In each case, the obvious thing for the pursuer to do is get over whoever he or she is obsessed with and find someone better / more available, which are much the same thing. (As a side note, literature is full of idiots pursuing pointless love for no particular reason: think of Gatsby and Daisy, or Robert Cohn and Brett Ashley in The Sun Also Rises, or any number of 19th century novels, or The Sorrows of Young Werther, or Romeo and Juliet (which has the advantage of Mercutio, until he dies it’s his death that’s tragic, because he’s hilarious-”I will bite thee by the ear for that jest” and “for the bawdy hand of the / dial is now upon the prick of noon”). This is true of both sexes, whether gay or straight, but it seems like a lot of people have trouble admitting it. The attention of beta orbiters is kind of flattering to women, but it’s also mostly pointless if you’re in the game, so to speak, you want to focus on the game, not the crowd. Does he leave or partake? If he leaves, you’re real friends. One thought experiment might clarify your “friendships:” imagine that you’re lying in bed, wearing lingerie or nothing, and your male friend comes in. Straight American women seem to be more susceptible to acquiring beta orbiters than straight American men, while women seem to be, on average, more deluded about their “real” relationships with their supposed male “friends.” I say “girls” here because, like men, adult single women usually grow out of this behavior, and if they’re attracted to a guy, they either make their move and see where it goes or they find a guy who is interested in them, instead of pointlessly pining after the unavailable. I’ve also had girls be the female equivalent of beta orbiters. Not all do, however, and you’ll occasionally run into 35-year-old men with the emotional temperament of 15-year-old boys in the thrall of their first serious, unrequited infatuation. Most self-respecting guys who are dumb enough to go through a beta orbiter phase leave that phase by the time they graduate from college, if not earlier. Non-adaptive behaviors should be altered. I finally stepped back from that behavior, wondered why the hell I was doing it, and stopped. I’m familiar with the the beat orbiter mindset because I spent a lot of high school being one-but that’s because I was an idiot who didn’t know any better. If the guy isn’t good enough for the hot girl, why should he be good enough for her friends? Again, I won’t say that no straight guy has ever gotten the female-friend hookup, but I suspect that the female-friend hookup is more mythologized than actualized. The hot girl’s friends also often know the hot girl turned the guy down, and that sends a powerful negative signal. Actually, my feelings don’t get hurt, but the feelings of other women sometimes do. More often, when a girl I’m interested in declines my affections, at best she sets me up with friends who are substantially less attractive than she is, and frequently says they’re “cute” and promises that I’ll “like them for their personality.” Unfortunate euphemisms lead to hurt feelings all around. While “She will introduce him to her hot friends” is true in theory, it isn’t true, or very often true, in practice (based on my experience, anyway). 2) She will introduce him to her hot friends. 1) The guy will become more confident around the type of women he’s interested in. I found this article recently that was telling guys why they should be friends with the women who reject them for dating, but want to be friends. How badly would you want to go to a restaurant when you’re desperately hungry but can’t eat at the restaurant? The metaphor isn’t perfect-women have agency and curries don’t, among other things*-but it should impart the basic urgency single guys feel and the reason why single men who don’t want to be “just friends” also don’t want to hang out with you as a friend. Think about it this way, from the guy’s perspective: you’re exceedingly hungry. I have an easier time with males, but I don’t think the single ones ever intend to be friends with me from the beginning… mostly beta orbiters I guess. I’m now trying to “friend-date” whenever I meet a female (or male) who seems platonically cool. A newly-graduated friend sent me this, as part of an e-mail about the difficulty of making friends after moving to a big city:
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