Friends with benefits - Heather Buechner

Friends with benefits is increasingly popular among people in their 20’s and in college. The question is, why? What are the benefits of this type of relationship? Also, aren’t there consequences in just being friends with benefits?

One advantage of being friends with benefits is that there is no commitment, which is especially attractive to college students, who meet new people much more frequently. With so many opportunities in college, it is nice to keep your options open. It is also important to focus on academics while in school, and relationships can cause a lot of mental stress, and take up a lot of time that you could be using studying. Friends with benefits don’t require commitment, and don’t require the amount of effort to stay together and make each other happy that relationships do. Another advantage of friends with benefits is that the sexual activity is with a trusted partner rather than with someone you just met. This obviously would not apply to people who have strong religious or moral beliefs against sex before marriage. However, for people who have sex without being in a relationship or married anyway, it is much safer with someone you are friends with and know fairly well than with a stranger.

“Sex between friends with benefits is more recurring and affectionate than that of a one-night stand,” said Aaron Ben-Zeev in an article on Psychology Today. A friends with benefits relationship is beneficial because it offers a caring friendship as well as sexual enjoyment, without the fighting, the stress, and the commitment. However, feelings can arise between the two people in the friendship, which can be complicated, since the purpose of the relationship is to stay friends without committing to one another. This can also be disappointing since partners in a friends with benefits relationship don’t have a mutual promise to stay together. Aaron also says in the article that there is a policy of “no questions asked” in a friends with benefits relationship, which means they cannot restrict each other’s behavior or ask about what the other person is doing. Once feelings arise, this can create a problem as well, because if your partner in this kind of relationship is talking to another person in a romantic way, you don’t have the place to ask about it, even though you might be jealous. One of the biggest disadvantages in friends with benefits is that it lacks the continuous and deep bond for one another, and there is no guarantee or commitment to make the relationship last. In addition to this, partners in this kind of relationship don’t necessarily make each other their top priority.  Lastly, in a friends with benefits relationship, there is no openness, and typically partners don’t talk about their feelings, which can lead to frustration.

The most interesting part of this article was the advice he gave to people who participate in friends with benefits. He recommended not having expectations, and having a time limit for the relationship, maybe not more than 3 months. He also recommended limiting time spent together to no more than two hours a day, and talking on the phone only once or twice a week. He also said no pillow talk, and no sleeping over. These rules can help prevent the relationship from developing into a committed one. He went on to say that if the bond of the friendship with benefits is strong, one or both partners might want to upgrade it to a committed relationship, because it will start to feel incomplete. However, this can be hurtful when only one partner falls in love with the other, and there is no reciprocity.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/in-the-name-love/201109/friends-benefits