That's what Friends aren't for

Published in blunt magazine volume 11 issue 6

The laughing, the joking, the confiding, the lengthily phone conversations about nothing in particular. Surely it won't be long before we take things to the next level, after all friends make the best lovers right? Wrong! I hate to break it to you buddy but you took a wrong turn back at should've-kissed-her-already lane and are now lost deep within the icy labyrinth of the friendship zone. You'd have a better chance of escaping an Al Qaeda prison armed with nothing more than a plastic fork with the prongs broken off and a Supersoaker 9000 than freeing yourself from the confines of this self-inflicted platonic hell. At this moment you are about as desirable to her as an all night Angelina Jolie fuckathon is to Elton John.

I oughta take a bullet to your brain and put you out of your misery right now because believe me it'd be far less painful than continuing in this friendship-relationship limbo, as insipid as a fart in a hurricane. A martyr of the heart you suffer in silence as she ploughs her way through man after man, placating yourself with the Hollywood-fueled notion that it's just a phase and one day she'll awaken from this emotional coma overwhelmed by all-encompassing warm fuzzies at thoughts of you. She'll confess her undying love as rose petals rain from the sky and all will be right with the world. This is not romcom land, she is not Jennifer Aniston, this is real life and the real laws of relationship physics do in fact apply. You are not a hopeless romantic you are just hopeless. And for those of you who have stuck out the waiting game and feasted on the fruits of your fortitude, there's a word for that, it's called settling.

The friendship zoners of today are the sexual cowards of yesterday. Those too scared to put themselves out there and potentially suffer the humiliation of a cock block so instead unwittingly strap into the safety of the pal seat paying the ultimate price for their sexual reticence. If you wish to avoid this mental anguish the approach needs to be a swift one, like that of a band aid removal, for he who hesitates surely masturbates.