While it is not impossible for men and women to maintain a platonic relationship, most men do their best to try and get out of the 'friendzone'. In popular culture, the "friend zone" is a situation involving friends of the opposite gender, whereby one person develops romantic feelings and the other wants to be just friends. More often than not, one party does not know about these feelings and seems satisfied with the platonic relationship. While some men have blamed women for leading them on, in his experience, Mike Majid thinks everything today has been hyper-sexualised, making it difficult for men to consider women as just friends. Majid says the need to belong and the pressures of "relationship goals" raises unrealistic expectations for men when they meet a woman they are interested in.

Source: The Star April 17, 2020 01:51 UTC