Have you ever had a friend with benefits?

Great “in the moment”, sucky when the inevitable happens and one participant suddenly (or not so suddenly) decides they want more.

Empty sex. Depressing as hell.

Yeah. Her name was Rosie.

No.

oh yes, that was fun, interesting, fun….

Do imaginary friends count?

Girlfriend > ex-girlfriend > friend-with-benefits > girlfriend > ex-girlfriend.

While I enjoyed it at the time, looking back over it now, I think I was just being selfish.

Nope.

I had one, once, and everything with that friend fell apart after that one night.. It was a fleeting sensation and I felt empty afterward.

It’s like communism. Looks good on paper, but in reality it never works.

Trust me. Steer clear at all costs…unless you enjoy drama.

@debzilla Oh god. Yeah, I wasn’t thinking of a Friend who later became a Friend With Benefits. That’s significantly worse. Terrible, terrible idea.

Nope :)

Yes… about 12 years ago. It was fun at first, we had a good arrangement. He was well-endowed and skilled in bed, and generally a nice guy to hang out with. But meaningless sex – as good as it was – did lose its thrill. Neither of us developed romantic feelings for the other, so that is not always the case. But I ended it to seek a true relationship; and the man I met next was less experienced, but we had an amazing physical chemistry and emotional passion between us. With him I learned the true meaning of “making love”, and I will never settle for anything less.

Well, I have friends with health benefits – is that what you mean? :-)

yes…and it turned into an abusive relationship

If that could mean someone that pays your rent all the way through university and takes you on some nice trips but is otherwise unavailable then yes. It was very romantic and worked out great.

I had a couple when I was in my early twenties. Of course we didn’t call it that, then. I don’t think we called it anything.

One was a former girlfriend, who later became a housemate. The other was a colleague at work who became a friend with benefits and then became a friend. I guess there were others, too, although most of them were friends with benefit—as in there was only one; maybe a handful of benefits.

They all were colleagues who I grew to know well (since the only people we socialized with were other colleagues. They would come to parties at the house I shared with three other women. We all became a large group of friends, and many of us slept with others. It was all very friendly—in the sense that I don’t remember much jealousy.

These were the last few years before AIDS; the last few years of the sexual revolution; and people had a different attitude about sex, I think. We did, anyway. I don’t remember much fear of STDs. We knew we should use condoms, and I think most of us did. No one really wanted the clap or clamydia, but if we did get it, it was easy to take care of.

When I hear the stories about today, I feel like we were much more innocent back then. We didn’t place things in the categories people have now. It wasn’t just about sex or booty calls. It was just an outgrowth of friendship, for the most part.

Oh yea.
Always good to have one of those from time to time.
Actually I know one ore two I can always call. Even if not talked to in a while that would come over at last minutes notice.

Kind of nice to cut through the games and be able to get down to business.

Yes, but it was a short friendship. I was working through my first divorce, I had full custody of my children. She gave a listening ear, and I listened to the problems she was having with the boyfriend she was living with. I invited her out to eat for conversation and company. We went our separate ways that evening.

I had her over to watch movies one evening, I rubbed her feet, we kissed for like two hours and she performed a sexual act on me. I thought that was interesting and somewhat strange, but she smiled said goodnight and left after she was done with me and called me the next day, I shook my head, felt guilty and waved goodbye, wow, I was naive, i honestly didn’t see that coming!

We talked and emailed a little bit more. She came over for dinner, the kids were visiting their mother that evening. We talked for a while and there she was when I turned around standing with her clothes off. You can guess the rest of what happened.

She was red-headed and physically stunning. I guess she was a liberal soul when it came to sex. We talked a bit more, there was never any discussion about relationship and we went our separate ways. I think I still have some Dr. Seuss movies she let me borrow for my children. No strings attached, I lost contact with her after a few months.

Her name was Kelly and she was my friend.

Yes, one – we were in a relationship previously. We are still at it <3

Looooong time ago. As with many things, the concept pre-dated the phrase by, oh, maybe a generation. I was in a circle of friends where this type of thing was not at all uncommon. I got a phone call one day and she said, “I’ll be in your neighborhood later today. Will you be home? Would you like to call (insert another female FWB’s name here) and see if she wants to come over to play?

Yea, but they were all one-time things and not for vaginal sex. Just everything else lol. And they’re all just acquaintances now; they were probably only acquaintances then too…

yes, for three-ish years. Then we were a couple for five years, during which time we had basically no sexual contact. Weird.

Today you would probably call it child abuse (me being the child.) I was 15, he was 20, it lasted about a year and it ripped my soul out. I guess “casual” sex is possible, people brag about it all the time, but there is nothing “casual” about sex to me.

Never someone who was a friend first and then we decided to use each other for sex but I’ve agreed to have sex with someone without the issue of a relationship being an objective. Thing is, I liked the sex so well I got familiar with the person and came to enjoy non sex time with them too, somewhere along the way we became important to each other. Bah!~

@Judi – Thank you for your honesty. Really.

There is nothing casual about a child having sex.

I pursued this sort of thing when I was younger, but regret having done so.

@ChazMaz ; The funny thing is, that until recently (I’m 48) I didn’t even think to look at it that way. I considered it totally consensual and have had guilt issues. Recently I have realized how manipulated and victimized I was. I was just a kid, and he was a man. I never realized that before. In my adolescent rebellion I thought I was a “grown -up,” when in reality, I was a naive little girl. I just don’t know why it took me 30 years to figure that out.

In time comes wisdom.

@robmandu That’s what I was going to do.
Boyfriend > Ex > FWB > Boyfriend > Ex > FWB > Ex > FWB.

It’s never been without feeling involved though.
We care about each other too much to have meaningless sex.

@pdworkin Why do you regret having had fwbs when you were younger?

Because it left me feeling empty, solved no problems, made difficulties, and wasted potential in terms of both friendship and long-term companionship.

Sort of, a long time ago. It was an ex who I had broken up with months earlier. It was a disaster in the end as I was over it and wanted out, but she wanted to get back together. Not good, and not worth it!

Yes. Not currently because we have SO but when we’re both single we have sex. It’s enjoyable but nothing more and we’ve been at it for almost 3 years.

Are friends with benefits and fuck buddies the same thing?

@ChazMaz yes.

I keep thinking about this concept because I did kinda try it with someone who’s not a friend but an acquaintance. Actually, we really didn’t even have sex as much as a few episodes of petting before I took up with someone I’d been adoring from afar. The result of the encounters didn’t give me any satisfaction that the non physical flirting hadn’t already but it did cause some problems I regret. Now I deal with an acquaintance who’s known me intimately, knows what buttons to push, feels entitled to close proximity and goes out of their way to offer and proposition whatever comes to their mind because they feel they can trust me. Suspecting I am seeing someone (I am) and that’s the reason I’ve chosen to cut down the flirting and nix the physical stuff (I have) they now seem hell bent to try and break my resolve which angers me. I should call this lesson, “Kinda-Sorta-Not Really-Fuck Buddies-Gone Bad”.

Um…yes and no. I have a friend, who I have known for 8 years now, and who I dated briefly when we were around 15 (so I knew him like 5 years then). We fooled around then, but only once. The relationship quickly dissolved and we fought and eventually because of a lot of things we didn’t see each other for 3 years. During that 3 year timespan we did talk and a few times brought up the idea of dating again, and at one point I said I didn’t want to date but would be friends with benefits. Nothing ever happened though. I always felt too guilty/ashamed/afraid.

After the 3 years though, I still wouldn’t call it FWBs, but we had one night of vulnerability, in which we fooled around. And that complicated our friendship greatly, because we were flirting and potentially going to date before that, but so many things changed. For about 3 months after that, I wanted to date him, but he eventually told me he wanted to be friends, because our friendship is too important and he didn’t want to risk losing it. Makes sense. After he told me that I did propose FWB after a while, and he got quite upset with the idea.

But, here I am now, occasionally doing an online camshow with him for pay. Sure it’s not really FWBs, and we aren’t really doing anything much. But sucking his dick is still sucking his dick.

My situation is a bad example, but I would recommend staying away from sex with a friend, unless neither of you attach any intimacy to sex AT ALL. Or neither of you are very close to each other and wouldn’t mind losing each other in the long run. I didn’t even have sex with my friend, but it still almost ruined our friendship.

Yeah I’ve actually had it work. I’ve been good friends with the guy for a couple years. Three times in the past year we’ve had completely no strings attached sex. It always takes a few days to get back to normal, but we really do carry on a normal friendship, and we never know if/when it’s ever going to happen again.

I’ve had it work, too. I had a very successful friend who I hooked up with for about six months. Maybe seven. Neither of us wanted a relationship although we were really good friends and also attracted to each other. We stopped hooking up because he also had a girlfriend who was far away and they decided to become exclusive (just a note, she was also sleeping with other people and knew that he was, too!) and it really was no big deal. I guess I was slightly annoyed since I stopped, you know, getting some, and we were both a little bummed because it had been really fun, but neither of us was heartbroken by any means. We went back to just being friends.

This was a few years ago now, and we’re still really good friends. I call him for relationship advice sometimes, and he’s still with the girl he was with while we were fwb. Actually, she and I are friends now, too. I guess it wasn’t exactly “empty” sex, since we were (and remain) extremely close, but there was just no romantic “love” of any kind involved, and we were never in a relationship. Hence I consider it to be “friends with benefits.”

For those who’ve noticed in other threads that I’m, you know, pretty gay, then I’ll add that I think that is one reason that this was so functional for me. If he’d been a woman, I guess I might have fallen for him!

I’ve had a few here and there. I enjoyed it, mostly, but then it always ended badly when one of us would develop feelings for the other. same thing goes for having a threesome with someone you know instead of a stranger

I had a girlfriend who I broke up with after a few months due to financial difficulties. The breakup lasted one day; she wanted to continue the relationship anyways. After a while, I found out she was going out with other guys, so I ended it. The problem was that we had intense physical chemistry with each other. We were basically insatiable for each other.

We were only in a relationship for around 6 months, but we remained as friends with benefits for years. We talked on the phone all the time, never had dates, but shtupped each other’s brains out at least weekly, if not more often.

To this day, I have no regrets about the arrangement. There were very few feelings involved (at least on my side of it), but that didn’t make the sex any worse. Still, at some point I felt as if I was holding her back from moving on with her life, so I ended it, for good this time. Within a year, she started dating the man she would marry.

@ChazMaz I read your first comment in the “other” frame of mind. I pictured a very old couple having sex. Ha ha. Sorry. It caught me off guard and I had to share.

@AstroChuck You didn’t happen to be drinking cider at the time by any chance?

@Judi sorry for the delayed response, there is a bit of time difference where I am at. I would hardly call a 20 year old a man, he is not even legally a man.

He was older and manipulation is almost always present, but I also have known 15 year old girls that can manipulate and in all ways appear to be 18 or older. Times are different now than they were 30 years ago of course.

I did. It was understood to be just mutual fun. I didn’t realize at the time that she became attached, and when I found someone else to be romantic with, she was hurt. I felt like a jerk.

No…but feel that if both parties are totally agreeable then why not? However initially it may seem like a good idea but feel it’s inevitable that feelings and attachments will develop that could be just one sided. After all it’s human nature to form attachments and are we really in total control of our emotions even if we think we are?

Wait. I went back and counted. It was your third comment. Sorry.

several. I had one for over 10 years

Yes, every once in a while the Wife and I will meet someone, Introduce them to the other and take protection and go off for a quickie. I love the updated tipping the waitress method by taking her to a storage closet at the end of her shift and giving her a good Shaft of shlong.

Even better when she wants to come home for the weekend!

I tried to have a friends with benefits guy once. He fell for me first and swept me off my feet…. still going strong.

Sounds like the benefits part is keeping you happy! yes it can work as long as everyone knows how to talk…

I’m in a “friends with benefits” relationship right now. I was the one who decided I wanted more… it’s a complete mess, I can’t stand the idea of another person not reciprocating the same emotions and feelings that I have. I’m get so upset about how the situation is, that I don’t even want the supposed benefits that are suppose to be there now.

- my suggestion is to not ever get into this type of relationship.

@RandomMrdan ; I understand totally! Everyone has to be on the same page, side by side and willing to reciprocate equally… The wife and I and her bff share this but like any relationship it takes work all the time. And all involved have to put in there 110% or it doesn’t work smoothly.

If it is not working then change it so it does.

Yeah. He just proposed.

Yeah. He proposed to me yesterday.

No.