I wanted to share some observations I've made recently on a phenomenon I mainly see in younger guys(17-24) but do occasionally see in older guys, it's a form of obsessive oneitis best described as obsessive unrequited affection. I've been mulling over the root cause of a particular way I've seen it occur and value hearing everyone's opinions and alternatives to the matter.


The way two women have a friendship is vastly different to how two men have a friendship.

Two women will hug, share personal intimacies, hold hands, kiss each other on the cheek, encourage each other and provide emotional support to each other.

Two men have drastically different ways of expressing themselves. They might pat each other on the back, but they rarely hug. They don't normally share their deepest feelings and fears in an intimate way. There is much less encouragement from one man to another to do that sort of thing. They would never think of grabbing another man's hand and pulling them to look at something. And kissing on the cheek might be an acceptable thing in a European sort of greeting, but not so much for loving support and comfort. When two women have a friendship, the body language is totally different than two men might display. Things like leaning in to pay closer attention, looking someone directly in the eyes for women is a natural thing between friends. Men interpret these things as interest.

Two women have close, loving relationships as a matter of course. Men might only have that relationship within the context of their love relationship with another woman (or man, if they are gay).

So when opposite sex friendships are involved, I think often men get a little off kilter. They misinterpret the female model of friendship as love interest. I don't think it's intentional, but more a product of culture and nature.

I think dwelling on an obsession, feeds it more. Perhaps if there were some sort of mental exercise that could be created to help with learning not to dwell. Unfortunately I have never come across such a magic exercise in my time, removing the thought of something from the mind is particularly difficult, especially in the depressed.

well if you practise meditation regularly you learn the ability to push unwanted thoughts out of your mind but it takes a lot of practise and mental discipline to do so.

I recently read an interesting book - The Pursuit of Attention: Power and Ego in Everyday Life: Amazon.co.uk: Charles Derber: Books - part of his hypothesis is that Women are generally (in western societies) socialised into attention giving roles whereas men are expected to take on attention getting roles in both formal and informal social interactions.

The result of this I believe is that in a friendship men are mainly competing with each other for attention (hence character traits such as assertiveness, competitiveness, egoism etc are considered masculine) whereas women in friendships tend to support each other and give each other attention (hence traits like nurturing, submissiveness etc are considered feminine traits).

So as a guy if you spend most of your life trying to get people to listen to you then along comes a woman and pays you lots of attention (as a friend) it can be easy to mistake this for romantic interest.

Also on the flip side it seems that if a man is paying a woman a lot of attention she is going to assume that he fancies her because typically that is not the natural behaviour of a man towards his friends.

Good post I'm sure many fall into thata trap

I think the easy answer is to make an effort have lots of female friends to you become used to the different dynamic that it involves.

I agree but it's part of the problem. Most guys don't have many female friends at all, they may have 1 or 2 but they're usually better described as acquaintances.

The women they do tend to actually spend time with and actively see are women they're trying to sleep with.