Friends with benefits

Too-Often The Reality: A harrowing emotional freefall where two peoples' expectations are usually misaligned and someone is bound to get hurt. The worst of all worlds: a hurt friend and all the hangups of arguing about sex.

In theory, it's a great idea. You get the best of both worlds (someone you can trust, talk to, spend your time with and laugh with, and you still reap the physical benefits of cuddling, kissing, sex, etc) and exclude the worst (there is no feeling uncomfortable because you WANT to kiss your friend, but you don't want to make things weird, and you have none of the commitment that goes along with the typical male/female romantic relationship). You can spend the day together doing things you both enjoy and go home at night to cuddle/kiss/make love. It's the perfect solution to commitment problems. It can save almost any relationship.

In reality, friends with benefits creates the feeling that either one or both parties are concerned with only the physical part of a relationship and don't care enough about the other person to be willing to make a commitment to them. One or both parties will undoubtedly end up feeling used when they realize how their partner makes the time for the physical part of the relationship, but finding time for the friends part grows harder and harder. When the time is found for the friends part, it will either be spent with both parties feeling ill-at-ease or it will be spent on the physical part. The friendship will stop growing and, sooner or later, turn bitter. The attempt to save the relationship will miserably fail.

There are two main types of people that enter into "friends with benefits" relationships:

The first type is the person who wants and actively pursues this type of relationship. This person may think they are acting in both parties' best interests but in reality they want the action but they don't want to commit. Or this person may realize what they are doing and admit, at least to themselves, that they are merely trying to get as much play as possible. They get the action from one person and have absolutely no restrictions on how many other people they can do this with, or on whether or not they can pursue another relationship. At least one of the parties is this first type, but it is often both parties.

The second type is the person who passively accepts the "friends with benefits" relationship. This person will always end up feeling used. They will see that their partner wants the physical aspects of a relationship, but doesn't respect them enough to make a commitment or treat them uniquely. This type is not always present in a "friends with benefits" relationship, and very rarely are both parties this type.

There are three typical scenarios in which people end up in "friends with benefits" relationships.

Scenario Number One: Two people are dating. Then, one of them (or sometimes both) decides that they like their partner a lot, but they don't like the idea of having a girlfriend/boyfriend. They want to be free to play the field, but they don't want to sacrifice their relationship (either because they still want the play or they truly care about the other party and don't want to lose them completely... it is often a mixture of both). So they break up with the other party amicably, promising to still be friends and go out, and things continue much as they did when the two parties were still a couple, with one difference --they are no longer committed to each other. This is probably the most damaging "friends with benefits" situation because the two parties are used to being each other's "one and only" and now any number of attractive variables are entered into the equation. When other relationships surface (or even the possibility of other relationships), jealousy and pain will be soon to follow. It is extremely difficult to maintain a strong friendship under these conditions. Both parties, if they truly want to save some of their relationship, are much better off being just friends.

The Second Scenario: Two people are friends. One (or sometimes both) of them decides that they like the other one more than just friends. Either the neutral party gives in and allows romantic action because they do not want to hurt their friend, or both parties decide they don't want to risk ruining the friendship they already have by going steady, so they agree to stay somewhere in between. This occasionally works out, but most often it ends in one party becoming so frustrated with their unfulfilling, borderline relationship that they leave in search of a more concrete relationship, leaving both parties upset and the friendship weakened.

The Third Scenario: Two people are friends. As they grow closer, they may or may not realize "something more" between them. One day, they find themselves in a "friends with benefits" relationship. It just happened; it was unprecedentedand inadvertent. These types of "friends with benefits" relationships have the greatest chance of working out for two reasons: 1) the parties do not have any preconceived notions of what their relationship should be like, therefore there are no hopes to be shot down or expectations to be disappointed; 2) these type of relationships tend to grow into committed relationships--the "friends with benefits" characteristic is merely a pretext for the feelings they are harboring inside.

In conclusion, "friends with benefits" relationships are, theoretically, a great idea, but rarely does the outcome satisfy the original desires of the participating parties.

I have found that each and every one of his relationships with women during college conformed to the pattern of "friends with benefits" aka fuck buddies. Explanations for this phenomenon, which has been detected in the lives of most of not all of my close friends living on the campuses of undergraduate universities around the country, may vary.

Speculation follows:

• Time. College is taxing, and it is often the case that people simply don't have time for other people. Example: my first major relationship in college lasted for all of a month. She was an overachiever par excellence - a freshman chemical engineering major with neurology aspirations carrying 18 credit hours of coursework at a 4.0 level, a part-time job as a microscopy technician, etc. I was forced to schedule dates nearly a week ahead of time. The breaking point was when I had planned a Saturday morning hiking excursion followed by Saturday evening dinner and a movie. She hurt her knee during her daily morning two-mile run, and then breathlessly informed me about two hours before we were supposed to leave that her presence was required at work that night, as well as having to finish a twelve-page research paper on nanotechnology by Sunday afternoon. We broke up by mutual agreement five days later. By contrast, it was far easier to maintain the relationships that followed, given that the only planning necessary was a determination of when the girl in question's roommate would be out of town.
• Culture. Thanks in part to the successes of the feminist movement, and in part to the general open-mindedness found on most college campuses, it's not really that frowned upon to have an informal relationship with a member of the opposite sex. While the infamous gender-based double standard remains - a man is a player while a girl is a slut - people of this one's generation can engage in mostly uncommitted sexual relationships without fear of social ostracism.
• Fear of commitment. Nobody in college wants to be tied down, lest one has already found someone with whom they feel they can spend the rest of their lives. Needless to say, this is rare. So most people are still looking, still keeping their options open. Having a more informal relationship can satisfy the natural human requirement for emotional and physical intimacy without locking one in to the undesirable strictures of a long-term committed relationship.
• Emotional fragility. Love can suck. People might want to avoid it, at least until they get all of their psychological shit in one sock. Example: Not unsuprisingly, three out of the four women with whom I had engaged in such a "friends with benefits" arrangement had, within the past six months, terminated an intensive romantic entanglement with someone they had known since high school (in one case, middle school). They were burned out on love. Or they just got burned: cheated on, lied to, whatever. My experiences with what this one thought was love ended similarly, and I was thus reluctant to experiment any further with such a dangerous unknown quantity. I believed that these women had been subject to similar experiences, thus rendering them temporarily unwilling or unable to engage in any real "relationship."