{"id":1006,"date":"2016-07-15T11:41:26","date_gmt":"2016-07-15T11:41:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=1006"},"modified":"2016-07-15T11:41:26","modified_gmt":"2016-07-15T11:41:26","slug":"friendzone-half-girlfriend-half-boyfriend-sex-romance-relationships","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=1006","title":{"rendered":"Confessions of a Half-Boyfriend"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A<\/span>couple of weeks ago, this website carried a harrowing <\/p>piece<\/a> about a specific type of man, who tends to care about a woman only until he is rejected by her. The author eloquently wrote about \u201chalf-boyfriends\u201d, the \u201cfriendzone\u201d, and the tough choice a woman is presented with: Going the whole hog with a male buddy who has just asked her out or losing a friend.\n\nOf course, it is the woman\u2019s right to accept or reject the proposal. But what the author failed to grasp is that choice swings both ways. The man also has a choice to continue the friendship or bounce out. The latter might seem the more selfish route to take, but it is often a mature one. It is kinder to the one who has his heart broken. If you gracefully decide to bow out of a friendship, you\u2019re following the path of minimum damage.\n\nI know this because I have experienced it first-hand.\n\nBefore society took digital loving to the next level, I fell in love with a girl, semi-analogue style. We\u2019d met during the chaos of Delhi University admissions, our parents lurking somewhere in the background. We would eventually go to different colleges, but I mustered up every ounce of cojones I had that evening and friended her on Facebook.\n\nI\u2019d like to tell you that this was the start of a great, grand all-consuming romance, but the best-laid schemes of mice and men\u2026 It was a full two years before she actually sent me a message and asked for my number.\n\nFrom texting sometimes to speaking at hours on end, we got closer and closer. I was lonely and she was too, and we quietly indulged our loneliness with bouts of catharsis from sundown to sunrise \u2013 back in the day when people still called each other over the phone. She was pragmatic, but had an inkling toward the arts. I was too swamped with the liberal arts and needed a dose of practicality in my life. It was a fit handcrafted by St Valentine himself (or herself).\n\nEight months in, I realised I wanted to meet more often, talk more often, and just be more with her. It seemed like the logical step forward in a relationship that already appeared quite involved. A month later, I mustered the courage to tell her about my intentions. Her response was: \u201cI don\u2019t feel the same way.\u201d\n\n

I don\u2019t mean to say that men who \u201chit and quit\u201d or those who befriend women for the implicit purpose of sex don\u2019t exist.<\/blockquote>\n\nThis is where my life turns on a dime. What I did next, I am not particularly proud of. But I\u2019ve put it down to the follies of youth.\n\nThe day after she and I spoke, I celebrated my 21st birthday by going bald. I had become \u2013 as the great Indian philosopher Chetan Bhagat would write \u2013 the half-boyfriend before Half-Girlfriend<\/em><\/a>.\n\nIt\u2019s only in the last few years that we\u2019ve found the vocabulary to qualify it, but \u201chalf-boyfriend\u201d is a condition that has plagued humanity since the era of Dante and Beatrice. Men have been \u201cfriend-zoned\u201d ever since we figured out how to talk to the opposite sex.\n\nBefore I get lynched, allow me to explain. I don\u2019t mean to say that men who \u201chit and quit\u201d or those who befriend women for the implicit purpose of sex don\u2019t exist. That shit is real and also, deplorable. For most of us dudes in India, who have no reference point of women being actually nice to them in a platonic way, the niceness becomes a bat-signal for love. Things would be so much better without the elaborate and sneaky dance men and women are forced to perform while forging romantic connections, when a simple statement of your intentions would help things along.\n\nWhat we have come to term the friend-zone is really just a communication error: On the part of women for not knowing that they ought to draw a line, and on the part of men for not thinking there could be one. I too hadn\u2019t thought there was a line.\n\nWe continued to speak: I\u2019d take my gol-gappa–<\/em>tasting heart to a MasterChef episode. When I realised that she had begun speaking fondly of another guy, I read the writing on the wall. I knew if something were to happen between the two of them, I might act, ummm, a little unhinged. To preserve my sanity and self-respect in these dire straits, I bid her adieu. I told her I was going to block her from various social media platforms as seeing her always seemed to trigger an indescribable ache just above my stomach.\n\nIn 2017, this act of self-preservation and killing all contact, would make me an asshole masquerading as a \u201cnice guy\u201d.\n\nWhen I said my goodbye, it wasn’t because I was expecting sex in return for my friendship. It was because I\u2019d decided not to unravel and break down in full view of her. \u201cHalf-boyfriends\u201d move on not because you took sex off the table but because he\u2019d collapse if he did not. I haven\u2019t seen much of the world, but I\u2019m fairly certain no one wants to pass along condoms to a girl we harbour romantic feelings for, as she moans with some other guy \u2013 and two months later, tissues, as she moans about him.\n\nYour average half-boyfriend is just a normal dude swimming in a fish bowl. He\u2019s not a \u201cnice guy\u201d who is nice to you only so he can get into your pants and he\u2019s definitively not how he\u2019s played on screen by Boney ka launda. Romance is a complicated thing and everyone deals with rejection differently. Some knock down doors and some close them shut. But it doesn\u2019t make us assholes.\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The \u201cfriend-zone\u201d is really just a communication error. Not all \u201chalf-boyfriends\u201d are sneaky assholes who are nice to women only to get into their pants.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":82,"featured_media":1007,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-love-and-sex"],"yoast_head":"\nConfessions of a Half-Boyfriend<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The \u201cfriend-zone\u201d is really just a communication error. 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