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Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Not-friends with only one benefit.

Dorkiewitch sent me this article, and it is amazing. I was uncertain if EzineArticles should be completely beneath my notice, to be honest, because I'm not sure anyone reads them, but this particular scribbling managed to be offensive in a sort of interesting way.

Occasionally, you'll meet a girl you have a lot of chemistry with, but for some reason, you don't want to commit to her. So you remain friends with the girl, while still being intimate with each other. It can become a problem though, if the girl is insistent upon turning it into more than that. She might try to suck you into a relationship. To prevent this, you need to lay some ground rules.
No, you need to lay one ground rule: this isn't a romantic relationship, and if you try to make it one while I still don't feel the same way, it would be best if we stopped altogether. Unless she's a full-on stalker (in which case any sexual relationship, "intimate" or not, is likely to set her off), she's actually capable of understanding this if you just say it in words. Just about everything that follows isn't maintaining boundaries, it's distrustful humiliation. But don't take my word for it.

1. No spending the night.
Letting her spend the night, or spending the night at her place sends the wrong message! It communicates a desire to settle down. If you can, keep the encounters at her place, and then leave. It's much nicer than kicking her out of your place.

Is she your fuckbuddy, or not? Because if she is, then she'll most likely want to leave, or be able to sleep over without making a thing out of it. And if she isn't, this isn't going to help. Either way, sometimes "I'm sleepy and don't feel like driving home" actually means it. Or hell, even "I'd enjoy sharing a bed with you"--sometimes I like a warm bed and some skin contact, without it meaning the guy is entrapped in my tentacles forever.

This article has a lot in common with Cosmo's "communication by whipped cream" philosophy--it totally discounts the messages you might send in words.

5. Don't discuss anything real.
Remember, we're trying to avoid intimacy here, and nothing creates intimacy like talking about important things. No family history, no favorite colors, no goals, no personal triumphs or tragedies. If you want to keep it a friends with benefits situation, you have to stay light: movies, bands, and favorite brands of booze.

Then you're not friends with benefits, because you're not friends. This shit isn't all-or-nothing; you can be slightly closer than strangers at the DMV and still not end up accidentally married with five kids, or whatever you're so afraid of.

What is this guy so afraid of, seriously? Say the worst-case-scenario happens and his fuckbuddy starts introducing herself as his girlfriend--then he tells her it's not so, there's a few minutes of really ugly crying and yelling, and it's over with. The worst that could happen, the result if she really gets her evil woman-tentacles in you, is just not that bad. It seems like one big fight and some hard feelings is vastly preferable to an entire relationship of mistrust and humiliation.

And it is humiliation; this kind of stuff doesn't make me feel like I'm not a girlfriend, it makes me feel like I'm not a person.

9. Always play it safe!
One of the sad realities of life is that women will sometimes do dirty things to hook a guy, and one of those things is getting pregnant. So always, always, ALWAYS use condoms and birth control when playing with your friend with benefits!

Okay, here's the worst worst-case scenario. It's not that common, and using the discretion to not fuck the craziest woman you know will probably do more for you than a condom, but say it happens. Say she calls you and says she's pregnant and now you have to get married. You say that you'll go halfsies on an abortion or she can take you to court for child support. It's harsh (but so is using a human life as a trap, which is why remotely-sane girls don't do this), but 98% of the time this results in a "miscarriage."

I still think you should always use condoms with fuckbuddies, because you're not fluid-monogamous and birth control can fail, but you can do that without expressing your hate and mistrust of all womankind.

I can tell you from sad personal experience, too, that guys like this never manage to be subtle about this shit. It's never "let's use a condom for safety"; it's always "YOU'RE TRYING TO MAKE A TRAP BABY YOU BITCH I KNOW YOUR TRICKS." (And boy, you know I'm not in this for the emotional fulfillment if I still fuck you after that.)

Joseph Matthews has been instructing men how to meet women since 2004, and is widely known as an authority in the subject of confidence building and dating advice.
Confidence building? Confidence? Confidence is being able to trust someone even if they aren't your schmoopy-bear, and being able to say "no" to them if you can't trust them. Confidence is realizing that you can deal with worst-case-scenarios so you don't have to spend your entire life on edge. Confidence is acknowledging that it's okay to have emotions and not all of them mean that you have to get married. Confidence is being able to say what you mean, instead of getting into a relationship with no spoken agreements and trying to communicate everything via whipped cream and toothbrush placement.

If you want to stick your dick in a warm hole, but you absolutely don't want to talk or go out or cuddle or sleep together or look a woman in her treacherous entrapping eyes--soak your Fleshlight in warm water and leave human beings the hell alone.


Wow, I got through this entire post without mentioning Benny. But even Benny, who was the absolute king of stiff-armed "know your place, woman" antics, wasn't this cold. (Actually, we started out genuinely dating, and it sort of devolved after I broke up with Alan. But even at its coldest it wasn't this cold.) He let me sleep over and we cuddled and stuff. And as you can see I became devastatingly attached and am now carrying twelve of his babies. He better buy me a really big ring!

16 comments:

  1. I can't say I don't agree with the text, 'cuz I do, but I really LOL'd when I finished the last paragraph. Didn't kinda expect that kind of ending.. :D Cheers.

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  2. I got that link from @WTFSexFacts on Twitter. They have a bit of a fan base, so it got around. Luckily they started cracking jokes about it just a few minutes after posting it, but it made me think of how much justice you could do it. Thanks for not letting me down!

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  3. I'm amused that the assumption is that he's the one who wants a "friends with benefits" situation and she's the one who wants a capital-R Relationship. Especially if he's a "confidence coach."

    And honestly, I can't help but wonder if his "rules" are more to remind himself of the relationship boundaries, rather than her.

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  4. Oh, here's something interesting: this guy stole a lot of his list direction from this sex blogger.

    I still don't think adhering to her list sounds like much fun, but she also makes a distinction in the comments between "fuck buddy" and "friends with benefits", the former type of relationship being the target for this advice. She published her on her website on 25 Sep 2006, and his article was submitted 26 May 2009. He added a lot of creepy shit.

    I don't like any of the popular terms for "friend I'm fucking". Why can't we just keep people as actual friends and fuck them or not as we and they please?

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  5. Correction: he stole it directly from her. Or at least it seems that way.

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  6. QP - Interesting. I think Over-Educated Nympho's list kinda sucks too, but what made this guy think that the best way to improve it (other than posting it to a pay-for-content site under his own name, of course) was to add misogyny?

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  7. You know, I've had a couple of friends-with-benefits where one partner wanted (and in some cases tried very hard) to turn it into a romantic relationship. It was always the guy. Go figure.

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  8. I was just about to point out the Overeducated Nympho steal (although I find both articles leave a sour taste in my mouth)

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  9. aebhel, if you are heterosexual, your sample might be slightly biased.

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  10. I'm female. I sleep with both men and women. I have had one woman I've slept with push for a relation. I don't know how many men exactly but I'd have to say about 70% of them wanted relationships, if not more. The men would get possessive and want to stake claim on me. The women were like "you're having fun, I'm having fun, let's not ruin a good thing".

    Is that a less biased experience?

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  11. dale:

    I'm bi, actually, but my point is that articles like this take it as a foregone conclusion that if someone is going to push the boundaries of a fuckbuddy relationship, it's going to be the woman. That has never been my experience; nor has it been the experience of most of the women I know.

    This is a problem for several reasons, not the least of which being that men have a way of assuming that if they want a romantic relationship with a fuckbuddy, all they have to do is ask.

    S.- IAWTC.

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  12. I've had a few fuckbuddies try to segue things into dating, too (I'm a straight girl). Even after I specifically spelled out that we were just "having fun" and that's all.

    Wanting to turn friendly sex into a relationship isn't specific to gender. It's specific to people who aren't very self aware or sure of what they want.

    Okay, sometimes one person falls in love and the other doesn't. But I'd say the majority of the time, someone either wants companionship so badly that they try to make friendsex into something more than it is, or they've never actually been in love and assume that the cozy fun of friendsex is everything a relationship is supposed to be.

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  13. Hey Holly, just wanted to comment a little on the idea of women "trapping" men with babies. Turns out it is a big fucking lie, and that a shockingly high number of abusive male partners either coerce their partners about getting pregnant, or sabotage their partner's birth control (either by poking holes in their own damn condoms, or by fucking with their partner's pills).

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  14. These kind of posts from you are definitely my favourite.

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  15. Well, at least now you have access to the fount of wisdom which is Thundercat PUA.

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  16. (tangency) check out this -- summary: someone tries to live their life according to the dictates of 17 magazine for a month.

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