This article was written by The Zillennial Zine’s summer editorial intern Connor Hanrahan. Find him on Instagram at @hannerhansmh. If you would like to share an article with The Zillennial, send us an email at thezillennialzine@gmail.com.
Friendships are a peculiar thing. We intentionally pick out people that we decide we want to spend more time with than others, but why do we choose these people in particular? Some friendships are founded on similar interests, some on mutual friendships, some on congruence of personality, some on family ties, etc. All of these serve their purposes and work as a consistent source of entertainment and emotional gratification, but what about the friendships that began with or adopted a tiny little spark of sexual tension? We typically categorize these as ‘Friends With Benefits’, but nowadays that phrase comes with a stigma.
In this article, we will be discussing different aspects of these friendships and answering the age old question: Is Being Friends With Benefits Bad?
The short answer is no. But there are a plethora of separate considerations we should make when deciding whether a friendship is worth risking or fully immersing ourselves in for sex, or even sometimes the prospect of a future romantic relationship. There is an even greater number of potential outcomes than there are aspects to consider in this situation, but one thing remains constant: to some degree, this friendship will NEVER be the same as it was before sex. Let’s discuss why.
Sexual Interest
Quite obviously, the first consideration we make when deciding to capitalize on mutual sexual tension is why we are feeling that way to begin with. Do you find the person physically attractive, do you find their personality attractive, or have you both just had several drinks and made prolonged sensual eye contact at a kickback and have nothing to lose? While this doesn’t at all affect the short term outlook on hooking up, this can have a huge impact on your friendship in the long run because the first and third questions are synonymous to hooking up with a stranger you met at the club, while the second one is FAR more likely to create an emotional bond between you two.
Two people deciding they think the other is hot, sexy and bed-worthy is as shallow as catching a glance across the bar and deciding to have a one night stand. It’s that simple. But wanting to hook up because you both thoroughly enjoy time spent with one another and are attracted to the way you both are as people pulls from a much deeper part of your mutual understanding than your eyes. It comes from your heart, and this is where we can initially differentiate between a shallow night of lust, and a friendship altering night of romantic passion.
Who You Are As A Person And a Fictional Tale For Illustration
Understanding who you both are as people is key in determining whether hooking up is a good idea or not. For this we must dive into personal histories and recall how both parties have reacted to intimacy in the past. I am also going to take a unique approach in this section and create a couple fictional friends: Claire and Jason.
Claire and Jason have been friends for several years now because they were both members of the same high school friend group. They kept in touch lightly through college but lead separate lives in different states, but have now reconvened in their hometown. The rest of their high school friends are spread throughout the states. We are going to focus on Claire and Jason, and no other external factors: this is about them.
In college, Claire fell for a study group friend who broke her heart and subsequently made that mistake again before deciding to stay single and focus on studies. Jason, on the other hand, hopped immediately into a relationship, got broken up with, and decided he wanted to spend his college years actively partaking in the single slutty party life.
The two young adults decided to start hanging out again and even go on a couple platonic friend dates where they reminisce about high school times. They talk about their college experiences and Jason even spills some tea on his college sex life and how he enjoyed it and in turn, Claire talks about her heartbreaks and how she has learned her lesson. They chat a bit more and talk about love. He talks about why he isn’t interested in a relationship, and she talks about how she loves Lana Del Rey and just wants to be treated right. As a result of their wonderful times spent together, the logs in their proverbial fireplace are rekindled and they become good friends again.
One winter night they go to a kickback at a high school friend of theirs’ house and they run back the good ol’ days with the rest of their friends who are in town for the holidays. They’re all drinking and having fun catching up but Claire and Jason both keep repeatedly catching each other’s glances and replying in turn with grins, smirks, and the whole flirty works. The party ends and as Jason and Claire are walking to their vehicles, Jason asks Claire if she’d like to come over for a bit to finish the night with a glass of wine and maybe a movie. She obliges.
They arrive at Jason’s house and he pours a couple small glasses of wine, sits down next to Claire, and they start a movie. They talk through the first bit and Claire gets up to use the restroom, but when she comes back she sits MUCH closer to Jason than she was previously and he scooches ever so slightly closer to her. A few minutes go by and on the television and as the protagonist shares his first kiss with the girl he has been pursuing through the entire first act, Claire leans a little closer to Jason, who lifts his arm over her far shoulder, allowing her to snuggle up closer..
Claire nestles into his embrace. A few minutes go by and Claire turns to face Jason, who responds in turn with a soft smile, and leans in to kiss him. He kisses her and brings his hand off her shoulder, slides it around the nape of her neck and up to her cheek to caress her face…. NOW STOP.
Let’s take a gander at the decision making that went into this hook up. Both friends were down for the cause, but based on the provided backstory alone, this hookup could change the course of their friendship forever.
When Claire went to the bathroom, she analyzed Jason as a person and acknowledged that he intends to remain single, and hasn’t at any point shown signs of taking a light bit of fun too far, matching her intent. She has identified Jason as an acceptable partner for the pilot episode of a friendship with benefits due to his shallowness, his inability to get too attached, and how good he was rumored to be in bed. However, she has caught feelings for other friends with benefits she had and will probably do the same with Jason.
When she returned from the bathroom and sat flirtatiously close to Jason, he thought only from the waist down, and failed to consider Claire’s history in situations like these. Jason is not looking for a relationship, but is now hooking up with a girl who has told him about the twice she fell for a friend in college. However, he thinks she’s really hot and he knows that pineapple is her favorite food, so he figures “aw what the hell” and hooks up with her.
Because Jason is not interested in a committed relationship, he will be unable to reciprocate the strings that Claire could potentially attach to this night. For Jason it was lust, for Claire it was intimacy.
These two were in it for the same reason, a hook up with an attractive friend, but they both have historically had very different reactions to hooking up after it happens.
Jason wants casual sex and after the casual sex, he still just wants the casual sex because he doesn’t need to know the person for it to happen because he’s in it for the sex.
Claire wants casual sex, but after the casual sex, she is unable to separate sex from romance and begins to catch feelings for her partner because for her, the sex can’t happen without some level of preexisting emotional connection to the person.
In conclusion, two Claires would yield a beautiful relationship, two Jason’s would yield an ideal friendship with benefits, and one of each would change the nature and functionality of that friendship forever. When hooking up with a friend, the intent matters, but the emotions that the act of sex subliminally creates in each individual matters more.
External Implications
The beauty of Claire and Jason’s relationship is that no matter how south things went for them, nobody else was affected and the potential collapse of their friendship wouldn’t cause any rift between the people close to them. If they were family friends or members of the same active friend circle, this would be different.
Friends within the same circle have every single right to do what they want with who they want. But, it is definitely worth considering the long term effects and weighing the pros and cons of taking a friendship to that new sexy level if you are cherishing the current vibe of that friend circle. While it doesn’t seem like having a friend with benefits within the group would change the vibe nearly as much as jumping into a relationship with that person, which would shift the focal point of the friend group to you two, it can actually still do that unless you can both keep a secret.
If both parties spill the beans to their friends within the group with the pretense of “hey man, don’t tell anybody,” everyone will end up knowing but nobody will be able to say anything. This alone adds to the tension of the situation because the taboo nature of it all will exacerbate the excitement of the friends clued in. This could lead to unwanted “shipping” and could apply enough pressure to the two hooking up that it may ruin the good thing they have going. It, in turn, could cause one person to cease the sexual activities even to the others’ chagrin, causing a rift between the two, hence causing a rift in the vibe of the friend group.
When the friend group situation is instead two families with a long history of friendship, it gets just as awkward. “Family friends” scenarios are typically constituted by a parental friendship and unless the adults are swinging, it’s typically the offspring, saying kids just feels icky, that end up in a friendship with benefits. We’ll call them the beneficiaries.
There is a greater sum of ways in which this can get weird than the friend group. For example, if the beneficiaries clue their respective parents into their fling and the parents start pressuring for a relationship due to the tightness of the families, much like the friend group, it can ruin the spark in the benefits. Or, maybe the parents find out why the benefits and start holding it against the other beneficiary.
However, this type of relationship is much easier to deal with after it has ended because ultimately, these family friends are not friendships you took the time to form. They were bequeathed to you. If things went really south, you have the option of not attending occasions that involve your ex-beneficiary the moment you become autonomous.
Secrecy vs Wanting a Relationship
Keeping your friendship with benefits between you and your co-beneficiary is the best way to ensure that no external pressure is applied to you two, making it the best way to make sure you retain your benefits without growth to a relationship via pressure. We lightly covered this in the “External Implications” section, but what if you WANT a relationship from your friendship with benefits….
The best way to form a relationship from a friendship with benefits is still secrecy. If you go running to your friends to hassle the other beneficiary about becoming something more, it could really turn them off to the idea, especially if they just wanted casual sex. This could be good if you aren’t interested in casual sex at all and only partook because you wanted a relationship, but if that’s the case, you should have mentioned it to your partner in crime after a couple of hookups so that no false pretenses were established.
More importantly, if both of you are interested in a relationship, it’s most important that both of you feel it was YOUR idea to form the relationship, and that you are the first two to know about it. I can’t even begin to express how many relationships I’ve seen that are immediately tainted by an announcement followed by a collective “FINALLY!” by the friends of one party in front of the other. If you want to go yap to your friends about your feelings on something like this, make certain it is to the friend you can trust best to keep your secret.
Distance
Distance in a friendship with benefits can be a saving grace. Proximity to your co-beneficiary can make them too easily accessible and regularity of sexual relations can form dependancy, which innately makes one want a little more than casual sex. A several hour drive or even a flight between beneficiaries can put a dampener on feelings or expectations between you two.
It keeps your focus on your life and the people closer to you which really helps mute the feasibility of getting carried away and wanting a serious relationship.
This may be the shortest subheading I ever create. It is a paragraph. Cheers.
Advice From the Author
Do not under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES have sex with your best friend unless you want a relationship and you know they do too. It does not matter what walk of life you have come from, the emotional connections you have are already too deep to separate sex from romance. Over and over the media shows us this. Movies are made about it, your friends will tell you about it. Only very few people on earth are emotionally closed off enough to separate the two. Hook ups are best left to strangers at bars or on dating apps and platonic friendships are best left to those you love but aren’t attracted to.
I’ve spoken most of this article from an objective point of view, but I have had friends with benefits and each time I have caught feelings. Each time the line between friends and romantic prospects was crossed and I regretted it instantly, so I never partook again.
For anybody considering a friendship with benefits, I would advise against unless you have tried it and it works for you. Let your dating endeavors be the casual sex in your life, or go hook up with people at bars but always use your best judgement.
I have found that the only friendships with benefits that work are the ones where you had sex before you ever got to know each other and you STILL don’t know each other well.
In Conclusion
Being friends with benefits can be hard work. It can be emotionally tumultuous, it can cause rifts in other relationships, and it can be extremely tough to not catch feelings. But, it will only ever be what you and your co-beneficiary make of it because at the end of the day, it’s just sex. Successfully keeping it a secret is your best bet to ensure that as little as possible in your lives has to change, but something will always change.
Is being friends with benefits bad? No. Is being friends with benefits worth it? Usually, also no. Facially, it is simply a friendship with an intense stigma created by people who did it poorly and are bitter about their failures, but deep down it affects everyone involved and amplifies feelings. Sexual connection is beautiful, but it is extremely volatile and is not always a risk worth taking.
What do you think? Did I miss anything? Have I glossed over any crucial considerations for a friendship with benefits? Let us know about your thoughts and experiences in the comments!
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