KISSES AND MISSES
'Benefits' run out quickly in relationship based on casual sex

By Tanya Bricking Leach
Advertiser Staff Writer

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Being "friends with benefits" — aka enjoying sex without commitment — is a pretty stupid idea. Because ultimately, there are strings attached. Sex does have consequences, even if it's just dealing with emotional distance after the "benefits" reach their climax.

Case in point?

Dear Tanya: My ex and I were together for about 10 months when we got into an argument that resulted in him getting drunk and sleeping with another woman. At first I was devastated, but I was proud he could be a man about it and tell me himself.

We met over the Internet and spoke on the phone for seven months before I agreed to meet him. We decided to make things "official" and became a couple. I felt safe with him around. Somewhere along the line, he asked to become "friends with benefits." For any woman, this is a difficult pill to swallow, especially with all the feelings involved. How can you be a couple, share feelings and experiences and be nothing more than a "friend with benefits?"

We technically were not a couple, yet we constantly exchanged "I love yous," and our friends and family considered us to be together. Did I have the right to feel the way I did when he told me about him sleeping with another woman? Is it wrong of me to continue my friendship with him after all he has said and done? What other advice can you offer me in getting over him?

OK, without even dealing with the way you signed your letter, I'll get right to the other problematic issue you're facing: casual sex.

I don't see anything sexually liberating about allowing yourself to be continually disappointed by a guy who says "I love you" but clearly doesn't mean it. It sounds as if you're the one who has more feelings here, and you're the one getting hurt.

Of course you have a right to feel jealous about him sleeping around, but apparently you're also the one who agreed to being "friends with benefits."

That's where you went wrong. Agreeing to that means you're either going to become a real item, or eventually you're not going to be friends anymore.

I think it's time to stop being friends.

The only way to get over him is to learn your lesson and move on.

To me, there's something degrading about hearing: "I don't like you enough to date you. I just want to sleep with you."

If that's how you want to deal with your urges, that's your call. But there's little chance of long-term benefits from that kind of situation.

A few years ago, a college survey by the Independent Women's Forum reported 63 percent of women who answered the survey said they wanted to meet their future husbands in college. But instead of being asked out on dates, most reported a "rampant hookup culture" on campus. By "hookup," they meant anything from kissing to sex.

But no courting.

That's what's wrong with dating today. The sex part gets in the way, and there just aren't all that many dates.

Can't even blame the college kids, though, because look at what even younger ones are saying: A 2002 survey by researchers at Bowling Green State University in Ohio found that of teens who had experienced intercourse — from 8 percent of seventh-graders to 55 percent of 11th-graders — one-third said they had sex with a partner who was no more than a friend. The proportion would have been higher if oral sex had been included.

That doesn't say a lot for romance.

What it does say is that blurring the lines of platonic friendship makes things messy. And if you really want to connect emotionally with someone, don't be too quick to agree to a physical relationship that by definition is short of intimate. It will never be satisfying.

Need advice on a topic close to the heart? Write to relationships writer Tanya Bricking Leach at Kisses and Misses, The Advertiser, P.O. Box 3110, Honolulu, HI 96802; kissesandmisses@honoluluadvertiser.com; or fax 525-8055.