Friends With Benefits: Part 1

Informational: Non-Fiction

(Characters have been fictionalized, names and genders changed to protect innocent from persecution and guilty from prosecution)

I talked to a friend who lives in Fort Lee, NJ. For the sake of this blog entry I’ll call her ‘Sal’.

Sal is in her 40’s and has three bartending gigs, one on the weekdays (Tuesday – Thursday), one on Friday at a really busy hot spot in the Bronx and another in Manhattan on Saturday Night.

Sal ain’t bad looking for a farm girl from Pennsylvania who can milk cows, plow fields, drive a tractor and muck stables.

To get by Sal had to make ‘compromises’ and changes in her life and living to survive in the current urban landscape that surrounds New York City. Sal met a lady, we’ll call her ‘Eva’ who is an uptown girl from a well off family who owns a building or two around Columbia University.

Eva was disowned by her family because she found a male friend, Marc a well educated, powerfully built Latin man who really ‘liked’ Eva but didn’t want marriage, kids or baggage.

Sal has a really nice apartment with a magnificent view of Manhattan and she occasionally has parties during the dead days between winter and summer with close friends and the part of her family that has accepted her “life style”. Sal had a good life until she lost her job working at the World Trade Center back in 2001. After that her company let her go in 2005.

Sal and Eva had a long talk on a slow night during her weekday gig at a neighborhood bar and grille just outside of Fort Lee, in Edgewater, somewhere near River Road. Sal needed a roommate and health insurance, Eva needed to stay close to the city, she’s an executive for a major health care provider. Eva wanted an ‘open minded friend’ to refine her BDSM fetish practice.

Sal and Eva kind of worked out a ‘deal’. Sal wanted male companionship, but not from her patrons, and not from one night stands, Sal wanted a steady cock with no strings, no promises, no bullshit. Just a hard cock to get off when she wanted, but she was paranoid about STD’s (sexually transmitted diseases) and wanted a faithful hard dick with a good body and no drama.

A week later, Sal, Eva and Marc worked out their ‘arrangement’. Eva got Sal both medical and life insurance in return for a place to stay.

Sal also gets Marc pretty much on demand (Marc does what he is told and loves it…not all sex slaves are female). Sal has committed to a unilateral BDSM relationship at least twice a month with Eva. Marc gets an occasional crash pad and sex as a submissive male.

This ‘arrangement’ has been going on for about three years. It hasn’t changed much and although it is dynamic in that all those involved have modified some things, all are satisfied with what they have worked out. This kind of thing goes on more often than not and especially with college students and college graduates. There is a name for this phenomenon called ‘Friends With Benefits’ or FWB.

Not all FWB relationships are this ‘detailed’ or structured. But this phenomenon has been going on since the 60’s but has caught on big time during the post 911 years. But this kind of relationship actually finds its roots in early modern history, particularly Rome. This kind of relationship or living was called ‘epicureanism’ that is a life without pain or emotional distress; a life of pleasures sought for the mind and the body.

So pursuing this topic away from what’s been in movies or on talk radio is the best way to see this from a kind of ‘clinical’ point of view in a real world context. I found a very formal study done on the topic “Negotiating a Friends with Benefits Relationship” by Melissa A. Bisson & Timothy R. Levine in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, dated September 2007. (Yeah, I read all kinds of stuff)

I read the study twice to make sure I understood it. What it boils down to is what to not expect in a FWB relationship and how not to get your emotions involved in FWB relationship. I know this begs so many different questions it’s absolutely mind-blowing (forgive the pun). So to start, I will quote from the study. This will blog will have several parts in a series so not to overwhelm your limited attention span.

Quoting the study, “FWB combines the psychological intimacy of a friendship with the sexual intimacy of a romantic relationship while avoiding the ‘‘romantic’’ label (Hughes et al., 2005;Mongeau et al., 2003).

Sexual activity with a friend distinguishes FWB from both ‘‘hook-ups’’ characterized by a single occurrence of sex between people who are acquaintances or strangers without the expectation of developing a relationship (Paul & Hayes, 2002; Paul, McManus,&Hayes, 2000) and traditional romantic relationships.

Labeling FWB as a friendship is consistent with the fact that these individuals are not romantically committed and do not share a romantic love for one another. But, consistent with romantic relationships, these people engaged in repeated sexual activity, which has traditionally been linked to a romantic relationship but not friendships.

Discussion

About half of the participants indicated that questions arose in their FWB relationship, and these questions involved uncertainty about what to call the relationship, the future of the relationship, and how to negotiate changes in feelings.

Despite these uncertainties, however, participants reported little talk about the state of the relationship. Almost 85% indicated that no relationship talk was initiated and 73% indicated no discussion of relationship ground rules.

Of the relatively few participants who explicitly established ground rules, the most prevalent theme involved third party concerns related to disclosing the relationship to others and establishing that they, unlike exclusively dating couples, were allowed to see other people. Specific strategies involved seeking compromise and arguing for one’s own desired outcome.

No significant sex differences in communication patterns were found, possibly due to the low frequency talk about the state and future of the relationship. While previous research has also reported that taboo topics are prevalent in relationships, the current findings suggest that this is especially true for FWB relationships.”

What does all this mean?

That the pursuit of a mate is no longer the purpose of sexual behavior? Are persons in an FWB relationship in it only to use one another?

What ‘taboos’ are this study hinting about?

Do these ‘taboos’ involve race, sexual practices, same sex relationships, or other deviant behavior?

What does this matter and how does it affect American society structures?

Yeah, heavy duty stuff for recreational and opportunistic sex hunters aint it?

Part 2 will deal with some of the above. See you later.

RJ