Oh, the dreaded “F-word.” The word that makes boys and girls alike cringe at the thought of it. The word that we all hope to never hear, unless of course that word does not apply to our lives. If you’re thinking of any other word that’s not “friend zone,” then you must not be a millennial.

The term friend zone is a term that has really come about over the last couple of years, especially in the younger generation. If you have somehow managed to avoid contact with all human beings, social media, movies and television, then the friend zone can be defined as “a state of being where a male inadvertently becomes a 'platonic friend' of an attractive female who he was trying to initiate a romantic relationship. Females have been rumored to arrive in the friend zone, but reports are unsubstantiated” (thanks Urban Dictionary).

Basically, it’s where one person likes another romantically, but the other person doesn’t feel the same way, but chooses to have a friendship instead. (Yes, usually this refers to girls placing guys in the friend zone, but this could easily be the other way around.) Somehow, this idea got coined into being put in the friend zone. And I’m here to say that this in insanely dumb.

The friend zone is not a real place. It doesn’t exist. It’s this imagined term to describe a male and a female being just friends, which apparently is shocking in this day and age. It’s hard to come by a platonic male-female friendship without having one person mention, “This guy must be in the friend zone.” But why?

Why do we have this idea that as human beings we either put others in or find ourselves in the friend zone? Why do we make being just friends with the opposite sex sound like such a horrible thing? The term friend zone has such negative connotations for absolutely no reason.

Yes, one person in the male-female friendship may initially have feelings for or gain feelings for the other while the feeling is not reciprocated, but that doesn’t mean you have to create a zone for this. If you truly cared about the other person in the friendship, then having just the friendship would be enough for you and you wouldn’t feel the need to negatively label it the friend zone.

I don’t really see the harm in just being friends with someone. If someone of the opposite sex says to you, “I just want to be friends,” then the answer should always be, “Okay.” And that should be the end of it. There is no need to drag it out with the concept of being put into the friend zone.

By complaining about it, you are reaping zero benefits. If you think that by incessantly talking about how annoyed you are that you’ve been put into the friend zone will get you out of there, then you thought wrong. Don’t use the friend zone to try and guilt the other person into feeling bad about having just a friendship with you.

In the end, the friend zone is really not a place, but rather a socially constructed idea that someone decided to come up with after feeling hurt that sexual feelings weren’t reciprocated. Just let that sink in.

I’ll leave you with the wise words of Elizabeth Plank:

“The friend zone devalues the very thing it references: friendship. Its view of sex suggests that platonic friendship is some sort of penalty box, rather than a relationship one should feel thankful and excited for.”