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Friends with benefits: The relationships where male and female friends have ?no strings? sex? but it?s seldom that simple
By Diana Appleyard
Last updated at 12:47 AM on 27th July 2011
I?ll be there for you? Evie, who has been troubled by her casual romances
To a selfish man with commitment phobia, it might sound like the perfect relationship ? a close female friend with whom they can enjoy companionship, shared holidays, a good laugh?.?.?. and regular sex. All the benefits of a? committed relationship, in other words, but with none of the emotional or? practical ties.
Unconventional? Certainly. Unromantic? Absolutely. But not as unusual as it sounds.
For a growing number of young women, sleeping with a friend is no longer a taboo but a lifestyle choice. There is even a term for it ? Friends With Benefits ? the supposed benefit being that the friends not only enjoy each other?s company, but sleep with one another, too.
If it sounds a recipe for disaster, that?s because it very often is. As the forthcoming Hollywood film Friends With Benefits reveals, a no-strings relationship often leaves at least one half of the couple ? and usually it?s the woman ? feeling confused, unsatisfied, and wholly unconvinced by the ?benefits? they?re supposed to be relishing.
So why would any woman enter into such an arrangement in the first place?
Lucy Waterson is one of a growing number of young women in their late 20s and early 30s who have embarked on a Friend With Benefits liaison. She is an example of how confounding it can be to shift from a platonic relationship to a sexual one.
Her ?friend? is Doug Thompson and their no-strings arrangement has been in place for the past three years.
To be clear, by ?no strings? she means they are both free to pursue relationships with other people. The purpose of their meetings is purely physical, and neither harbours any expectation of commitment from the other person.
But, of course, things are rarely so clear cut. Lucy admits she feels jealous of Doug?s other relationships, is sometimes confused by their arrangement, and is keener on Doug than he is on her.
?We?re very close, yet each of us pulls back from a proper relationship,? says Lucy, 27, a television researcher who lives in North London.
?At times it is confusing, at others fun ? but sometimes he makes me feel jealous.
?I?ve even asked him why we can?t get it together and he says, flippantly, that I am not the kind of woman he wants to marry.
?I think I am more jealous of his other relationships than he is of mine, but we both know the score. I tell myself I want him to be happy and meet the right girl, but when he?s dating I get confused about my feelings. Doug says he respects me too much to lie to me and just isn?t ready to commit to a relationship.?
So this is hardly a no-strings-attached arrangement. But Lucy insists it?s the kind of relationship with which they are both happy. They see each other and sleep together until one of them meets someone else, at which point the physical side of their friendship stops. Or so the plan goes.
Evie with her ex-lover who is not identified. She said she has decided to draw a line under Friends with Benefits
So how did they embark on a sexual relationship at all?
It began with a casual fling. ?When we met through friends, I wasn?t immediately attracted to Doug, even though he ticks a lot of boxes for me ? he?s dark-haired, dark-eyed, university-educated, intelligent and funny,? says Lucy. ?But we started teasing each other and there was definitely a spark between us.?
They met for a drink a few nights later, one thing led to another and they went to bed.
?It was just sex, for both of us. Sleeping together just seemed a natural progression,? says Lucy.
?Some weeks later, we both? agreed we didn?t want a serious involvement and that we would be better off as friends.?
So that is what they decided to become. Except they never quite shook off the physical side of their relationship, without progressing to becoming a proper couple.
So Lucy and Doug go to the theatre and cinema together, text and phone each other regularly and see each other at least twice a month. Doug has even gone so far as to meet Lucy?s parents.
?Lucy admits she feels jealous of Doug?s other relationships?
They liked him, but, understandably, they struggled to understand the nature of his relationship with their daughter.
Lucy sometimes has doubts herself.
?I think we need to keep the lines clearer between us, as it is emotionally confusing,? she says.
?One moment we are all? lovey-dovey, the next we?re messing about like pals. When we first met, I think Doug was more into me? than I was into him, but now the situation has reversed and I don?t know where I stand.
Some of my friends think it?s cool to have a friend with benefits, others think he is an idiot and should ask me out properly, as they say we?d make a great couple.?
That is certainly the view of Rachel Morris, a psychotherapist specialising in sex and relationships, who predicts an unhappy outcome for Lucy and Doug ? and for any other friends in a set-up likes theirs.
She says: ?Most of the women in these cases are seeking a proper relationship. In a way, it?s likely the man in this relationship is being quite callous. The emotional consequences are huge ? and someone is going to get hurt.?
She may be right. Lucy?s no-strings partner Doug, 27, who lives in St Albans and works in IT, seems well aware that there are faultlines in their arrangement.
?We probably shouldn?t have slept together, but we did,? he admits. ?I was worried it might affect our friendship, but Lucy seemed fine with us just being friends and sleeping together occasionally.
?Now, I think it bothers her more than it does me. I enjoy her company, and I love being with her ? I just don?t want to go out with her. I value her as a friend, though. She seems to understand me in a way that a lot of women don?t.?
Why, then, is he not willing to enter into a proper relationship?
Doug explains that he had just broken up with a previous girlfriend when he met Lucy and wasn?t looking to make another commitment. ?I?m picky,? he says.
?I have a feeling I?ll meet a woman and know she is perfect for me, but that hasn?t happened with Lucy.? The fact he is risking their friendship by treating her with so little respect seems not to occur to him.
It?s complicated: Friends and lovers Doug and Lucy
But as psychotherapist Rachel Morris points out, sex changes everything: the moment a woman becomes intimate with a friend, her feelings change irrevocably in a way that men?s simply don?t.
She explains: ?Young people today, male and female, pretend sex is no more important than a handshake. Yet intimacy has a profound effect on the emotions, which can be very confusing, especially for women.?
Rachel adds: ?A hormone called oxytocin is released in a woman?s brain during sex, which gives her a biological pre-determination to seek a connection with that man.
?Men, however, are biologically programmed to sow their seed and seem able to disconnect emotionally from sex in a way that women cannot. So friends with benefits relationships are often more emotionally confusing and upsetting for women.?
That may well prove to be the case for 27-year-old Martina Wilkinson, who is in a no-strings relationship with her old school friend Malcolm Atherton.
She insists she enjoys their arrangement, but admits it can be unsettling.
?We meet up every couple of weeks, go for a drink or see a film. Sometimes we sleep together, sometimes we don?t,? she says.?I wonder if our relationship might develop further if we let it, but we have reached the stage now where to express any emotion for each other would be embarrassing.?
Meanwhile, Malcolm, 28, a computer analyst living in Barking, Essex, is wondering how to tell Martina that he has met a woman he wants to have a conventional, committed relationship with.
He doesn?t seem to feel troubled by the fact that Martina is likely to find out by dint of this article.
Malcolm says: ?I have enjoyed my time with Martina but our relationship is confusing. We made? it clear we?re just? friends, but we have complicated the issue by sleeping together.
?I think when Martina finds out I?ve met someone I want to be my girlfriend, she?ll say we can still be friends.
?Then, if my relationship doesn?t work out, I can go back to Martina. Both ways, I win.?
His attitude seems shockingly clinical. All the more so because it was Malcolm who asked Martina out in the first place after they bumped into each other on a visit back to the hometown where they had once been school friends.
Martina, a youth support worker from Pinner, Middlesex, explains: ?Malcolm and I had dated at college but it was nothing serious.
?When we bumped into each other ten years later, we flirted and giggled about old times.
?A few days later, Malcolm contacted me via Facebook and asked me to be his friend.
?Then he went a bit further, using a phone app called Take Me I?m Yours, designed to get couples together. Rather than just saying you want to be someone?s Facebook friend, you flag up a romantic interest in them.? Martina felt flattered, having just come out of a serious long-term relationship. So she and Malcolm started emailing each other.
Next, they agreed to meet in London and enjoyed several dates.
Initially, she says, the idea of having a Friends With Benefits relationship suited them both well
?I liked Malcolm but I wasn?t ready for a long-term romance,? says Martina. ?He?d just come out of a long-term relationship, too, so it suited him for it to be no strings.
?We both felt shy of commitment, so we fell into the kind of casual relationship we?d had at school.?
Malcolm, however, seems more certain of exactly what sort of relationship he was after. He says: ?I knew what I wanted from her ? on-a-plate, no-strings fun. To have a friend I could enjoy being with, with the added benefit of sex.?
But Rachel Morris says that, quite apart from potential heartbreak, the belief that friends can sleep together and not wreck their friendship is just naive.
?It is fashionable, at the moment, to try to take the intimacy out of sex, to see it as a no-strings pleasure that can be picked up and put down at will,? she says. ?But human beings are not made this way.
?If it sounds a recipe for disaster, that?s because it very often is?
?Men and women derive different things from sex. Men in Friends With Benefits relationships are actually congratulating themselves on getting regular sex with no complications.
?The male wants a conquest, that is how they are programmed, and sex gives them a sense of achievement and a physical release.
?Women like the period leading up to sex ? the feeling of empowerment in having a man wanting to sleep with them.
?But once he has slept with them, they can feel powerless.? If he then just wants you as a friend,? how does that make you feel?
?Women are not biologically programmed to have sex and not care.?
It?s a lesson that 24-year-old Evie Moore has learned the hard way. She has had several Friends With Benefits, but says she has decided to draw a line under them because she feels they are hindering her from being in a committed relationship.
?Having sex with a friend can be confusing,? admits Evie, who runs an online fashion business and is also an artist.
?All the moments you enjoy in a friendship ? feeling relaxed in their company, not caring what you look like, baring your soul in the pub, admitting to all kinds of disasters and having a good laugh ? are complicated if you start sleeping together.
?It?s too easy to let the lines blur. In future, I?m going to stop blurring the boundaries like this because I think they are jeopardising my chances of having a proper relationship.
?What will other men think of you if you sleep with your male friends? It doesn?t send out a great signal about your reliability.?
Not that she regrets the long-term affairs that she has had.
After university, when Evie was doing a busy job in the City, she says it made sense to have Friends With Benefits. She was working long hours that precluded traditional dating, so sleeping with an existing friend was, she says, a ?short-cut?.
?It also took away the pressure of having to look your best and be on your best behaviour all the time ? with male friends you can be yourself, it?s easy,? she adds.
?And as long as everyone is clear where they stand ? that your relationship is not going to turn into a long-term romance ? then the theory is that it can be light and simple.
?But I?ve seen romance ruin friendships. I?m convinced now that it is best to work with boundaries and stick to them ? to keep friends and lovers separate.?
Some names have been changed to protect identities.
Source
Source: http://www.athensreport.com/2011/07/the-relationships-where-male-and-female-friends-have-no-strings-sex-but-its-seldom-that-simple/
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