ROSEMARY ABBOTT | Culture
MESSAGE RECEIVED
A 28-year-old Christchurch man has found himself firmly in the friend zone just days after meeting a woman at a run club, after she repeatedly referred to him as “mate” in their Instagram messages.
Rhys Macklin said he thought things had gone well when he met Chloe over the weekend, chatted after the run and exchanged Instagram accounts.
“I thought there was a bit of chemistry there,” Rhys said. “She messaged me later, so I thought, ‘Sweet, we’re cooking.’”
That optimism quickly disappeared when Chloe began dropping “mate” into their messages.
“First one, I thought, maybe she just talks like that.”
“The second time it happened, I started getting concerned.”
“By the third ‘mate’, I knew I had basically become one of her brothers, and totally uninteresting to her biologically.”
Rhys said the final blow came when Chloe replied “Hahaha thanks mate 😊” to a message he believed was “pretty clearly flirty.”
“That was devastating. I’d spent ages thinking about what to say and she responded like I’d just helped her change a tyre.”
Rhys said he has since accepted that he was friend-zoned before he even had a chance to make a move or develop a fully formed crush.
“I haven’t even been rejected properly. I’ve just been quietly reassigned.”
He said he would continue going to run club but was now prepared for the relationship to remain strictly platonic.
“If she calls me ‘bro’, though, I’m moving to another suburb.”
At press time, Rhys was reportedly staring at Chloe’s latest message, which ended with:
“See you Thursday mate!”
More to come.
