A true friend likes you exactly as you are. They know all your flaws and they don’t care. You never have to worry about putting your best foot forward or hiding your real opinions when you’re around your friends.
It’s easy to tell who your guy friends are because you don’t want to have sex with any of them. If a guy is annoying, he isn’t a friend.
It’s harder with women. Sexual tension makes it difficult for us to see what’s real and what isn’t. A woman may be annoying but if she’s hot, you might be reluctant to avoid her.
It doesn’t matter whether they’re male or female, physically attractive or unattractive: if you want to sleep with someone, that person is a potential lover and not a friend. We always treat our lovers and potential lovers differently than we treat our friends.
Most men aren’t good listeners. We love to complain about women. We love to converse about sports and gear but we don’t really listen to anyone except people we want to sleep with. Even with them, most of the time we’re pretending we’re paying attention. If you’ve never patiently listened to a friend weep and patted his hand with sympathy as he explains how his girlfriend hurt him, you’re probably not acting like yourself when you do the same for an attractive girl. You’re being a fake friend.
I recommend you stop doing that for reasons both moral and practical.
I’ll review the moral reason first. It isn’t good Karma to fake being someone you’re not. You may be able to fake being sensitive and caring while you’re horny, but as soon as you’re satisfied you’ll revert to your old self. You won’t be able to help it; that’s just how the male brain works. If the girl fell for your act and started dating you, you’d never be able to keep it up. It’s always unethical to pull a bait and switch.
The practical reason for not being a fake friend is it will never lead to what you want. In movies and novels, fake friends often end up with the girl. This happens because almost all male script writers and novelists are nerds who make livings writing about their fantasies. It doesn’t happen in real life.
If the girl really wants to be your friend, she REALLY isn’t attracted to you. The best you can hope for is being loved like an adopted brother. If she’s anything close to normal, she will not be attracted to family members.
“But”, you protest, “being a fake friend is working! Just the other day she said, ‘I wish my boyfriend was more like you’. She’s totally into me!”
Let’s analyze her statement. First what were you doing when she said that? The odds were good that you were doing something men almost never do—you were carefully listening to her. You were also caring and empathetic. To put it bluntly, you weren’t acting like a man; you were acting like a girl.
When men get frustrated with their girlfriends, they often say, “I wish she’d be reasonable!” Men often wish women would be more like men.
When a girl gets frustrated with her boyfriend, she often says, “I wish he’d stop being so stupid and insensitive!” She’s wishing that her boyfriend would be more like a girl. So when a frustrated girl compares you favorably to her ex or current boyfriend, she’s comparing you (an honorary girl) to him (a real man).
Unfortunately for you, in a competition for a heterosexual girl’s affections, an honorary girl never beats a real man.
You don’t have to be an asshat or treat a woman badly to be a real man. There’s a fine line that separates ‘nice guy’ from ‘honorary girl’. You just need to avoid stepping over that line.
If you don’t want to be effectively neutered in a woman’s eyes, you mustn’t let her complain about ex or current boyfriend to you. Seriously, do you really want to hear this?
So how do you stop her? My initial suggestion is to yawn. It’s not hard to make a yawn when you’re really bored. Most women will get the message and let you change the topic. If a yawn doesn’t stop her, say this: “I’d much rather talk about us than him.”
It’s a bold statement that cuts through all the bullshit. It tells her exactly where you stand. A woman wouldn’t be talking to you about another guy if she was interested in you. The odds are high that she’ll reject you, but at least now you will no longer be wasting time and energy on a false hope.