We subject ourselves to lots of openly unfair treatment at the hands of other people and often never know why. It can be a boyfriend who doesn’t treat you well, a girlfriend who is emotionally distant, the group of “it” girls at school who humiliate you or whomever you give the power to mistreat you to. This ceding of power is mostly linked with the hardwired human need to feel a sense of belonging; you could want to be part of the in crowd or simply want to gain favour with some man or woman.

This is a natural feeling and there is nothing wrong with it but it must be stressed that how you go about belonging to these groups or gaining this favour has a lot to do with your state of mind at that time. Tied in with that, your ability to see and not stand for any form of unfair treatment is closely linked to what back-up you have. If you’d let me articulate please…

If you have a strong urge to be friends with someone you make efforts, you will place yourself at the right place at the right time, probably have similar interests and if the chemistry is right it never takes much to ignite a friendship. I know that between guys it not that difficult for us to get along and barring things like racism or homophobia in some instances guys generally get along well. A male female friendship will almost always initially have undercurrents of sexual tension. This is normally something kept hush by one of the parties as they are putting their best foot forward, but it’s important at this stage to make some things clear.

Most single people are not looking to be friends; a single guy will strike up a friendship with a beautiful woman not because she’s so cool but because he has a need he wants met. This could be physical or emotional but you must know that these friendships between singles are normally inspired by some sort of attraction. I can’t comment on how ladies approach these situations but I sincerely hope that it’s not with a naivety so robust that they fail to see the physics at play.

As long as this man is single he will keep looking to get his needs met, at some point he gets to know the lady and finds ways to convey his feelings. Depending on the individuals he may cede power to her as he might have this crush or be in love already. Some women like to play the friend card knowing full well the guy has the hots for her, and as time goes will make the man squirm emotionally. Knowing that she has some kind of hold on him she can keep the door ajar just enough to keep the poor guy around.

Loneliness can cause some men to stick around as they now have a woman to talk to; his friendship is growing with his emotions for her. In any event they are always BBMing each other or something so the feeling of growing closer is genuine. While this man has developed an emotional bond with this lady his physical needs not being met often starts to cause tension, this tension is exacerbated when the woman is also single. Generally the tone of these situations is always: “you’re good enough to hang with but not good enough to get with.” This flies like a fist to the jaw and generally makes the man feel not good enough.  

The desire for companionship sometimes is that strong that even at this end the guy will stick around.

Now put a guy in a relationship in the same situation. If he loves his woman the inclination to be friends with beautiful women is normally greatly dulled. Even if he isn’t that in love and he just wants a side helping his approach to this friendship is very different to the single mans. The fact that somewhere else he gets love means that he doesn’t need companionship like the single guy does. Situations vary but for the most part if you want to be friends with a guy, in the full sense of the word friend its best you approach a guy in a relationship. He might find you attractive but will resist for far better reasons than the fear of making you upset. He will also be more critical of the friendship, if the lady tries to make use of her feminine whiles to get her way he can call her out quickly bringing her back to order.

In simple terms, lonely people are willing to submit themselves to a lot more ill treatment than those who are not. Just like some men take advantage of lonely women, some women do the exact same to men. None of these people should be proud of themselves.

I came to this realisation after I met my woman. You see I had maintained a very unsatisfying friendship with someone I had fallen in like with. In the back of my mind I knew that she wasn’t a halfway decent friend, but her attention [measured chronologically] filled something so missing that I was happy to have an intelligent woman to talk to while I worked. I had made an emotional connection to this woman and enjoyed the fact that she gave me feelings.

Being alone and living a life devoid of emotions can get so terrible that you are so happy to be eventually feeling something you might not be aware that you’re being given negative feelings. I got used to feeling this way, sometimes she’d say things that got me wound up enough that I’d have to complain. I’d send a mail or something and then be scared to read the answer. Sometimes even feeling like there are some things that I just shouldn’t say for the sake of harmony.  

I liked her but was scared of what she could say; if I expressed positive feelings about her I’d hear that I’m getting carried away. If I said something negative I got that “this crap again?” kinda attitude, as a result we really never discussed anything worthwhile.

My girl got onto Instant Messenger as well but our conversations were so much more positive, I even started sporting a little grin while chatting. What I had been looking for was being provided, and although I still liked my friend I started noticing things. Things like how she could never say something nice about me. Or rather how she had never said anything nice about me, I noted that she’d only said something positive about me after I had pointed out that she’d had never done such before. While I had been with other women while holding a torch for her I had made that emotional connection but now realised that I made that connection on my own.

Having something else to compare this friendship to I started to see all the weak points, I started seeing that I had subjected myself to this. I saw how little she cared about me and furthermore saw how little our friendship meant to her. I saw that had I invested the same energy in this she did I would have seen it for the dud it was. Being finally disenchanted I saw that even though we chatted daily online for hours my friend had never once visited me at my home for example.

Being loved by my woman made me take note of this and made me question why I would stand for this kind of treatment. It made me see that even though I needed to have a woman I could talk to loneliness or blind adoration had put me in a situation where I was getting negative reinforcement and sadder I was doing this out of my own free will.

Not being single made all the difference in how I looked at things, what makes it even worse is that having had fallen in love like I have romantic inclinations had finally been banished from my mind. So the day I finally look at my friendship and evaluated it I got to see what I was dealing with.  

Had I not had the emotional back-up that I have now I would have taken much longer to see that I’m the only one being a friend here.

I like to say: Don’t test how much people care because you might not like the answer. Well one should never be in doubt regarding if or not their friends care for them too, so go on if you’re not sure if this is a genuine friend test away