You don't know your intention upon meeting someone. By the time that you know you want to make a move they may have already started viewing you as a sibling figure.

I would say that you know which women you would consider potential partners within minutes.

If you're very shallow perhaps.

I think he's right (I am female). It's not about "being friendly" or "being in the same group of friends" it's about "being her friend." If you have this idea in the back of your head that you'll get married one day but either a) she's with somebody and you don't want to try to break them up or b) you just don't have the courage to ask her out because you don't know what she'll say, so your response is trying to be one of her best friends, hang out and talk a lot ... the problem is, one day it will come out, it always comes out. She's going to wonder why you always say negative things about her boyfriend or why you ask so many questions about her relationship or why you never date anybody or why when you do date people you say negative things about your girlfriend to her or maybe you'll just eventually blurt it out, however it comes out, two things will happen. One is, she will feel like the friendship was phony, and it will be over. The other is, she will not have much respect for you because you were too afraid to say how you felt. Is that "the friend zone", maybe but it's not for the reason I think a lot of guys picture, which is basically that there is something in girls' brains that says we aren't supposed to date guys we enjoy hanging out with. It's about confidence and deception really. If we're talking about a group of people who know each other and sometimes hang out as a group and chat along with everybody else, that is different, I don't think you are hurt in any way by that, that's just being a normal person. There are exceptions to everything, some people actually DO end up dating friends, but it's not the norm.