I think this happens to everyone a little bit when we're young, but it especially happens to guys who lack a positive, strong male role model. Ironically, it also happens more to men who are comfortable hanging out with women and have platonic female friends. It actually has little to do with unrequited feelings or the 'friendzone' in a direct way.

The fact of the matter is that women get away with some behaviors which we can't. This isn't to go on a rant about how women have it better than us, because there's just as much traffic in the other direction. But we have to be clear about this stuff, because in many cases we get depressed and think that life is shitting on us as individuals when we use tactics and approaches that work for women (especially young, attractive ones) but absolutely fail for us.

A lot of these norms have to do with attention to detail and competence at tasks. All of them stem from the fact that there is an ocean of male desire for women out there. To put it plainly: Women can get away with dressing in thrift store rags, fucking up in school and then flirting their way out of bad grades, etc; and there will still be plenty of guys interested in them, to the point that the larger social consequences aren't immediately apparent. Again, I don't say this to assert that women have it better than us--because in many cases this actually fucks up their sense of discipline and thus life trajectories--but it does work for them, and it doesn't work for the vast majority of us.

When you grow up with a bunch of female friends, especially if you knew them from before puberty, this stuff can slip right by you. Your female friends have sparkling social lives despite paying little attention to cleaning their apartments, making money, or, at the extremes, making much sense in arguments. They can effortlessly infiltrate social scenes, get out of trouble at school or work, make friends easily; people are nice to them. People treat you like a surplus pitbull in a crowded animal shelter. You may even occasionally complain about some social mishap or another to your female friends, and they may accuse you of whining or not trying hard enough.

They are probably at least partly wrong (not that whining is ever a good idea). It really is harder for men. And it's hardest for men who see themselves as having essential things like money, education, or intelligence in common with their female friends, but don't realize that even with those things being equal, the difference in gender matters more to how they have to act in order to achieve the same broad goals.

It's become a pretty common trope around these parts that women give bad dating advice for men. I would extrapolate that: I think the way that the world acts towards women is different enough that pretty much any advice about how you present yourself to the world should be taken with a couple grains of salt.