It’s known as “oneitis.”
It’s the feeling every man comes to know at least once in his life when
he falls in love with a woman who regularly tells him she loves him too
… but only “as a friend.”
This is also the one non-Craigslist-related question I get asked most
often: How do I turn a girl from a friend into something more?
Researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire have come to
the rescue with some fresh insight. They surveyed the opposite-sex
relationships of more than 400 adults, ranging in age from 18-52. Their
findings offer some important scientific observations on which any man
can make some important decisions.
FINDING #1: “Attraction in friendship is happening, and it’s persistent,”
says lead author April Bleske-Rechek, associate professor of
psychology. “In the majority of (opposite-sex) friendships there’s at
least a low level of attraction. And if it’s coming more from one friend
than the other, it’s probably the guy.”
FINDING #2: Men reported more attraction to their female friends than women did to
their male friends; men overestimated their friend’s level of
attraction to them, while women underestimated attraction; and men
reported a stronger desire to date their friend than did women.
FINDING #3: The men assumed that the women were more sexually interested in them than they actually were – and the women tended not to realize this.
So what does this mean for the guy who is helplessly in love with a girl who only “loves” him back as a friend? It means this:
Regardless of how many love songs a guy hears or how many movies he
sees in which friends become lovers, it’s rarely something that happens
in real life. Once a girl decides a friendship is platonic, a guy’s fate
in usually sealed.
So does a guy have any chance at all in making a friend into something more?
Yes. In some situations, there IS a chance of changing the entire
dynamic. Check my next blog entry for more about how this can actually work.
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