Thursday, April 12, 2007

The "Friends with Benefits" Phenomenon

Teenagers may have adults baffled by the relatively new form of relationship they have embraced that combines friendship and sex, sans the commitment: the "friends with benefits" relationship. According to the article What’s Love Got To Do with It? Exploring the Impact of Maintenance Rules, Love Attitudes, and Network Support on Friends with Benefits Relationships by Hughes, Morrison and Asada, a “friends with benefits relationship” (abbreviated “FWBR") is a relationship between two friends of the opposite sex who participate in sexual acts but who do not consider themselves as being in a romantic relationship. The authors conducted a study to understand how people who engage in FWBRs perceive love, seek support from and communicate with their same-sex friends about these relationships, and decide on rules for their FWBRs.

The study's findings reveal that both men and women are quite open to talking about their FWBRs with their same-sex friends; they even seek advice from friends regarding friends with benefits relationship maintenance. Also, the results show that FWBRs are more stable than “hook up” and casual sex relationships because they combine the benefits of both friendship and sex while discarding the responsibilities and commitment of a typical romantic relationship—friends with benefits have sex or engage in sexual acts purportedly without emotional involvement.

Furthermore, the authors discuss the fact that a FWBR may form out of the ruins of an ended romantic relationship. Two people who experienced manic (possessive, obsessive and dependent) love together are especially likely to develop FWBRs because the two ex-lovers desperately want to cling to the remains of their relationship. Concerning gender and FWBRs, women were previously thought to associate the concept of love with sex, whereas men were seen as being able to separate the two. The researchers have concluded, however, that this may no longer be true because women in FWBRs are now reportedly engaging in sex without the presence of love more than ever before.

This last piece of information about the similarities between male and female perceptions of friends with benefits relationships is interesting—are modern women truly adept at separating feelings of emotional attachment and love from the act of sex? Unlike Hughes, Morrison and Asada, other researchers have claimed that women are biologically predisposed to become attached to sexual partners in order to commit to the mates who will provide for them and their children. The answer may lie somewhere in between these two assumptions, or the answer that these three authors suggest may, in fact, be based on a lie; perhaps women, in an effort to increase their senses of personal autonomy and independence inspired by the notion of women's liberation, are convincing themselves that they are able to separate sex and emotions as their male counterparts can so as not to feel needy or appear vulnerable.