Why a Friend With Benefits is Complicated

“7 Reasons For Not Putting Your Friend’s Genitals in Your Mouth” renamed Why A Friend With Benefits is Complicated [renamed at the request of a gentle reader — 8/30/11]
That’s [the deleted language is] the subject title of this post over at Owl Asylum.  To my mind, the arguments are equally persuasive reasons to refrain from putting one’s own genitals in one’s friend‘s mouth (I think the logic works like that).

Here are some highlights excerpted from Owl’s post.  (Warning: strong non-academic language – ehem; the asterisks below are mine, not Owl’s; also not a good read if you’re having a high-second-wave-theory day.)  I admit to rolling with laughter and appreciation.

1.  People assume because you f*cked, it is an assessment of you. It is not. My sex life doesn’t define my entire existence. Only a portion of my story.

2. We f*cked. That was it. We didn’t fight bullies together. We didn’t share an adventure that served as a rites of passage. We f*cked. That doesn’t make us friends.

3. Sex creates a pseudo-relationship that causes people to not want to be as open as they would if the removal sex wasn’t there.

4. There is an assumed price tag with sex that makes people react in a petty way.

5. Most of us have sexual encounters to assauge emotional pangs. That means if you don’t fit my requirements of a long term relationship, there is a very possible chance that you will consider me something like an enemy. That is a burned bridge, something I don’t need

6. Before you have sex, you should know what you want out of that experience. Sex can be more addictive than cocaine. If you truly believe you understand your motives, more power to you. Personally, I like relationships, and I’d like to be in one before  introducing someone to my f*cked for fun factory.

7.  It is difficult enough to be a writer without adding politics and economics into the equation. Unlikely is the person able to accomplish this. I consider the same with my friends. Sex complicates things. It makes people consider an element of eternal that is difficult to dissolve in the mind of another without burns. If we have made it the point of friend, then I would rather not destroy that with a nut.

And after I’ve written all this…I’d rather f*ck a friend than a stranger.

Read his full post here.  Very real.  Complicates the whole “friends with benefits” analysis.

This may call for a new spate of legal scholarship on friendship.

-Bridget Crawford