Perceptions of healthy and respectful relationships and friend zone phenomena

The term “friend zone” has been used in various areas of social media and pop culture to define a situation where one individual covets a relationship with a close friend that never evolves; typically the situation includes a male seeking a potential romantic partner with a female. Although friendship is often viewed in a positive format and sometimes the foundation of a healthy relationship, this term has been stigmatized as an unfortunate situation and counterproductive to obtaining a fulfilling relationship.

To approach the multi-faceted concern of friend zone phenomena and the many areas damaging messages that occur, my thesis starts with the history of friend zone phenomena, establishing a definition of friend zone phenomena for future scholars. Next literature on friendship and love, and Galician’s work used for both the methodology and theoretical framework is introduced leading to the analysis. The methodology and theoretical framework for the analysis uses Mary-Lou Galician’s 7-Step-Reality-Check-Up, twelve Myths social media promoted as the preferred reading and the Twelve Prescriptions (Rxs) for Getting Real About Romance. Resources on the discourses of gender performativity, psychology, and sociology are also included in the theoretical framework.

I start with an introduction to retrograde misogyny, The Manosphere (including The Red Pill [TRP]), the Elliot Rodger case and rape culture. This initial segment is analyzed differently from the other texts to describe the crux of social justice issues within friend zone phenomena. I then analyze 10 online memes related to friend zone phenomena. Lastly, I analyze Jet and Star’s new book, How to Get out of the Friend Zone –their book is a textual version of the advice they give on their YouTube channel.

Throughout all the texts Myths 5 (Physical Attraction), 6 (Man = Stronger), and 13 (No Cross-Sexual Friends) were all proposed as the preferred reading. Myth 14 (Men Want Sex/Women Want Money) was prevalent across the memes and TRP/Rational Male. All four myths are laden with gender performativity with damaging perceptions of healthy and respectful relationships. Additional research on friend zone phenomena in the form of interviews and surveys is recommended as research is still sparse.