Sleeping With Your Friends
I've lived in Toronto for seven years and have moved through a dozen or so social circles in my time here. Things are generally tight and without prodding, most groups tend to avoid long-term co-mingling. People move in and out but a core group tends to remain.
I've also had my share of fun and several relationships but I've noticed a distinct shift in terms of whom I choose to get closer with. Most of my hook-ups are close friends that I've known for awhile. While I've dated some of them briefly, all of them are people I feel comfortable with.
According to the ever-useful NOW Magazine Love and Sex Guide "35 percent of men and 39 percent of woman" identify as single while engaging in sexual relations with a friend.
Allowing for the demographics of those who cared to respond to the survey, that's still a substantial number.
A friend of mine once commented that friends who know each other long enough and well enough can get quite "incestuous" with each other. Leaving aside the potential for misunderstandings (of which there can be many) and monogamy (generally the favorite option) many people seem to find that while they are up for the idea of finding Mr. or Mrs. Right, they're perfectly happy to sleep with a almost-right option, the friend with benefits.
The advantages can seem pretty good. You can hopefully be more honest with each other because , as friends, you both know what you want; a good fuck. No commitments, no romance, just some simple intimacy and you can both laugh about it in the morning.
If it were that easy, more people would be doing it. People become friends for a variety of reasons and while attraction is not always a factor, the FWB situation can be perceived as an opportunity by one friend for pursuing the other romantically.
The common fallacy of "if they sleep with me, everything else will work out" has a tremendous pull on many people and this erroneous notion leads to a lot of deception; the death of many a FWB relationship.
And yeah, that's right, it is a relationship. While commitment-phobes might like to call it anything but, it's a exactly that with some carefully-self-defined (if unspoken) unboundaries. While any relationship relies on honesty to survive, a FWB relationship is particularly fallible to fuck-ups when one person lies to themselves or their partner
The flip-side of being honest with your partner is not talking about the relationship with all of your other friends. Rumors, misconceptions and jealousy are no fun and all of the safety-nets that can apply to a monogamous relationship are often disregarded by those in the know who feel that the FWB relationship is not as "sacred". The more people who are involved, the easier it is for one of you to get hurt.
Me, I don't know how I feel about FWBs long-term but they seem easier. As I get older (and have a better idea of what I'm looking for) the desire to start a monogamous relationship with just anyone seems pointless unless I really want to make a go of it.
Picking up while out is generally unappealing and often has more unknown factors than I'm comfortable dealing with. Sticking with what you know is not the same as being stuck in a rut and can potentially be much more stable than one-night stands.
While some folks might look at FWBs as greedy letches who want to have their cake and eat it too, I just want another slice.
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Photo: Tomitheos
Comments (20)
Another thoughtful post, Japhet, on a sensitive (t)issue - well done.
I've worked on finding a bed buddy for some time without success, at 45 with teenage children, the bar scene is a bit of a stretch - going to hear the right band can be better.
At the same time, I don't want to push my friends and potentially wreck a good relationship. I say that I am open to it, if someone else is.
Failing that, which has been the case, there is always trying to find a sex worker with whom you can build a relationship. And yes, those of you out there who are curling you lips right now, sex workers are people - duh.
I'm a big fan on FWB. In fact, I have several. But since I do have a penchant for monogamy, we often devise a system where we are not physically around each other for a few weeks (but call/email). This prevents those nasty phermones and monoamines (the love/jealousy bugs) away.
"The flip-side of being honest with your partner is not talking about the relationship with all of your other friends." I agree and think it's even more sacred in some ways. Secrecy is paramount to making it work, it prevents you from feeling awkward around your friends and having them ask for status updates as if some progress is expected. It's also an indicator that they need to analyze the relationship, and perhaps think or hope that it will become more. If you have an FWB who talks about the relationship, end it. Trust me, you'll all be much happier in the end.
Re: the inevitable monogamy that comes from sleeping with your friends...
A wise person once said, "It is not the object of a man to get in a woman's bed, but to keep other men out of it."
People who are into this are really selfish people who only want the sex out of it. They do not want to put effort into making the relationship work and having good and bad sides of the relationship. To me this is no different than hiring a hooker for a night (which one poster mentioned). That is fine, but it's reduced to sex, so don't call it any other way.
Whatever happened to love? For example, I am no angel, but I can't have sex if I am not falling in love.
@mike Read it again. There's a huge number of TOians doing this.
@N It is TOTALLY different than a hooker. There is certainly still a relationship like Japhet said, just not the same kind of one as in a monogamous relationship. What's so wrong with a purely sexual relationship?there's a place for both.
Right, but they aren't always 'purely sexual relationships'. I hang out with mine regularly in non-sexual contexts. The 'friends' part of friends with benefits very much apply.
@N, not only are you making unfair generalizations, you're being very presumptuous and offensively judgmental.
In my experience, FWBs are often just friends for months or even years beforehand, and often for years afterwards. The sexual experiences shared only strengthened the trust and bonds of friendship.
I wouldn't have sex with people I don't already know very well. Many of those people have already been in short-term relationships that did not work out but I would be the last person to suggest they should be cut out of my life.
Sometimes, relationships work a certain way.
To each their own. I still stand that it's selfish (whatever fan of whatever one may be) and that you are only calling this relationship because you'd like it to be different from prostitute (btw, you can find prostitute who will give you a GFE if you so desire).
If there is no emotional involvement then it's purely sex (no different from prostitute). If there is emotional involvement than you are in a relationship - boyfriend/girlfriend kind of relationship).
"Me, I don't know how I feel about FWBs long-term but they seem easier."
Precisely... selfish and you admit it. Because, you know, a relationship is a lot of work and is scary. In this society we are always taught to take the easy way out. No commitment, no effort.
And yes, this has so little to do with Toronto, because the vast majority of single people even by this disputable survey (65% of men and 61% of women who identify as single do not go into FWB). But hey, I'll never read an article written about these regular relationships and how to make them work, because, huh, that's just too much work for these people.
Wow, you seem a little bitter and are almost completely wrong.
Thinking that a friends-with-benefits relationship is purely about sex is incredibly naive. It has an emotional component; sex is almost never divorced from emotion and to suggest otherwise is disturbingly binary.
Visiting a prostitute can be a very emotional experience; we are never far from our emotions no matter what we do. Mind you, being with a hooker is probably a more emotionally-limiting experience than being with a spouse of many years (it could possibly be on par with having a one-night stand although this is where it gets interesting... some people probably have had better times with a prostitute than they have with a one-night stand and vice versa, there are way too many factors for your kind of blanket statement) but maybe not. There are many loveless relationships and probably a few FWB relationships that are more loving than marriages of many years.
Selfishness has nothing to do with my recent dalliances with friends. Most times, I have little desire to get into a relationship because I can already see too many incompatibilities.
In my mind, a relationship worth trying would be one where we have lots to talk about, some shared interests and worldviews and mutually-compatible lifestyles. I don't see too many people who fit those fairly-broad criteria and they're often already taken. I'm also at an age where I'm not willing to settle (give me twenty years and that might change).
I don't expect perfection but I do know what I want. Relationships do take a lot of work and I'd like to have more pluses so that the minuses aren't quite so bad. I don't think any of this is unreasonable.
Lastly, I can't understand how you question the relevance of this article to citizens of Toronto when it comes to majorities VS. minorities. While the NOW survey is probably not exact, there are people who engage in FWB relationships and this article is for them.
If you don't want to give it a try, THIS ARTICLE IS NOT FOR YOU! Read it, comment on it (try to be smart) but don't question the right for information to be made available to interested parties; I quite frankly insulted by that and I think it shows intolerance on your part.
As for your complaint concerning the lack of writing on "regular relationships" I could direct you to many websites, quite a few magazines and many, many self-help books but I trust that merely referencing the volume of this subject will suffice.
What I really don't understand about your POV is that these FWB relationships are private matters between consensual adults ... which shouldn't invite such accusations from people who clearly don't want to have anything to do with such practises.
This poll makes me feel entirely better. I've been flirting with a FWB-situation with one of my close friends, and I was a bit worried. I didn't know that they were so popular in the city.
Oi, I didn't know people had such strong opinions about FWBs, especially since they've been relatively common in my life and the lives of all the people I know.
While I don't agree with N at all, I'm glad he/she spoke up: it opened my eyes to some of the conceptions people have about sex and relationships in this city.
So, FWB lovers, just one question .. what is the most important difference between a girlfriend/boyfriend and a friend you screw around with sexually ? To me it seems trivial at best but please enlighten me !
The differences between the two can be great or none at all depending on the parameters you set up.
Sometimes, it comes down to how people feel they want to define their relationship with regards to how they relate to each other, how they relate to the people they know and vice versa.
Alright .. well doesn't seem like a big deal to argue about it then .. words I find are hard to express emotions with .. that's why I ask people I want to be intimate with to "show me"
I'm always amazed how rigidly people want to define the word relationship. I always that it was the interactions between two or more people, meaning you can have an amazing amount of relationships going on at the same time that each do different things for you.
@Gregg: I've had fuck buddies ("lovers" if you wanna try and keep it classy) friends with benefits, (I see a difference - but not everyone does), boyfriends, and partners. For me it comes down to rules of behaviour, and how much time I'm willing to invest in another person. ymmv.
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