When Harry Befriended Sally...

You’re at a bar. A guy you know and are may (sort of) interested in tells someone the two of you “clicked” as soon as you met. Does this mean:

1. He thinks you’re destined to be great friends.
2. He thinks you’re destined to be more than friends.
3. It doesn’t mean anything because he’s a guy and guys don’t talk with subtext.

How does a girl go about determining the right answer without the ability to look into the future and actually see his endgame? Words like “click” and “connect” mean different things to different people. If I were using such a word, it would most likely imply choice B, but I have learned my subtext and a men’s subtext are even less compatible than me and men.

But if I were in that situation, more than wondering about the context of a single word, I would inevitably be pondering a deeper question: have I already been friend-zoned? The “friends zone” is rather legendary, especially when you’re in college, where the attitude implies that if he didn’t want to hook up with you right away, it probably means he’ll never be interested. In the real world, where it’s commonly frowned upon to jump every attractive person you see, does this attitude hold up? Or was the attitude bogus to begin with?

We’ve all seen When Harry Met Sally and thought, “Wow, that’s the way to do it.” You meet someone, become good friends, after an indeterminate amount of time one of you is upset, the other comes to the rescue, and bing bang boom you’re making out on a sofa, knowing there’s been more between you all along. It’s the perfect melding of choices A and B. It would be easy to cast off the “friends become lovers” story as Hollywood made - except that there’s always someone in your life that fits the scenario: Friend, friend of a friend, or newspaper wedding announcement. 

For me, it’s my own brother. He became friends with his wife when he was 16 years old and interested in her best friend. It took quite a few months, but he soon realized he was going after the wrong girl. Seventeen years, two dogs, and one impending baby later, they’re still together. And the list goes on. The friend from high school I found out got together with her best guy friend. The wedding announcement with the meet-cute couple who became friends for a year before getting together. Are they all the exception or the rule? 

I have never been able to transition a friendship to a relationship. Not when I bonded with a guy at a retreat. Not when I worked on the college newspaper with a fellow music lover. And again, the list goes on. It’s a catch-22, really, because I’m more apt to fall for someone AFTER I get to know him. So here we are, joking around in a bar, talking about our lives - have I reached the point of no return? If he knows I’m afraid of pigeons, is all hope of a relationship permanently damaged? I guess all I can do is wait for my own, personal multiple choice question to answer itself.