps maybe. The reality is she’s not into it. If you’re projecting your high interest and ignoring the fact that she’s not reciprocating, it feels normal. It feels like the type of relationship you typically have with parents that don’t hug you, tell you that they love you enough, or fill your bucket of self-esteem up.

Our conversations were good, but I hesitated to make any physical moves.

The other thing is, if you’re on a date and she’s showing signs, like I talk about in the book, that she’s ready to be touched, ready to be kissed, and you constantly chicken out, again it’s communicating that you don’t have any confidence. A confident guy goes for the kiss, even if he gets the cheek, then he knows not to continue investing time and money in somebody that is keeping it on a platonic level.

So you see, there’s a lot of interactions going on for many months. There’s lunches and he’s too scared to make a move and is continually displaying that he has a lack of confidence in himself and therefore her interest is just not going to go anywhere.

She returned to Korea in early May due to safety concerns after a local incident.

I don’t know what that means. She’s running from the law maybe, or she got DUI or something and fled the country.

When I suggested a call, she said she was busy. After a 20-day no-contact period…

Yeah, so he’s trying to call her to talk to her and she’s like, “Oh, I’m busy.” Again, he’s completely ignoring her low interest because he’s only focused on his interest in her. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy because deep down, if you’re needy and you don’t feel you’re worthy of love, you’ll keep interacting with somebody like this even though they’re not reciprocating, because you’re trying to get love and it’s not coming back in exactly the same way typically that you experienced in your family growing up. So from that perspective, it feels normal.

You have to understand, ideally this is why you read the book 15 to 20 times, is how things go when a girl is actually into you. When I was younger, I did stuff like this a lot, and I would take too long to disengage. It’d be many months, be friends for six months, a year, a year and a half, whatever happened to be, thinking I’m going to get my chance eventually, and all I end up doing is spending money on lunches and getting the cheek and hugs, and it just doesn’t go anywhere. After that happens enough, you’re like, “I see a pattern here.” You have to choose to say, “All right, she’s either in or out. She either likes me enough to go out on a date and kiss me or not.”

…She didn’t reach out, and when I did, she responded late saying she didn’t realize we were dating and only wanted a friendship.

Again, he’s just constantly pursuing and this girl is making absolutely no effort.

She mentioned not wanting a foreign boyfriend and is uncertain about returning to Australia. I told her I wasn’t interested in friendship and to contact me only if she wanted a romantic relationship, but she hasn’t contacted me since.

I would assume you’re probably never going to hear from her again because she just wasn’t interested in you. I don’t see any signs in your email that she was ever interested in you, but I’m sure she enjoyed the attention and validation that you gave her, plus the free lunches. Maybe you bought lunch for her friends as well that she brought. The bottom line is, I don’t see any evidence in your email that there was any kind of romantic interest in her towards you.

I’m writing to you not to get her back…

She was never yours.

…But to seek guidance on improving my overall approach to dating. I want to be better with women in general. Thank you, Coach. I will continue reading your book at least 20 times and more and apply your advice to improve my dating life.

Sincerely,

Bob

I mean, I did the same things when I was young as well, so don’t feel bad. The good news is you got the book, so you can learn all these things and not have to go through the trial and error process that I did for all those years to figure out these things. You can just learn from me and get results a lot quicker than I did. The biggest thing that I see that you did wrong is you just didn’t disengage when the evidence was clear that she wasn’t interested. Plus, you continue to agree to do lunch dates, you allowed her to bring friends and do a group date and you continued engaging with her when she used the F word. The friendship word. When somebody uses that and they try to make it clear that they’re not into you romantically, then you say, “Well, I’m not looking for that, but hey, give me a call if you ever change your mind,” and you walk away and you never look back.

In this case, I would assume you’re probably never going to hear from her again because she wasn’t interested to begin with. The fact that she takes forever to reply to your messages just shows that her interest is low. She’s responding because she’s trying to be nice and not rude, but it’s pretty clear there’s no interest. When you see this, again a girl that likes you will make a date, she’ll give you her phone number and she’ll take yours and she may text you when you’re right there to make sure they go through OK. She may even reach out to you in a couple of days if she hasn’t heard from you once you get the number, which is a good sign. The more you stay focused on women like this, where it’s going nowhere, you’re not going to be able to see the other women that are around you or that you’re encountering in life just because you’re going to be in your head thinking about this girl that’s giving you no attention, and then you’ll be dismissive of any girls in your life who actually do show you attention.

You got to go through a lot of no’s in order to get to the yeses. All you really need is one good one. When you see a girl that’s just not interested and doing the things that this one was doing, you got to disengage quickly. So these interactions went on, again he was thinking he was dating, but it went from February to May, so he spent 90 days of his life hung up on this girl trying to get blood out of a turnip, if you will, get water out of a rock. There’s nothing happening. There’s nothing coming back. So within a first date, you should have known not to go any further with her. On top of that, she wasn’t willing to even give you her number, but just the fact that you agree to take her social media if she’s not following you back, like right then and there, it’s clear she’s just trying to dismiss you and get rid of you.

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