Busting Out of the Friend Zone
Men attempt to woo their female friends by flashing the cash.
Posted May 31, 2026 | Reviewed by Tyler Woods
The concept of the friend zone—a place to which a person who harbors a romantic interest in a friend is relegated by that friend, thereby ensuring that their passion remains unrequited—was first introduced in a 1994 episode of the sitcom Friends . Joey explains to Ross that he has waited too long to make his move on Rachel: ‘If you don’t ask her out soon, you’re going to end up stuck in the zone forever!’
Ross is not alone. Studies have shown that about 50 percent of people who are attracted to the other sex report experiencing attraction in what is termed a cross-sex friendship (a friendship between a woman and a man). The traits that people desire in a cross-sex friend are similar to those they desire in a romantic partner. And men, more than women, view cross-sex friendships as potential mating opportunities, suggesting that the popular belief that men are more likely than women to feel that they have been friend-zoned may have some basis in fact.
Fans of Friends and of Ross and Rachel’s on-again, off-again, on-again relationship can tell you that Ross did eventually bust out of the friend zone. This outcome is far from unusual: two-thirds of romantic relationships begin as friendships.
How do people engineer their transition from friend to romantic partner? In 2000, the psychologists April Bleske and David Buss hypothesized that men, in particular, may engage in financial provisioning as a courtship tactic. Throughout evolutionary history, the reproductive success of women has depended on their ability to secure investment from long-term partners, whereas for men, the limiting factor has been access to fertile partners. This accounts for why men signal their romantic interest in a woman by investing resources in her—by lavishing her with expensive gifts or paying for shared meals.
Bleske and Buss found some support for their courtship hypothesis, but a more rigorous test of the hypothesis was recently conducted by Ryan Dobson, William Costello, and David Lewis.
Dobson and colleagues recognized that, if the courtship hypothesis is correct, men’s provisioning should be predicted by their mating interest in their friends. What’s more, because men tend to be uninterested in whether a female partner financially invests in them, Dobson et al predicted that there would be no link between mating motivations and provisioning behavior in women.
Another key observation by Dobson and colleagues was that there are multiple plausible explanations for sex differences in financial provisioning in cross-sex friendships. Men may invest more than women in cross-sex friendships as a way of courting their cross-sex friend or because they perceive those friendships as especially valuable. Research has shown that men may benefit more from romantic relationships than women do, because such relationships provide relatively greater gains in intimacy and emotional support. The same may be true of cross-sex friendships. The logic goes that men obtain non- sexual , non-romantic benefits from their friendships with women that they can’t obtain from their friendships with other men. Women, meanwhile, obtain similar benefits from friendships with men and women. Perhaps men invest more in their friendships with women than women invest in their friendships with men because of this difference in perceived friendship value and not because of differences in mating motivation . Dobson et al refer to this as the friendship quality hypothesis, and note that it generates different predictions than the courtship hypothesis. They sought to test the two hypotheses against each other, to see which better explained behavior.
About 600 undergraduate students answered questions about their two closest cross-sex friends. The research participants indicated the extent to which they were attracted to these friends, responded to questions about the quality of their friendships, and stated how they split the bill with their friends when going out to eat or drink.
The psychologists found that men reported paying for significantly more, and women reported paying for significantly less, of the bill when going out with their cross-sex friends. Men who were more romantically interested in their cross-sex friends contributed more to the bill when socializing with these friends. But it was not the case that men selectively provisioned more for one cross-sex friend than for another, depending on their attraction to those friends; instead, some men generally provisioned more than others. This implies that some men see provisioning as an especially useful tactic.
Depending on how the statistical tests were conducted, women’s mating interest either did not predict their bill-paying behavior or negatively predicted their bill-paying behavior. In the latter case, what this means is that women who were romantically interested in their cross-sex friend reported paying less of the bill. This may, in a sense, be a courtship tactic, because it signals a willingness to permit their cross-sex friend to invest in them (conversely, rebuffing a man’s attempt to pay a greater share of the bill may be interpreted by men as a soft rejection tactic).
Participants who thought their cross-sex friendships were of high quality did not pay more of the bill, which is contrary to the expectations of the friendship quality hypothesis. Consistent with the courtship hypothesis, women who reported that their male friends paid for more of the bill also perceived those male friends to be more romantically interested in them.
Dobson et al suggest that future research could determine whether men intend their financial provisioning of cross-sex friends to signal romantic interest. They acknowledge that men may also financially provision their cross-sex friends to cultivate a reputation for generosity , which may enhance their attractiveness to a wider pool of potential partners (observers and friends of their friend).
They also propose that socioeconomic status may be an important factor: men with lots of resources may provision more frequently, as the subjective cost of provisioning is lower for richer men; less wealthy men may provision only when their mating interest is especially strong or when they perceive that a cross-sex friend is romantically interested in them.
Bleske, A. L., & Buss, D. M. (2000). Can men and women be just friends? Personal Relationships , 7 , 131–151. doi:10.1111/j.1475-6811.2000.tb00008.x
Dobson, R. T, Costello, W., Lewis, D. M. G. (2026). Courtship in cross-sex friendship: novel tests of male financial provisioning as a signal and cue of mating interest. Evolution and Human Behavior , 47 , 106885. doi:10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2026.106885
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Robert Burriss, Ph.D., is an evolutionary psychologist with an interest in partner preferences. He has held research posts in departments of psychology, biology, and anthropology at universities in the USA, UK, and Switzerland.
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