PATREON EXCLUSIVE: What Moral Responsibility Does A Woman Have To Her Orbiters?

Definitely joint responsibility. Scale can tip one direction or the other depending on the context but nobody is ever free of fault in these situations. Sometimes it's because the guy feels too much shame around making his intentions known. Sometimes it's the girl who is manipulating the power imbalance to fill a lack something else in their lives. Sometimes it's one person trying to escalate a pre-existing non-romantic relationship into dating and struggling with all of the context. What I will say is that I do have a lot more empathy for someone who is having trouble expressing their interest than I do somebody knows someone else likes them but is using them as an emotional tampon. The former still isn't right but happens due to inherit shame from being treated wrongly. The latter is high key emotional manipulation.

Orbiters are semi unavoidable as a woman- I don't ever purposely lead men on, but I also know how it feels- I've been led on by a man who just wanted sex 🤷‍♀️ it's not a nice thing to lead on anybody or expect them to wait around on you, when you KNOW you don't want the same things.

I'm just gonna say it, women get sex-zoned and men get friend-zoned. It just is what it is. Don't wait around on a person who doesn't want the same things as you 🤷‍♀️ that's that.

I would say if it seems like every time the friendship is about to escalate into a relationship, she takes a few steps back, then you're being led on. I think Alexander has talked about this before: boyfriends usually make a woman's life *easier* so if she really is into you there's hardly any excuse to "not want a relationship right now" whereas with guys, having a girlfriend is has more responsibility attached so it makes sense for a guy to say that he's "not ready for a relationship"

I feel like I still struggle to know if I'm being led on.

I heard stories where women got pissed that her orbiter find actual partner and tried to shit on that women and guy in the social circle. But in general all this crap could be avoided if orbiter would be decisive.

Ignas

But what about when it was the woman that made repeated attempts to insert herself in her orbiter's life? I feel like many women that end up leading men on do that and they really should be to blame at that point. I guess what I'm saying is a guy being indirect with his feelings isn't always the start of the story.

Hey I noticed your comment. I don't even know what questions to ask. Were you definitely an orbiter with the first girl? Those things just seem like you were doing friend stuff. I get you were driving but you were hanging out and unless the studies only purely benefited you then I don't see that as a favour. The second girl (the ex) yeah I get how you could be seen as an orbiters if you were giving favours of monetary value. Do you think you were doing that because you still cared about her or did you hope she would come back to you? Good on you for stating your intentions. About the Disney thing, yeah I get that, see I wasn't a big Disney or Rom-com fan but these messages to permeate almost all media. I think the grand gestures and over the top cheesy things men do in Disney or other films are more about appealing to a validation fantasy rather than a romantic fantasy xxx

Alisha

@Alicia [edit: sorry this was meant to be a reply to your reply, not a new post] In the first case, I either asked her out, or made it clear at the outset that I was interested but understood she had a boyfriend. It was quite a long time ago, so I may not remember well, but I was definitely timid and wish washy about it. I did favors in terms of driving her around to places we both wanted to go, studying together and such. Never anything monetary. The other one I spoke of actually was an ex girl friend who broke up with me much to my chagrin. I did favors for hear also after the break up to include monetary favors. I took her to restaurants, went hiking, and paid a few bills. She told me she felt dead inside after a death in her family, but when I looked back on it, she had clearly been checking out before that. So, as we were walking through the park once she said I couldn’t ask her to just pretend and fake it. To which I replied something to the effect of; if she wanted to be friends she needed to understand that I was a friend with an ulterior motive and that she similarly couldn’t expect me to fake not wanting intimacy with her. And if she couldn’t deal with that, then we’d just have to go our separate ways. To which she said “no” to going our separate ways. So, I was real explicit. It went on for awhile with both of us having a great time together, but tugging in different directions. Now, I would be more assertive about not entering the friend zone and less negotiable about it. But this was really a case where she was engineering the whole thing. I think the media is to blame for pushing men into thinking an orbiter strategy will work, but also a lot of people’s horrible advice. It just pervades the culture like a virus. I’ve seen it several times recently with feminists objecting to the Briffault’s Law idea that women love opportunistically. They were finding it unflattering and therefore misogynistic of course, but the critical thing was it was basically interfering with their Disney notions of how enlightened their romantic interests purportedly are. More often they’re objecting to men’s attraction for women’s looks as superficial and that men should get to know the woman as a person, which again is not a bad thing, it just doesn’t open any doors. But I think this Disney Fairytale really comes from every nook and cranny of society.

Todd McDaniels

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oPiNHwj6MU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8teRxOSNHs 1. Women HATE coaching men up, especially on social behavior. 2. If she tries to break it to the guy, he may take it as a sign or romantic interest because he refuses to see the writing on the wall. 3. Women can't afford to pity self-inflicted victims and have little problem benefitting from it. Most women see FZed men as self-imposed victims. I think it is primarily biological and ingrained in our caveman DNA. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=no7FuVwcn6w TL:DR The FZ begins and ends with men controlling themselves. Women as a whole catch way too much blame for the phenomenon.

Why did you not ask the girls out to begin with and do you think media is to blame for thinking an orbiter strategy would work? How do these things even play out as friendships and did you do favours for these women? I notice a lot of orbiters do favours or they admit to it xxx

Alisha

I think a big part of the problem is the Disney fairytale that romantic love comes from getting to know and appreciate each other as people, to love the person as a person. Now I realize this just makes you like a brother. But this is the strategy I once used as a hopeful orbiter; I thought if I was enlightened and came to know a woman more deeply, she would connect emotionally with me and therefore get turned on by me eventually. It clearly doesn’t work that way at all. Romantic intimacy is really about the polarity of the masculine identity in relation to the feminine identity in the most animalistic fashion. Appreciating the woman as a person is certainly value added, an important extra for long term, but not the real essence of an intimate relationship.

Todd McDaniels

The actual act of being indifferent has probably elevated her attraction for you to one degree or another. This is the sort of game orbiters lack (so messed up and steeped in irony, I know). I would say continue to rigidly confine your discourse to work issues. Don’t flirt with her. Remain indifferent. Be careful about HR. If she escalates and you are still interested, well, then maybe send an email to Alexander for expert advice on how to proceed. :)

Todd McDaniels

I’ve been in the friend zone twice. Once when I was a young adult, I was only very slightly open about my interest early on, but mainly waiting in the wings for her to dump her boyfriend, which never happened. Later, older and maybe slightly wiser, though not wise enough, I had a girlfriend break up with me, but wanted to remain friends. I didn’t want to break up and objected to the just friends thing, but she still sought to hang out with me. I did continue to hang out with her, but was very explicit about my interest and motive. That was really on her. She used me for attention and resources knowing full well the romantic and sexual nature that I was interested in and that we were both in fact once engaged in.

Todd McDaniels

Same here, 2 bitter years. What changes are you making to make sure it does not happen again?

I did actually ask her out, and she rejected me. A month later, I told her we cannot be friends anymore. Now she suddenly keeps contacting me, asking me trivial questions at work, while before she never needed any help. The point is, I cannot reject her questions, as I am obligated to help out all coworkers. What do you make of this, and is she to blame for not respecting my choice?

Self esteem damage early is better than self esteem damage months later when orbiter wasted a lot of effort. The truth is less manipulation on both sides causes less resentment.

Ignas

I was raised in a Christian household and was an unattractive, awkward, nerdy, introvert who was in HS/college in the ‘90s. I fell (and still do to some extent) into the camp of being taken completely by surprise if a guy is interested in me unless he is really blatant about it from the start. My girl friends in college were like me and we were all so innocent, naive, and inexperienced in many ways…. The degree of intentionality and conscious behavior you describe here feels so far removed from my life experience. But, I am grateful for that because my heart simultaneously breaks for, and is horrified by, men and women in this situation.

That is very interesting Jennifer, so why did you think you had orbiters? Did they offer some sort of security or validation and also what was it like ending the cycle of having orbiters? Also what do you mean by turning orbiters into fuckbuddies if you had a boyfriend? Also, thanks for your honesty xxx

Alisha

I sure hope what I'm about to say helps somebody, because it's not easy to talk about. As a woman who's done some of the things Alexander described, I think the woman bears more moral responsibility for the orbiter's plight than the orbiter himself.  I didn't know until finding Alexander's channel that this kind of relationship was called 'having orbiters'. But the description matches behaviors I exhibited in college so I'll keep using that terminology. I think it's important to note that there is a difference between an 'orbiter' and a guy who truly is just a friend.  And a girl always knows the point when the latter becomes the former.  My experience, while it proves many of the 'orbiter' theories true, was the opposite of Alexander's description of the girl who says 'he never explicitly said he was interested in me romantically/ sexually'.  BTW, if a girl who has orbiters says that, she's full of shit.  Because you always know.  ALWAYS. That's one of the things that defines him as an 'orbiter' in the first place.  Otherwise, you'd stop being friends with him at the point he stops being 'just a friend'. So Alexander is 100% correct on that point. In my case, it was ME who was not explicitly saying what needed to be said.  Plus, my case is a little different than what he described because I sometimes had sexual contact with my orbiters. So I didn't view these men as back up boyfriends necessarily, I viewed them more as back up sexual/cuddle partners.  (I think this is where I need to say 'trigger warning'. I'm sorry!) An orbiter, because he is, by definition, a 'friend', knows when the girl has a bf or not.  So I thought that by them knowing I was attached to someone, that the following rules were apparent: It doesn't matter how good of friends we are, what secrets are shared, or what kind of sexual contact/outright sex we have, that the orbiter knows that he's not 'The Boyfriend' and is probably never gonna be.  That was my attempt to brush away any responsibility I might have for their feelings while I took advantage of them.  It took me many years to admit to myself that it was a conscious decision to treat them that badly.  Otherwise I'd have done the right thing and ended the friendships immediately.  But since I didn't... you now see why I believe the woman bears the majority of moral responsibilty here. But my strategy backfired because one of my orbiters fell in love with me anyway. One day, after I had tried to avoid him, he found me on campus and confronted me. He asked me outright about my behavior and it annoyed me that he actually expected me to explain myself.  In my head I was like 'dude, trust me, you really do NOT want to know!' I thought he was pathetic for letting himself fall for me when I thought it was obvious that I was not going to reciprocate emotionally and make him my bf.  So I had to reject him. I watered it down as much as I could stomach and kicked him out of my 'orbit'. And afterwards, I had the nerve to be mad at him for making me go through the unpleasant experience of verbally rejecting him. So after that, I decided from now on I was going to say, out loud, to any guy-friend as soon as he showed orbiter behavior, that there are no strings attached to whatever 'this' is, and that I will bear no liability for any potential hurt feelings on your part. Do not expect to be my bf at any time. The minute I suspect you've caught feelings, we are DONE. As in, not even platonic friends anymore I never want to talk to you again kind of done.  Can you handle that or should we just stop being friends right now? After that, I didn't have what most people would traditionally call 'orbiters' anymore. I found that by making sure they knew right off the bat what kind of girl I really was, it had the effect of turning what might have been orbiters into fuck buddies. I never again had one of them fall for me.

Jennifer Coopman

I remember asking about this a while ago hahaha. Since then I've been very careful about not maintaining orbiters; however, some of them aggressively deny having any intentions beyond a platonic friendship. Those "friendships" end badly because you have the orbiter refusing to be honest with himself and instead redirecting his own cognitive dissonance into anger towards the girl disguised as "why would she just assume that I'm into her, narcissistic b*tch" when it's really "why doesn't she like me? Does she think she's too good for me? IS she too good for me? Why am I not good enough?" Unfortunately, there's not really a smooth way to cut off an orbiter that doesn't involve damaging the guy's self-esteem or at least embarrassing him. Very sticky situation

Yup, only the blue pilled get friend zoned. The only people who can afford to be blue pilled AND have success with women are Henry Cavil, Zayn Malik etc type of guys.

Ashwin Srinivas

I think it’s partially due to false information from childhood movies such as those from Disney, where the handsome guy ends up being the evil person and the princess goes for the kind (simpy) guy that is nice to her all the time. (and usually not the best looking)

Being fully transparent, after being an orbiter for over 2 years, I can never allow myself to go into the friend zone again.

Women have acountability haha good one. No really I witnessed women that after advances and dates, making out to withdraw later a bit, come back out of blue when she is sick and need support, then flake reapproach. If this was not intentional game to put into orbiting role and milk attention I don't know what it was.

Ignas

The "Friend Zone" is a self inflicted problem 100%! I think that anyone who understands this can avert that situation completely and the friend zoner will no longer benefit from taking the perosn for granted. In fact, I think that if the friend zoner is punished enough number of times by having the other person that was not romantically reciprocated to withdrawn, they would stop taking people for granted and develop empathy more. I have tried to be as gender neutral in my statement as possible because it goes both ways, although I must admit that the "Friend Zone" is a situation that plagues guys a lot more. Similar is the case for being an Orbiter.

Ashwin Srinivas