I don't think that I know any male ENFPs (only ESFPs :dry
or I'm pretty sure that I'd be desperately in love with them. At least if my favourite actors list is any indication... it seems to be all ENFPs and INFJs. Men with feelings make me swoon.
Anyway, My best friend and roommate of 6 years, though, is an ENFP, and she seems to have more in common with most ENFP guys than girls... she's pretty self-loathing about her feelings. So I might be able to speak to this a bit. But anyway, to the questions!
are all ENFP males basically auto friendzoned? well not Automatically but generally end up being Friendzoned?
I've never seen her interested in someone where it got to the point where they said to her, "sorry, I don't think that this is going to work, but I'd love to be your friend." She's actually the one who usually "flakes out" first. She isn't a flaky person at all (she's very, very loyal), but she doesn't really try to force things to work with people. If they do, great. But if they don't, she isn't the kind of person to stick around, especially in the early stages.
Since she doesn't really pursue people, I've never seen her get friendzoned, but I do know that when she and I first met (I'm not going to lie, our epic friendship is basically a sexless marriage and even in that regard... we totally tried to go there and it just didn't end up working for us), I was initially very wary of her because I felt like she was treating me like she treated everyone else. I really liked her, but I didn't think that I mattered to her. So we were kind of like magnets circling around each other for the first two and a bit years. We'd be all over each other every time we met, just super obnoxious about our intense connection ("if we ever hung out, we'd be BEST, BEST friends") but we were both too nervous to make the first move in terms of actually going there.
Even when we did become closer friends and it was very clear to me that she was
my best friend, I was still afraid to call her that because I still had this nagging little doubt in the back of my mind that she either didn't feel the same way or would find that very claustrophobic and needy and clingy and laugh at me/reject me. I've since learned that I exude "I'm damaged and I have boundary issues" to any xNFx within a 10 mile radius and she couldn't believe that I wanted to be her friend (not because I'm particularly great or anything, just because I was so quiet and weird and lonerish and cold in high school that I got a reputation for thinking I was "better" than everyone else). So she was also stubborn and decided that she wouldn't say it until I did.
The fact we seem so immature maybe?
Maybe also the fact that we may push too hard at the beginning i.e needy actions?
I think that that definitely could be part of it. I'm not sure how old you are, but I think that I would have found ENFP guys to be "immature" when I was younger. I've since learned to make the distinction of child
ish and child
like. My ENFP is the least childish person in the world, but she does have a certain something about her that is very childlike. I think it might be the fact that she's very, very idealistic/optimistic. But honestly, I love that about her. I love that she isn't as jaded and miserable as I am and I love that she picks me up without even trying. Now that we're living together, she's even able to do it without physically being in the same space as me. It's a very remarkable thing.
When we first became friends, as I mentioned before, she was able to read me really, really well. She suspected that I might bolt if she came on too strong because I'm so intensely introverted, and so she reined herself in. She always made herself available whenever I wanted to do something with her, but she very, very rarely initiated anything.
Emotionally, she isn't a very needy person, at least not in a way that I read as needy. I need very intense, close relationships with the important people in my life and she is the same way. There was a period of time last year where I was pretty unhealthy following the disintegration of my first serious relationship and tried to keep it from her for various silly and stupid reasons and that was probably the only time she's ever been needy and even that was a result of me (un?)intentionally stonewalling her in order to put myself together a bit first.
So is this true and if so how do we get out/steer clear
I think that the perpetual friend-zoning thing could be type related because an overwhelming number of my N-dominant friends are chronically single. I obviously can't speak to the composition of your personal friend/acquaintance groups, but statistically speaking, most people are sensors. And I've had a couple of sensors tell me that the reason why they don't like me/her/us (or initially didn't like me/her/us) is because we make them feel stupid. So it's possible that there's a bit of this going on.
I've also noticed that male NFs (and female NTs!) seem to have a rougher go of it in general because they often don't really act in gender appropriate ways, even if they have learned to more or less fake it to make it. No matter the type, most heterosexual girls are brought up to be attracted to men who act like men and most heterosexual guys are brought up to be attracted to girls who act like girls. It's why female NT-male NF relationships are often trickier than female NF-male NT ones, even though they should technically be no different.
Tl;dr I guess what I'm trying to say is just to keep being yourself. I'm sincerely sorry that people can't recognise how incredibly you are but you shouldn't have to change who you are for someone when there are people out there who will like you for who you really are. I know that it's hard to be patient, but you'll be a lot happier in the end.
ETA: I'll second/third/fourth/etc. everything that's been said above about being slightly mysterious. I feel like that is kind of what my friend did when we first met, playing hard to get and making me come to her. That combined with ENFP charm would be absolutely
irresistible.