The Backpocket Girl

There’s no shame in being a backpocket girl (hereinafter referred to as BP). I’m sure that each and every one of us has experienced being “back pocketed” at least once in her life (some of us more than that and yours truly used to be a serial BP). The point is to realize that that’s what happening to us and add certain behaviors to the list of our red flags and deal breakers so that we avoid lying to ourselves and chasing a man who’ll never truly be ours.

What is a BP? It’s probably easier to define what she’s not. There’s a difference between this phenomenon and friend zoning as the latter means the guy isn’t sexually attracted to her. In other words, unlike a friend zoned girl, a BP can and usually is used for some “action”. Depending on the values of both parties involved a BP can be sleeping, dry humping, real life flirting or even only texting with the guy. He’s not interested enough to court her properly (usually due to commitment issues) and knows that it’s going nowhere, while she keeps hoping that it may and dreads asking the question “what are we?“.

My observations and experience tell me that the main indicator of whether or not we’re a BP for our interest is the frequency of communication. In short, a guy who really likes a girl makes sure that he spends enough time with her and he tends to be in touch when he doesn’t see her. A guy who’s dealing with a BP sends her a message from time to time and invites her out occasionally or even worse asks her to “let him know when she’s available” entirely minimalising his effort. At the same time he puts xs in the messages and uses terms of endearment which send off the wrong message (if confronted he’ll say that’s the way he rolls and doesn’t know what you’re on). The most misleading technique of a backpocketing guy is the desperate need to maintain the BP’s interest. When a guy realizes that a BP starts to look around and that her interest is decreasing he all of a sudden overbehaves. He becomes affectionate/understanding/warm and/or generally more available. The point of this trick, however, is not to truly conquer the BP and live with her happily ever after but rather just to make sure that she remains an option. Once he knows that, he comes back to his old habits.

When we realize that we’re being backpocketed it’s really easy to stop paying any attention to the guy (AND ignore his over the top behavior in response to our indifference)… if we don’t like him that much. If we do, we just have to suffer through the whole experience, until either he does something disrespectful enough to make us hit our rock bottom or we naturally lose interest ourselves (unfortunately it usually takes time). A Polish habit suggests to “wybić klina klinem” which refers to both drinking what you drank the previous night to heal hangover and get another romantic interest to kill the pain after another one. The latter seems to be the only piece of advice that I can give so if you’re currently in the situation date like there was no tomorrow. This too shall pass. I promise.