looking for love? check your friend zone

"I could never be attracted to her like that," you think. "We're just friends."

Maybe.

"He's like a brother to me," you say to yourself. "No way I could think of him as anything more."

Are ya sure?

Let's (at least) admit this: many of y'all regularly use an ad-hoc, 

...unevenly applied and followed, 

...never-completely-verbalized, 

...always-in-edit-mode criteria 

for what sort of person you want to be with (or not be with). It shifts like a breeze on a spring day.

Please don't hear what I'm not saying: I'm not saying that's an unreasonable thing to do.

What I am saying: your criteria for who gets 'friend zoned' also shifts with time, and experiences.

[a Friend Zone Description: a friendship between two people in which one of the persons has an attraction to the other that's not presently reciprocated]

Ergo, it's not inconceivable that someone in your 'friend zone' might respectfully desire more, hope for more. It's also not inconceivable that while they fit the friend zone just fine when you met, maybe they have more to offer. 

That was then, this is now. 

Ideally, you get wiser with time.

To put it another way: you would not want to be with someone you wouldn't also be friends with. So an overlap of friendship and romantic love already makes sense. And yes: attraction, sexuality, romance, etc are -- within a proper context -- all great blessings from God. But if this lacks a foundation of respect and a lasting friendship, something's wrong.

Infatuation, having a crush, situationship(s), "what-are-we" chats, and 'catching feelings' usually involves heaps of adrenaline-laced anxiety.

But, we can mistakenly think this: if we enjoy someone's company, but being around them lacks that boost of octane adrenaline, that's not someone for us. Yet we also should feel safe in relationships. This feeling would correlate to lower anxiety. So don't brush off a lack of, or more subdued feeling of, 'butterflies in the stomach' or palpable 'rizz.'

This world absolutely brims with happy, thriving couples who were friends first. 

And at some point, one of them probably thought, 'This is someone I want to be with' while the other person initially said, 'No way this would ever be anything more.' Dear reader, I personally know many couples who started out this way. Heck, I'm one of them too.

So what am I saying?

I'm not saying you were wrong to categorize someone as "just" a friend, and nothing more. I'm just saying it's wise to occasionally re-evaluate these decisions.

Looking for love? Check your friend zone. Check it like you check your blind spot while driving.

Try to look at someone in a different light. See if there's anything more to see. Maybe you'll still be just friends. But it's at least worth considering.

If you enjoy spending time with someone, and they have character qualities that you respect and want to be around, that's a foundation for a healthy friendship. Bonus: it also happens to be a foundation for a healthy relationship.

Sometimes, we discover the best treasures are right next to us the entire time.

Book to read for further contemplation:

-Boundaries in Dating (by Cloud & Townsend), chapter 7: "Don't Fall In Love With Someone You Wouldn't Be Friends With"

over-feeling & never leaving well enough alone

"You're overthinking it." I've been told this, and have told this, countless times over. 

You have too. 

But you know what I've never, ever heard said to me? "You're over-feeling it." 

And why not?

If we can overthink, we can over-feel. Seems to make sense.

What's overthinking? 

My take: it's when we analyze a thought, relentlessly. We do this a point where it disrupts much of our day, and a disproportionate amount of life. It derails other thoughts. It overrides other stuff we want to also ponder. It stays excessively heightened in our mind's eye.

BUT here's the thing: our thoughts aren't always right. Actually, we're wrong about as often as we're right. So therefore, not every thought we have is well-thought-out.

So what's over-feeling? 

My take: It's when we analyze our feeling(s), relentlessly. We do this to a point where it disrupts much of our day, and a disproportionate amount of life. It derails other feelings. We're somehow unable, in the moment, to discern if the feeling's valid. It overrides other feelings we want to properly feel. It stays excessively heightened in our heart and mind.

BUT here's the thing: our feelings are sometimes mistaken. Actually, our feelings can be off-base as much as true. So not every feeling we have is sensibly felt.

"In my defense I have none, for never leaving well enough alone..." -T.S. (The 1)

How do we stop over-feeling?

Whoa, whoa whoa.

First, let's check expectations. 

Trying to abruptly *stop* over-feeling will likely end in failure. Might as well try to stop feeling a breeze when you're outside and it's windy. Nor can we expect to always *control* our over-feeling tendencies.

I picture it like this: I have this plate of food sitting in front of me. The only item on the plate is a food called 'over-feeling.' It tastes like plain oatmeal, which is not everyone's favorite. And somehow, I can't take it off the plate (so that option is out), nor can I push the plate off the table (that option's also out). One way or another, I've gotta eat this mush. 

So what to do?

What I can do is I can try to interrupt, to interfere with that over-feeling taste, so that it's not the only taste on the plate. I put something else on the plate with it. I can add salt. Or ketchup, or brown sugar, or butter, or popcorn, or ranch dressing, or milk, or anything. 

The point is not that it tastes great. The point is that the taste of over-feeling gets disrupted. There's no law that says 'over-feeling' gets to overwhelm us all by itself. Adding ketchup radically disrupts the taste. My goal is to add to and crowd my over-feeling, to disrupt the taste. 

This concept takes center stage in the book The Giver.

Jonas finds living with memories amidst the Sameness landscape undesirable. But he can't rid himself of the burden. So what does he do? Jonas flees to some Elsewhere so that the burden of memory isn't all he has with him.*

Make the over-feeling work for it.

Also: it's reasonable to need help when we face our over-feeling tendencies. It takes time to learn new ways. Praying to God helps. The counsel and/or silent presence of wise, loving friends can also do much good. These are some options to add to the plate, to crowd the over-feeling.

The presence of feelings is not the problem. It's the over- part of feeling (and thinking) that we can learn to spar with, to check, to push back against, and to test. Over-feeling won't go away, and won't always be controlled. But that doesn't mean there's nothing we can do.

(*If you're a reader of the Narnia book series, Puddleglum the Marsh-wiggle does this in The Silver Chair. 

He can't put the enchanted-smelly fire out, so he grinds his bare foot into flames. The smell of Puddleglum's burnt foot irrevocably disrupts the enchantment.)