Emma Medeiros made a special friend decades ago while she was in college. Ultimately, Adam Caldow would become her best friend – and also her “friend with benefits,” slang for a friendship that becomes sexual but not romantic.
“We wanted to lose our virginity, but neither one of us knew what we were doing, so we thought, this is a good match,” Medeiros recalled. “We won’t be embarrassed if we’re with someone else who doesn’t know what they’re doing,” added Medeiros, who is now 44 and living in Lewiston, Maine.
From that point on, sex became part of their friendship, no strings attached. “We really made it clear to each other, this is a physical thing,” she said.
There’s anecdotal evidence that Medeiros and her friend, who ultimately became her husband, aren’t alone. But there’s also plenty of anecdotal evidence that navigating such arrangements can be dicey. Therapists and others are quick to point out the shortfalls of such arrangements and to warn people to prepare for, at best, complications, and at worst, destroying the friendship.
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Sweetness, boundaries
Proponents say the relationships are like zero-calorie sweeteners: all the sweetness without the calories. Critics say the empty calories will come back to haunt you unless both participants set clear emotional boundaries.
In Medeiros’s case, she and Caldow dated other people, but after two years realized they wanted to be with each other more than anyone else.
“And thank God we did,” she said. “The funniest thing was, when we finally did tell our friends we were a couple, not one single person was surprised. Everyone was like, well, it’s about freaking time.”
They got married in 2012 and have been together ever since.
A study published last year in Women’s Studies International Forum said such relationships are getting more popular, especially among young adults, and that casual sex may be happening more often between friends than strangers. The three psychology researchers in Portugal who wrote the study attributed that to accessibility, safety, trust, an ease in understanding one’s partner’s feelings, and an ability to still hang out and do friendly activities.
But it’s not all sunshine and noncommittal fun. Another study, from the University of Delhi, said such relationships were also “fraught with emotional complexities, as evidenced by unexpected feelings and conflicts mirroring those in traditional romantic relationships.”
“The emotional toll of [such] relationships manifested in stress, anxiety and unhealthy coping mechanisms underscored the need for caution and self-awareness when entering such arrangements,” researchers in that study wrote.
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Communicate or complicate
Whether such a relationship will work depends a lot on the context for it, said Shay Thomas, a licensed marriage and family therapist in Atlanta. A successful relationship depends on the participants’ motivations and how aligned they are. It also requires impeccable communication.
“Is each person deciding to do this because they’re going through a dry spell, or is this some kind of reactive rebound situation? Is it a decision related to avoiding intimacy? Or maybe you don’t have time for a relationship, but you want to enjoy sex from a pleasure standpoint,” Thomas said.
Ultimately, she said she doesn’t believe the relationships have staying power: “By and large, I believe it’s more likely to cause complications and heartbreak and confusion and kind of rupture the friendship.”
Tracey Laszloffy, a marriage and family therapist in North Carolina and Connecticut, also doesn’t believe the arrangements have a long shelf life.
When they end, it’s usually because one person’s expectations changed, Laszloffy said.
“I think that happens more times than not,” she said. “The problem is when you think you didn’t want this to go any place too intense, and then you find that changes. And then jealousy starts to creep in, and you’re thinking, ‘That wasn’t where I thought we were going with this.’”
While anyone can start having feelings for a friend, Laszloffy has seen more women than men get emotionally invested.
And then you have people like Natasha Ho. In her case, her former friend with benefits is still a friend – though there are no “benefits” now – but it took years to get to that stage.
While they were still in the benefits stage, there was a period when Ho wondered whether they should start a romantic relationship, but her friend didn’t feel the same – and then when she moved on, the friend became jealous and angry and the friendship soured.
“There were a lot of great qualities that I enjoyed about him, but I think the timing just never was there for us to actually be in a committed romantic relationship. And then I found someone that I had the right relationship with, and the timing was right, and the personality was right and what they wanted was the same thing that I wanted,” said Ho, 38, who lives in Tacoma, Washington.
She wanted children while her friend did not, she said. He changed jobs frequently, while she craved stability, she said.
“When I look back at it now, I realize that in terms of long-term goals and lifestyle, those kinds of things, we didn’t have that compatibility there. We had great friendship compatibility, but in terms of the kind of life we were trying to build long term, we didn’t have that,” she said.
It took her three attempts over three years to rekindle the friendship. It wasn’t until her friend reached out to her four years later that they were able to reconnect. He’s even going on a vacation with her, along with her husband and two children.
One of the main reasons relationships end is because one or the other has started dating someone, said Laszloffy.
“They’ve met someone, and they’re interested in going in a different direction, and they feel like, now I’m ready for a committed relationship, and so I’m just moving on,” she said.
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When one party catches ‘feelings’
Friends-with-benefits relationships can’t last because they’re unrealistic, said Tracy Margolin, a licensed family therapist in Stamford, Connecticut. There’s too much of the good stuff and not any of the hard stuff, like expressing feelings and being allowed to have expectations, she added. With friendship, there is some responsibility, and with responsibility can come expectations and hurt feelings.
“If I told you I was going to call you tomorrow and I don’t, you’re going to be disappointed. Are you telling me in a friends-with-benefits relationship, you’re not allowed to be disappointed because I told you I didn’t want anything serious?” she said. “That’s not going to work because somebody will catch feelings. Or there will be resentments.”
But more than that, she asked, what does a friends-with-benefits relationship solve, and why would someone want that kind of relationship?
“If the problem is, I’m not ready to get in a relationship, well at some point, you will be. So then that didn’t solve it,” she said. “I mean, is a friends-with-benefits relationship like a ramp up to see if you’re ready, and then you say, well, now thanks for that. I’m healed from my past hurts. Bye. Bye?”
Relationships are always going to tend toward something, whether it’s an ending or the beginning of something romantic, Margolin said.
“I think it’s human nature to want to move forward. Nothing can stand still. Nothing is in a vacuum,” she said. “Could it serve a purpose for a while? Sure. Will it solve a problem for a while? Yes. Can they endure the long haul? I don’t think so.”
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