{"id":57,"date":"2019-05-16T20:20:59","date_gmt":"2019-05-16T20:20:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/strongermarriages\/?p=57"},"modified":"2019-05-16T20:20:59","modified_gmt":"2019-05-16T20:20:59","slug":"friends-benefits-biggest-lie-modern-dating","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/strongermarriages\/2019\/05\/friends-benefits-biggest-lie-modern-dating.html","title":{"rendered":"Why \u2018Friends With Benefits\u2019 is the Biggest Lie in Modern Dating"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"friends
Image Credit: Shutterstock.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Have you spent time online dating or IRL dating recently? If so, you have no doubt encountered people saying\/typing\/texting that they are exclusively looking for \u201cfriends with benefits.\u201d I can\u2019t count how many Tindr and OkCupid bios I have swiped past that included something along the lines of: \u201cI don\u2019t want a relationship right now, I just want to be FWB.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s time to call B.S. on the phrase friends with benefits \u2015 or at least how modern daters use it.<\/p>\n

Friends with benefits is a lie, perched on the back of more lies; it\u2019s lies and miscommunications and denial and half-truths all the way down. I get a migraine just from trying to parse this weaselly phrasing.<\/p>\n

I am not against hookups, one-night or one-week stands, or a part-time lover whom you bang twice a month when they are in town for work. I want you, me, all of us to have fulfilling and fun sex whenever we are able. You can have sex with no or very few attachments as long as both (or however many) partners are consenting, self-actualized adults who are going into the bone zone with their eyes, hearts and minds wide open.<\/p>\n

But none of that is friends with benefits.<\/p>\n

People who use FWB in their profiles \u2015 or IRL \u2015 are trying to convey that they are down for sex with some kind of intimacy, but most definitely NOT a full-bore relationship.<\/p>\n

But you can\u2019t have an FWB without having a friend, and friendship is a relationship \u2015 for many of us our friend relationships are the strongest, safest, sweetest bonds we have. Relationships are what keep you going back to your favorite deli guy, your grumpy barber, your former boss who is kind of terrible but at least he\u2019s the kind of terrible you understand and can work around.<\/p>\n

What you are implying when you say you don\u2019t want a relationship with the person whom you want to stick parts of yourself into (and vice versa) is that they are not as important to you as any of the other hundreds of people in your life. Is the bond you make with your sex friend while lying under the duvet (or smooshed in the back seat of your Hyundai) any less meaningful a bond than the one you have with that one receptionist at the gym who always remembers your love of the Phillies?<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think 10,000 would-be romancers understand the huge neon DANGER sign they are sending up by using FWB in talking about their dating life. They are signifying that they want to make all the rules, all the time, including when, where and how often sex is had and, most insidiously, how their sex friend should feel about that.<\/p>\n

The only acceptable feeling for them is total chill vibes \u2015 don\u2019t expect them to put any emotional energy into anything they aren\u2019t comfortable with at all times. And for super sure the other person cannot impose any of their own desires on them, or make emotional overtures. And even if you have a deep feelings convo after you smoke more weed than usual, everyone still has to be super cool about it because you aren\u2019t in a \u201creal\u201d relationship, remember?<\/p>\n

Let me give you two recent FWB examples from my dating life. Neither of these gentlemen callers were American and neither of them lived full-time in my city. This setup doesn\u2019t lend itself to a traditional, full-on, monogamous relationship which works for me as long as we are both on the same wavelength and communicating our needs.<\/p>\n

Pretty quickly in the first relationship, the dude (The Euro) let me know all he wanted was an FWB-type scenario. He also let me know I was not a priority to him. We would go out to drinks, sloppily make out (or just as often not), then he would disappear off to the parts of his life that he refused to discuss with me.<\/p>\n

The Euro loved to come to my house in the middle of the afternoon, have a couple of gin and tonics and some sort of fooling around, and take a nap. And then leave unceremoniously, which isn\u2019t what friends do. A friend doesn\u2019t indulge in a week of sexy texting before he flies into your city from far away to then tell you he can\u2019t hang out for the next four days with no further explanation. He made, changed and broke plans with ease \u2015 I was traveling frequently for work at that time and more than once had scheduled everything out for him to join me only to have him cancel at the last minute.<\/p>\n

The few times I called him on his behavior, telling him that I needed a bit more of the \u201cfriend\u201d part of our relationship \u2015 the part that was close, intimate and loving, the part where my priorities were as important as his \u2015 he would always say he didn\u2019t have any emotional room for me at the moment and maybe never would. I stayed tangled up in this shitty pattern for a few years because I liked him, I wanted to be closer to him despite every single way he showed me he was not my friend.<\/p>\n

It ended, as all great relationships do, with us yelling at each other in a crappy bar in Williamsburg and then me crying in the gross bathroom before crying in a Lyft all the way home, alone.<\/p>\n

The second case was a real FWB whirlwind. I had one unforgettable date with this man (The Expat). We had an immediate connection, banged it out and the same thing happened the next time he was in town. Then he sent me a WhatsApp message saying he really liked me but he just wanted to be \u201cfriends.\u201d<\/p>\n

So I told him sure, next time he came to town maybe we could get a chummy drink. Before his next trip, he asked if we could have a good old sex session when he arrived. All without asking me what I wanted, what being a friend meant to me, anything like that. (That hasn\u2019t stopped me from hitting it with him. I\u2019m garbage and he\u2019s hot.)<\/p>\n

Real, healthy, sacred and sublime FWB relationships can exist. You and your old roommate get a little tipsy at a local pub trivia night and go back to yours \u2015 then decide you want to do that same thing every Wednesday night for the foreseeable future. Or maybe you never noticed that the pitcher on your softball team was sooo cute until you really noticed by making out in your car after practice one day. Those people are your Friends and you are giving them the Benefit of seeing your naughty parts up close.<\/p>\n

The Euro and The Expat weren\u2019t my friends just because they said that\u2019s what they wanted from me. We aren\u2019t friends if we have drinks and apps together once or if we go for a long walk in the park and talk about our therapists the first time we hang out. We still aren\u2019t friends if we go home together the first time we meet because we\u2019re extra-horny on a Tuesday night. We remain not friends though we may hook up each and every time we see each other \u2015 in that case we are lovers or fuck-buddies.<\/p>\n

We are friends when we have shared experiences and feelings, when I know you hate Perky Purple nail polish because of that one mean manager who always wore it; when we almost get kicked out of a comedy club because you can\u2019t resist showing me an unsolicited dick pic and I scream; when you call me at 3 a.m. to cry over your long-dead cat because you know I will listen and cry with you. Friend relationships grow, morph and change, and maybe we end up in a more-than-friends relationship or maybe I end up dancing to \u201cHalo\u201d with your gay uncle at your wedding, happier than I ever thought I could be.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s not what you are asking for, stranger looking for an FWB on the internet, so I declare that you get nothing until you expand your relationship horizons. No more dating FWB folks until they are fully realized enough emotionally to tell the difference between sex, friendship and all the other shades of relationship gray.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

By Jennifer Abbots<\/strong>, as originally seen on The Huffington Post<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Have you spent time online dating or IRL dating recently? If so, you have no doubt encountered people saying\/typing\/texting that they are exclusively looking for \u201cfriends with benefits.\u201d I can\u2019t count how many Tindr and OkCupid bios I have swiped past that included something along the lines of: \u201cI don\u2019t want a relationship right now,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":462,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[20,1],"tags":[21,22],"class_list":["post-57","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dating","category-uncategorized","tag-friends-with-benefits","tag-modern-dating"],"yoast_head":"\nWhy \u2018Friends With Benefits\u2019 is the Biggest Lie in Modern Dating<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"It\u2019s time to call B.S. on the phrase friends with benefits \u2015 or at least how modern daters use it.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" 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