Men put themselves in “friend zone”, often times because they’re not being upfront and genuine with their sexual or romantic interest.

If men are deliberately putting themselves there - the idea that being a woman’s friend and hoping for a relationship in future is a very high risk/low reward mating strategy that should ideally never be used by any man.

Women are also delusional about male friends: if a woman is 200kg or more or is just plain obese - how many male friends would she think she would have? Zero is the answer. I never see very ugly/very unnattractive/obese women with “male friends”.

I see this all the time though - a man hasn’t seen a his “female friend” in awhile and he meets her again and she has put on an ungainly amount of weight. He then conveniently loses contact with her (forever).

On the other hand, if you’re a man are around a woman (in your extended friendship circle, university, work colleagues, housemates, etc.) that likes you, my experience is that if you don’t actively “make a move” women will either feel hurtfully rejected or they’ll try to leverage you into a friendship that serves that woman’s biological need for support and protection. Never underestimate how often women feel rejected or feeling like rejection is upcoming and pre-empting her own pain from being rejected, it’s happened to me so many times.

If you have a girlfriend that says she has male friends (that aren’t gay), and tells you this - she doesn’t actually treat them like “friends” but as monkey branching options if it doesn’t work out with you or she’s using them as support or for attention/validation. Having genuine male friends as support (it goes both ways) is ok if you’re single, but not in a serious relationship or married. Imagine men having close “female friends” when they’re serious about another woman or married and she’s single.

Most women don’t really feel the need for many male friends when they’re married with children, have you ever noticed that?

It’s not to say men shouldn’t make female friends. They should, but men really need enforce their own strict boundaries (on all people, not just women) to have and enforce a balance in the relationship where both parties are benefitting about equally. Men should be sticking to these boundaries without exception.

If you find the relationship is becoming lopsided where she’s taking alot and not giving enough back to the relationship, then pull back or sever that friendship, as you would with any man or a girlfriend.

Most men that find they have alot of female friends is when they offer alot of PASSIVE value to those women OR he just works with mostly women. This is usually due to those men not having to exert much additional effort or investment, like if he’s in fashion industry, has a large friendship circle, works with mostly women, is famous or is very physically atrractive (which is passive value to women).

Too many men get caught giving too much time, effort, money and thoughts to their “female friend” who doesn’t deserve it. Men often do this because they’re (secretly or not) hoping for a sexual or romantic relationship in the future - it’s a toxic situation to be in.