The joke of the dreaded "friend zone" is always afoot in gentlemen's circles. On some level we all know that there is a difference in friendship and attraction, but at their core, what exactly is this difference? Well, let us take a look at the very beginning...
Evolutionary Theory
Even in our current age, single-celled organisms outnumber the amount of multi-celled organisms in both amount and mass, but at the dawn they were the only form of life. So, let us imagine what that would look like: we have a bunch of single-celled organisms floating around in the water. All of a sudden, two of them bump into each other and their membranes mesh for a moment -- in this moment, they exchange genetic information through that connection. This is vital! Now, those two cells shared their genetic "strengths" (i.e. DNA) with each other and now instead of only having the strengths and immunities that one had, they each have the strengths of both. This is the first exchange of DNA.
Now, overtime, this exchange created stronger creatures than a-sexual reproduction and thus this evolved to the act of sexual reproduction. Thus, we see that the desire for sex is only a mechanism for survival, but the strongest mechanism at that. So, at the core, we see our two strongest physiological desires: the desire to survive and the to reproduce.
However, when we break down these two desires, we see that they are almost the exact opposite of each other in their methods.
Survival
So lets fast-forward to plains of Africa when we lived in hunter-gatherer societies. To survive, we needed two primary things, food and protection.
For food, the men -- due to their larger size -- went out and hunted, while the women stayed back and helped to pick fruits and berries and watch the children. So imagine the men out hunting wild beasts. They need to communicate with each other since any one alone probably could not take down the wild beast -- they needed to work as a team in order to protect themselves and to get the kill. Now imagine the women: as they are working, they are probably spread out to as they gather food. They also need to keep in constant communication. Imagine that a wild beast came all of a sudden and scooped up one of the children, that wouldn't be too good. So, they had to evolve to communicate about the whereabouts of where everyone was in the tribe for safety reasons. In both scenarios, everyone had to work together to survive.
Replication
When we look at replication, we see that we are no longer working as an entire unit against the outside forces of the world. Rather now, we are working within our species -- everyone competing against each other. On some level, everyone is communicating, "look at me, pick me, I'm a better mate than the next guy." We all had to prove our worth in order to attract mates, else all our potential suitors would choose a better candidate. So, here we see that everyone worked against each other.
Thus, at their core, we already see the conflict between survival and replication.
Attraction vs. Affection
So what does this have to do with attraction and affection? In the simplest of forms, we can think of attraction as linked to replication and affection as linked to survival. This is why to appears that the "rules of attraction" are flipped on their head when compared to the "rules of friendship" In affection, you are subtly communicating that you want to relate and that you need the other persons cooperation (i.e. "let's be friends, together we can get through it") whereas in attraction, you are subtly communicating to the other person that you have your pick of the litter and have the privilege of being picky (i.e. "I have many suitors after me, prove to me why I should pick you").
Now, this does not mean that in a relationship it is strictly attraction or strictly affection (although some people try to play just in the realm of attraction alone, which causes much heartache in the future), but rather a mixture of both. The key is to not let the passions of attraction die, while still maintaining affection throughout.
Recommendations for further exploration
Affection (e.g. friendship) -- How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
Attraction -- The Mating Mind by Geoffrey Miller; The Red Queen by Matt Ridley
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