This isn't a huge problem, as such, but I thought it would be interesting if anyone has any similar experiences.

One drunken night out, I hooked up with a friend of mine. We quite enjoyed it and agreed to meet up regularly, but not have a relationship. We've been doing this for quite a while now (four months-ish) and all this is still good and dandy. I do care for him, I feel closer to him than most friends, but I still can't see us in a relationship, and that's fine.

But-

My flat mate seems to think that this can only end in heart ach. That I can't be happy doing these things with someone that I don't want to go out with. That I must have a yearning to be with someone, and so on and so forth. She is being quite persistent on it.

So I'm interested to see if this has happened to anyone else, and how it turned out in the end.

Your flatmate should shut up and mind her own business. If she can't manage unusual relationships that's her problem, and I think she's confusing ‘caring about you’ with ‘telling you what to do’. :]

At any rate I think any relationship will end how the people involved want it to end. If someone wants it to end with heartache it will, if they want it to end on good terms then it will. You won't be able to control the other person's reactions, but those are for them to live with and not you. Just make sure you are on the same page with any expectations and emotional boundaries and I suspect you'll be fine.

I used to have a “friend with benefits”.

But in the end though it only weakened me. In a way that I start to develop an emotional attachment to her but its not two way so I just dropped it.

It was easier to let go though because the emotional attachment was only at 10% and not at 110% with the last girlfriend I had who I originally intended to marry.

I don't wanna do this kind of thing anymore.

Because I guess I'm such an “old-fashioned” guy who cannot help but develop an emotional attachment that keeps getting stronger and stronger everytime my sword enters her scabbard. Every time I smell her hair. Every time I touch her body I cannot help but develop an emotional attachment little by little.

You see, it needs a kind of psychopathic personality to engage in these types of relationships and be successful with it. You have to be incapable of love and really honestly believe that love is some kind of disease.

Love is a serious mental disease. - Plato.

hey,if yer both cool with it,then why not. safer then sleepin around with strangers.

I have one. It wasn't outright intended that way to start, but right now it's where we both see things as being fine. It's fairly common place. Consider it dating without getting more serious.

I'm the type that can't help getting emotionally attached to the person I'm sleeping with so I would personally not recommend it.

However. I've only had sexual relations during long term relationships and have stayed clear of things like one night stands and such. Thus I might not be the right person to ask for an opinion.

I've had two before, it was good for me because i was sick of the serious aspect that came with a real relationship and in a way i was avoiding getting emotionally close(i was going through confusion/denial of my sexuality). Both ended poorly because of shitty communication, mixed signals etc. So i recommend not letting a misunderstanding get out of hand because it usually really is a misunderstanding.

Skool is right though it's none of her business and these relationships can totally be beneficial with good communication/not acting like an inexperienced high schooler. She's probably just trying to lie to herself that yearning for a high moral prince charming is the way to go.

kyupol
everytime my sword enters her scabbard.

And I thought my euphemism's were weird, roast beef wizard sleeves anyone?

I love everybody's reaction, you'll all put so much thought into it. My flatemate has a bit of a warped idea of relationships I think. She was engaged to this guy in China, and insted of calling of the engagement, so just moved back to France. Then a year later he went looking for her, thinking they were still getting married.

I'm also glad that there are examples out there from when it didn't end in tears.

Skullbie

kyupol
everytime my sword enters her scabbard.

And I thought my euphemism's were weird, roast beef wizard sleeves anyone?

Well, at least he's not parking his car in her garage, docking his submarine into her port, slotting his tab A into her slot B, or roasting his sausage in her oven…

As far as the topic is concerned, I don't think I could get into a “sex” friend relationship (I'd use the other word, but I don't swear unless I'm really really REALLY angry). For me that kind of thing is very intimate and I reserve it for someone I'm to whom we both have a strong emotional attachment.

Oh… and it really isn't your flatmate's business what your relationship with your friend is unless that friend is mutual to you both… or something like that…

Well, there is nothing wrong with this kind of friendship. But playing with fire can be dangerous.

Also, on an unrelated note, porn.

I could never pull off “friends with benefits”. The only girlfriend I had I got really emotionally attached to, and we didn't go out for very long. If you can pull off being “friends with benefits”, more power to you.

elektro
I could never pull off “friends with benefits”. The only girlfriend I had I got really emotionally attached to, and we didn't go out for very long. If you can pull off being “friends with benefits”, more power to you.

then I'm drunk with power, yeah *hic*

kyupol
I'm such an “old-fashioned” guy who cannot help but develop an emotional attachment that keeps getting stronger and stronger everytime my sword enters her scabbard.

kyupol you're a regular casanova.

I couldn't do it. I develop romantic feelings for people I haven't even met. If a guy looks at or talks to me in even the slightest flirting way, I go into whimsical/timid/“love” mode. I can't imagine how physical contact would effect me emotionally, but I doubt it could be casual.

But, I say to each her own. Any kind of relationship is fine as long as both parties are on the same page.

Skullbie
And I thought my euphemism's were weird, roast beef wizard sleeves anyone?

Feel the magic?

OK, back on topic I haven't done this but I do have friends that have and it seem to turn out all right if you're both honest with one another. I mean, as long as you're both in understanding as to what it is and isn't I don't see the harm.

The only example of this I can think of that ended that badly is this two that decided to enter an “open relationship,” later the girl punched the guy in the face repeatedly for hooking up with some other girl at a party. I mean, what the hell?

usedbooks
If a guy looks at or talks to me in even the slightest flirting way, I go into whimsical/timid/“love” mode.

So… How you doin'?

kyupol
You see, it needs a kind of psychopathic personality to engage in these types of relationships and be successful with it. You have to be incapable of love and really honestly believe that love is some kind of disease.

I think that statement statement is far more psychopathic than a person who can separate the feelings of “sex” and “love”.

Personally, though, it's never worked for me. Largely because if we're already friends in the first place, there's already some emotion there. Spending time with each other, having fun and just sitting around laughing and chatting before eventually going home to sheathe cutlery isn't all that different from my regular relationships. Except probably with less kissing.

I've never really tried the “acquaintence” with benefits system, though, so that would have probably worked out for me back in the day.

patrickdevine

Skullbie
And I thought my euphemism's were weird, roast beef wizard sleeves anyone?

Feel the magic?

OK, back on topic I haven't done this but I do have friends that have and it seem to turn out all right if you're both honest with one another. I mean, as long as you're both in understanding as to what it is and isn't I don't see the harm.

The only example of this I can think of that ended that badly is this two that decided to enter an “open relationship,” later the girl punched the guy in the face repeatedly for hooking up with some other girl at a party. I mean, what the hell?

That guy sounds like a bit of a pussy

Interacting with humans and observing their social behaviour has let me to observe roughly these types of ‘romances’:

- The romantic relationship in which you are not also friends, essentially you don't know each other, and make yourself believe the other party is some kind of person the other party rarely is. You ‘like’ each other already before you even had a decent intimate conversation or discussed a topic at all. The kind of relationship that comes out of ‘Hey, do you want to go on a date with me?’ as a first thing you spoke to each other, oh, you hate each other afterwards too after you've found out what kind of person the other really is.

- The romantic relationship that's also a friendship, you knew each well other before you were romantically evolved, and you continue to be friends afterwards. There was never a hard line between the two periods and you continue to consider each other attractive afterwards, you simply know each other and find the person that the other is attractive, not the person you make the other out to be which it really isn't.

- Bromance, about the strongest ‘romantic relationship’ there is, so strong is your love for the other party, and so well you know each other that even though that the other party is of a gender you're not ‘supposed’ to love, you ask yourself at various points if you aren't to some degree in love with your best mate here.


If you need a romantic relationship, ‘being in love’ (pink filters) and all that mumbo-jumbo to sleep with some one, you're doing it wrong and you probably hardly know that person. Also:



It kind of ruins the meaning of it if one of the parties has a right to complain if you don't now does it? It's like giving a mother's day praesent in the end.

I agree that your flat mate needs to STFU.

Friends with benefits can be great, as long as one of you doesn't start feeling like you're in a relationship or feel that it should start being one. The two times I had friends with benefits, they both decided they were going to start nagging about wanting “more”, when they knew exactly what they were getting in to before they did.

Basically put, your flatmate is wrong. I personally think that any kind of sexual relationship - gay or straight, monogamous or poly, deeply in love or friends with benefits - is a-okay so long as the people in said relationship aren't underage, know what they're doing and consent to it.

That's my longwinded way of saying that yeah, you can be happy with a sexual non-relationship.

SplicerParade
aren't underage, know what they're doing and consent to it.

You're doing the same thing here you see? I mean, even assuming that most under-age people don't know what they are doing and can't consent (itself a hot topic that's being debated in sexology at the moment, scientific evidence points to that they can). The part after the comma is enough then, supposedly people that are under-age can't have sex by law because they can't consent', but then only the part after the comma should be sufficient and let's say that 5-10% of the under-age sexual population can consent, then shouldn't those people just be free to have the right to their own body about these things?

Personally, I think that this whole ‘under-age people can’t consent' is another of those fantastic pseudo-scientific rationales made up to simply force a moral issue through, parents find it frightening in the west that their children have sex, and parents make laws not children. The vast documentation of countless societies that existed and still exist where it's perfectly normal for 11-14 year old children to practice sex consensually as well as that the ‘age of consent’ differs dramatically in countries depending on the moral sexual liberal status of the culture there makes it pretty convincing, to me, that the ‘age of consent’ is just an arbitrary age that has no solid basis and in reality it's dramatically different from person to person and probably coincides with things like first ejaculation and first menstruation, after all, it would be profoundly absurd if humans were the only mammals around that supposedly ‘could not’ have sex mentally when their body becomes capable of reproduction, that would be a strange evolutionary quirk there.

Maybe children can't consent, I think they can and that's why they often just say ‘No, I don’t want sex.', but in any case as hell it's not for all children a nice number like 18 in some states of the US, 12 in Mexico, 13 in Japan, 14 in the Netherlands, 16 in England, 21 in some other US states or even officially only after marriage in some others…

Oh, I think that a lot of kids are more mature and able to decide things than adults give them credit for. I just didn't want to advocate breaking the law there.

(And I may have been trying a little too hard to cover my ass, because goodness knows that I've seen way too many people go “gay is okay!” and then get accused of opening the door for paedophiles or some such nonsense. I'm not expecting to run into that here, because people here seem awesome; but I've gotten this ingrained “uh oh, better make it clear that's not what I mean” pre-emptive reaction.)

I dunno about the ages of consent being arbitrary - I mean, they have to have some rationale behind them, even if it's just ‘this is the best we can do’ - but I do agree that they're far from perfect and often kinda stupid. Eighteen? Twenty-one? After marriage? Someone needs to do some serious rethinking of when people are mentally ready to have sex. And of course, no law in that area is gonna be perfect, because everyone is gonna be ready to have sex at a different age. So we're right back where we started with laws that seem arbitrary.

My potential solution is to scrap the age of consent, or make it illegal to have sex before puberty hits (because unless I'm very mistaken, you can get injured by having sex before then) and concentrate on going “this is a condom, this is an STD, if you want to do it then you can at least do it safely”. But that's because my main concern is, for example, some thirteen-year-old couple ending up with a physically-damaging pregnancy and a baby they can't look after. Different people will have different reasons for worrying about it.

I think you are wrong about the injury. Granted, it also has to do with a “fit” thing…but let's not get into that discussion.

I don't believe in scrapping the age of consent, personally, but I do agree with the education.

My “friend with benefits” eventually became my husband. So it doesn't always end in heartache, like your flatmate believes. ;)

SplicerParade
My potential solution is to scrap the age of consent, or make it illegal to have sex before puberty hits (because unless I'm very mistaken, you can get injured by having sex before then) and concentrate on going “this is a condom, this is an STD, if you want to do it then you can at least do it safely”.

That's pretty much how it's done where I live. Until you become 18, you're considered a minor and thus can't make legal decisions for yourself. That includes conceding to have sex. If someone older has sex with someone much younger it could become grounds for statutory rape (sex with a minor, even though the minor agreed to have sex). However, if memory serves me right there's a special 16 year old buffer rule. Kids that are 16 and older can have sex with 18 year old and vice verse. Also if both partners are minors then it's not considered a statutory rape. This is to prevent those fun cases where an 18 year old starts to date a girl in a class below him and risk getting branded a sex offender for the rest of his life. However, a 19 year old or older can't bee romantically involved with a 15 year old which is perfectly fine by me.

Anyways the school sponsors a rigid sex education for 16 year old kids and they utilize scare tactics in order to hammer it in. We get to see pictures of inflamed, bleeding penis, vagina with puss flowing out of it and other equally pretty pictures. Simple message: This will be you if you don't practice safe sex (they also do this when they're teaching young kids to brush they're teeth (show pictures of bleeding gum, blackened teeth and similar).

lastcall
My “friend with benefits” eventually became my husband. So it doesn't always end in heartache, like your flatmate believes. ;)

While that's nice to know, the flatmate could still use this as an argument. Here we have two people who decided to be come “friends with benefits” and they ended up falling in love. While that's all good, the results could become quite heartbreaking when it happens to one of the participants and the feelings are not returned.

Product Placement
Anyways the school sponsors a rigid sex education for 16 year old kids and they utilize scare tactics in order to hammer it in. We get to see pictures of inflamed, bleeding penis, vagina with puss flowing out of it and other equally pretty pictures. Simple message: This will be you if you don't practice safe sex (they also do this when they're teaching young kids to brush they're teeth (show pictures of bleeding gum, blackened teeth and similar).

yeah, they showed us a lady giving birth. Fucking hell, I never want to see that again. I'll wear protection jeeeeesus, just don't let me ever see a baby get born, ever again. I mean, they didn't need to show us pictures of STDs, that was enough.

qqq
Personally, I think that this whole ‘under-age people can’t consent' is another of those fantastic pseudo-scientific rationales made up to simply force a moral issue through, parents find it frightening in the west that their children have sex, and parents make laws not children. The vast documentation of countless societies that existed and still exist where it's perfectly normal for 11-14 year old children to practice sex consensually as well as that the ‘age of consent’ differs dramatically in countries depending on the moral sexual liberal status of the culture there makes it pretty convincing, to me, that the ‘age of consent’ is just an arbitrary age that has no solid basis and in reality it's dramatically different from person to person and probably coincides with things like first ejaculation and first menstruation, after all, it would be profoundly absurd if humans were the only mammals around that supposedly ‘could not’ have sex mentally when their body becomes capable of reproduction, that would be a strange evolutionary quirk there.

Geez! It's not against the law for like, 15-year-olds to have sex with eachOTHER, just with someone over 18 (varying numbers per country).

Sure, even toddlers can say ‘yes’ and ‘no’ (an extreme example, of course, but you get my drift). But younger folks are easier to manipulate, especially on subjects about which they know very little. It's not FRIGHTENING to western parents, just an issue of protecting children's rights and most of all, safety.


On the frenefits issue, I wouldn't personally (CUZ I GOT A MAN!) but you gotta get your jollies however you can.



AND SKULLBIE THAT PICTURE IS THE BEST PICTURE IN THE HISTORY OF PICTURES!!

It really all comes down to maturity and how good you feel about yourself. A mentally mature person with a healthy sense of self worth has no problem handling this kind of relationship (I've had several, and none ended badly at all.) People need sexual closeness…but can't always find that one person to fall in love with. Better to be open and have fun, consensual sex with someone you like until the right one does come along. Making a relationship ‘happen’ when it wouldn't have is the height of folly and is unhealthy for all involved in the long term.

As for the right relationship…I had to wait until I was forty-two before the right one showed up. And I screwed up a lot in between. Wish ‘friends with benefits’ had been an option when I was younger–but my up-bringing really didn't allow it as an option. You guys are lucky you can do this.

Flatmate needs to STFU as has been succinctly put previously, but I feel the same!

Not touching the underage thing…