Why does being friends with benefits never work out?
Why does being friends with benefits never work out?
It seems that when two people become intimate yet non exclusive, things tend to go awry.
—Question by Anonymous on Quora
So you start with a solid friendship and you both decide that it would be fun to add a casual, light-hearted sexual dynamic to that friendship.
The way I see it, there are two general eventualities:
- The friends-with-benefits (let’s call it FWB from here on out) relationship blossoms into something more intimate and closer. Your friendship becomes some form of partnership.
- The FWB relationship “fails”. (I’ll talk about those quotes in a moment.) You either have a falling out, or you successfully roll-back to just “friends”.
You might be wondering about a third eventuality: The relationship remains a friends-with-benefits (let’s call it FWB from here on out) more or less indefinitely. I don’t list that because…well this one is not bloody likely. Circumstances and people change. Something about this relationship is either going to move forward or backward.
We’re not really interested in the first possibility for the purposes of your question, so that leaves number two: The FWB relationship must die.
You want to know: Why?
The same reason that a casual relationship will either fail or become deeper. The same reason that an established, committed relationship will either fail or back off, or turn into some form of lifelong commitment. None of these situations are reallyany different from one another in this regard.
Life has too many variables. And we, as people, should always be learning and growing. And when that happens, our needs and desires are going to shift. Our priorities are going to change shape. And, damn it all, we’re going to get bored. Either one of you are going to want something to change.
Where a FWB relationship differs from many others is that it’s a particular style of relationship that exists to fill a void–a need or a desire. Engaging in that relationship will present change to the equation. The void will either grow (as you realize the FWB dynamic is only pointing out the things you’re intimately lacking even more) or it will disappear (as you realize, wow, this person is amazing in this capacity! or something similar).
Right, so I’m getting side-tracked. Point is: a FWB relationship is never really likely to “succeed”.
So let’s change the game. Let’s change the rules. Let’s define our rules of engagement. Let’s define “success” and “failure”.
If we know that a FWB relationship is a temporary thing, then why is it changing into something else inherently a “failure”? Personally, when that happens, I do my best to see it as a success!
Most of the time a FWB relationship fizzles or rolls back because the two parties involved slip out of parity with how they feel about it. Someone winds up getting far more or far less out of the deal. This is a relationship that can only really ethically exist while both parties are in it for–let’s not call it the same or equal reasons–equitable reasons and motivations.
So if you need to dissolve the With Benefits part of the Friendship, this is a really good reason to need to do that. My suggestion: Both you and your friend talk openly and plainly about your feelings. Acknowledge that you’re on different plains and that now, early on before things get too complicated, is the time to decide what to do: To either focus on what makes you great friends and go back to trying that out, or to explore a more romantic relationship.
If you’re really friends, then both of you will be prepared to have that candid talk and make sure you can help each other through it.
But no matter what, I’m sorry to remind you: There is only forward and backward, side to side. There is no action without motion in some direction. You can’t hold onto this moment forever if you expect anything but boredom, stagnation, and a lack of growth.
—Dominic Bourbon
Featured image photo credit: “Colombia Dating Scene 2” by Mira John on Flickr. CC, Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0).
