The Friendly Boot

I just got the "friendly boot" a few hours ago. What that means is that the woman I was dating contacted me and said that she wasn't interested in me romantically anymore but would like to remain friends with me.

Am I heartbroken? No. Am I a little hurt? Yes. Am I mature enough to remain being friends with her? No.

I'm sure some of you are thinking that I'm immature and that I'm passing up an opportunity to have a good friend, and you may be right; however, I have my reasons for preferring to break off all relations rather than attempting a longterm or close friendship.

First of all, I want you to know that I am capable of having friendships with women. It's just that the relationship has to begin at that level. For example, I am friends with many of the women who take my martial arts classes. To me that is a professional student/teacher relationship. The relationship began in that context and I'm not willing to take it further. Also, if I were to meet a woman online and if she were to say that she doesn't want to pursue a romantic relationship BEFORE we went out on a date, I would definitely be able to be friends with her.

I don't think I'm alone in thinking this way. If you begin a relationship with romantic intent, then once the romance ends BOTH parties must feel that a friendship can be maintained in order for a proper friendship to develop. I believe it is unfair to have one person hoping for another shot at romance while the other person views them simply as a compatriot.

What results is the "Nice Guy" syndrome. A man is there waiting in the wings for his opportunity to change his status. He does nothing but suffer in quiet desperation as he watches the one he cares about both emotionally and physically persues relationships with other men. I'm sorry, I don't mean to be chauvanistic and say "he". I'm sure this happens to women, too, but I think that this is a phenomenon more common to men.

Again, maybe I am being immature, but if I am physically attracted to a woman and at one time that woman reciprocated those feelings, I can't simply be a neutral friend. It is against my nature. Heck, I think it's against human nature. Think about it. Our basic purpose in life is to survive and to pass on our genetic material to the next generation. It is our higher brain functions that allow us to show compassion and to think of others before ourselves, but this base survival instincts cannot be ignored.

To reiterate, if the ground rules from the beginning were "You can only be friends with this woman", I can abide by that. I don't chase after married women as that is a social more and my higher brain function says, "This person is off limits,"; however, if the relationship begins in the context of "this might be a potential mate", I can't shut off that instinct to secure my "territory".

To conclude, I think that a lot of women feel the same way, and the idea of saying, "I hope we can be friends" is really a code to say, "I hope we can end this relationship on friendly terms." In other words, "I don't see this relationship working out. Please don't be a psycho stalker."

THAT IS ALL