Friends With Benefits: Meaning & Whether It’s Right For You

What Are Friends With Benefits?

The term “friends with benefits” describes a relationship where individuals engage in sexual activity without any romantic or committed expectations. It’s a label used to communicate a boundary that the relationship is primarily focused on the benefits of sexual expression, exploration, and release but doesn’t have romantic or committed expectations. Generally speaking, the friendship connection is primary, and the friends involved engage in a sexual relationship with freedom from social and emotional expectations that come with romantic commitments.

Every friends with benefits relationship is different and varies by what the people in the relationship are looking for. For some, the people want to spend time together and are not transactional or rooted only in sexual experiences. For others, the relationships are private and could also include rules and clear expectations for when sex can be had, where it is had, how sex happens, and who can initiate, etc.

Friends With Benefits Vs. Dating

Traditional dating often involves a relationship progression as well as social influences. As a dating relationship solidifies, the couple often becomes more public and integrated with their relationship by talking about their dating partner, introducing them to their sphere of influence, and making plans with the other person. Friends with benefits are typically structured in such a way that they focus on the mutual benefits of having a sexually toned relationship in private.

Friends with benefits is different from a dating relationship since the relationship by design is not intended to extend past the casual or purposeful sexual connections the relationship facilitates. This does not mean that relationships that start as friends with benefits do not evolve into committed relationships, but it does mean that the difference in purpose of each relationship is different at its inception. If romantic feelings develop, it is important to communicate them with the other person to determine what each partner wants to do about the relationship.

Are Friends With Benefits Right For You?

Many who come from a traditional view of a relationship may consider friends with benefits to be amoralistic or shallow, but the role of having someone to rely on and have positive sexual experiences could be supportive for those who have traumatic sexual experiences as well as those seeking to explore their sexuality casually and safely. It’s important to keep in mind what you need personally, sexually, relationally, and psychologically prior to jumping into a friends with benefits relationship.

Circumstances When Friends With Benefits Might Work

Friends with benefits could work for people who prefer non-monogamous relationships, or are transitioning out of traditional relationships. Sexuality is an important aspect of the human experience, and sex is important to most relationships, so those who are seeking more closeness and clarity within themselves could benefit. People who identify as aromantic, or people in open relationships might have other positive sexual experiences in friends with benefits relationships.

When to Avoid Friends With Benefits Relationships

While there are many popular reasons to explore friendships that are beneficial to sexual experience and exploration, there are other reasons to reconsider casual sex. Difficulties for friends with benefits include problems with how attachment is built and maintained¹ and how sex is connected to love experiences.^{2, 3}

It is also most problematic to friends with benefits relationships when one person wants more connection and sees the friends with benefits role as a way to win someone over, or to convince them to enter a more traditional relationship once the friends with benefits arrangement starts. This most often leads to more heartbreak than conversion into a meaningful relationship, despite what the Rom-Com’s portray.

Friends with benefits relationships are established with the understanding that experiences are confined to a casual or private capacity. However, as sexual encounters foster emotional attachments,^{1, 2} individuals involved may unknowingly pave the way for disappointment, as the sex intensifies the desire for deeper, emotional connection, which may be restricted. While certain friends with benefits relationships may naturally progress into more profound connections, the entire arrangement is primarily based on boundaries and regulations designed for a singular purpose: casual sexual experiences.

4 Tips for a Successful Friends With Benefits Relationship

Considering the advantages of experiencing, exploring and sharing sexual experiences as well as the disadvantages of being limited on experiences and lack of emotional attachment, there are some tips for establishing a successful friends with benefits relationship.

Here are four tips to help you discern if a friends with benefits relationship is best for you:

1. Establish Your Ground Rules

Establishing the expectations and setting boundaries of experience, especially when sexual and emotional, are essential for safety in the friends with benefits relationship. Things to consider are how communication happens, when communication happens, type(s) of sex allowed to ask for, if each person is allowed to see other people, and are these people known to the friends with benefits relationship. The logistics of a relationship that is sexual but flexible will require elaborate, detailed conversation and compliance afterward to make sure safety is maintained.

2. Agree on a Timeframe & How to End Relationship

Finding a timeframe or contingency for the relationship being established or ended is important to determine before you get there. Having a plan for if the friends with benefits relationship isn’t what you want anymore will help alleviate stress in the event of someone wanting to end their friends with benefits relationship. Further, having plans for other relationships before they happen will create a sense of safety for relational exploration, sexual exploration and connection. Your timeframe discussion would also want to include conversations for if the relationship were to develop into something more than casual connections, and how those conversations are brought up and held.

3. Decide if the Relationship is Monogamous

Keeping a relationship secret, private and exclusive is a differentiating line for many people in friends with benefits relationships. Deciding if the relationship can evolve to include other friends to the primary relationship can be difficult but is essential. Those who are in casual sexual relationships may be more inclined to have more frequent issues with sexually transmitted diseases, especially when sexual activity started earlier in life.⁴

4. Maintain Open Communication

Sex with anyone requires open and thorough communication to produce positive and meaningful experiences. Friends with benefits relationships are not exclusive of this requirement to talk about sex with your partner, since these relationships have more logistics to clarify like rules, terms, monogamy, communication, frequency, initiation/refusal, etc. Friends with benefits relationships also need to resolve conflict just like any other form of relationship that is meaningful and safe. Being able to communicate preferences, needs, requests, desires, kink(s) will all be in the context of open communications with one another.

How to End a Friends With Benefits Relationship That Isn’t Working For You

Ending a relationship is hard for many, but focusing on what is happening, how you feel and what you want to do about it is essential. As you bring up concerns about the relationship, it is ok if your partner has reactions to this and even requests to fix or resume the relationship under new terms. If you would like this, then go for it. But if you intend to end the relationship, stick to what you need for yourself since that is why you are bringing the breakup up in the first place. Sexual intimacy should feel good but if your expectations are different from your partner or you want more out of a relationship than you’re getting, it might be time to reconsider.

Being clear and kind are generally good ways to handle the breakup conversation. Try to avoid lengthy explanations of what is happening unless you feel you need to break down something that has or isn’t happening in the relationship. The cliche “it’s not you, it’s me” will also cause more heartbreak for you since that sets up the other person to forgive, console or support you in your difficulties. Instead, keep the message simple and direct while being kind as this will help the relationship transition to its next defined identity.

When to Seek Professional Help

Breakups are difficult and could explain difficulties you have with your mood, anxiety, levels of agitation or concentration. Professional help can identify the effects of a breakup or processing the incidents that were regrettable. It is essential to get clarity on what happened so the patterns do not repeat themselves in other relationships. Freud even makes this connection in 1914 and says that “we repeat until we remember.”⁵ This means that we tend to repeat our unresolved conflicts in our lives until we can remember where the conflict in the past was, and then make connections about its subsequent impacts.

Online therapy can be very helpful and accessible for those who are busy and needing help and flexibility. The biggest concern around online therapy is for those who staunchly do not want online therapy and end up meeting online with a therapist against their preferences. People who want in person therapy should meet in person for a good course of therapy, and those who are open or interested in online therapy will have a good course of therapy online.

Sex therapy is a specialized form of psychotherapy and is designed to help individuals and relationships increase satisfaction and decrease sexual frustration. Sex therapy can support a multitude of experiences related to sex and is not just for issues related to pleasure, orgasms, or addictions. Sex therapy can help individuals and relationships detail safe and meaningful sexual practices that foster satisfaction.

In My Experience

In my clinical experience, the friends with benefits relationship is often used to cope with past relational pain, attempts to convert a friend who doesn’t have romantic feelings into a partner, and perpetuates attachment insecurities. Sex is a very powerful attachment builder in any relationship and being able to use that in the context of conflict, pain, problems can produce security that helps the future relationship (with new or same people) respond in more secure, safe and productive ways.

This article also notes ways that people could benefit from casual sex, but these benefits would be hard to obtain if not well thought through, communicated and agreed upon and could be more effort to maintain the rewards the relationship pays out. Keeping in mind that all positive and meaningful sexual experiences come from a place of security and safety, should be the priority for any shared sexual experience. When there is manipulation, ambiguity that is unwanted or tension that is resolved with sex, sex will be used as a tool instead of something to foster delight with health, psychological and relational benefits.

Lastly, I would encourage those considering a casual sexual relationship to ask themselves why they want sexual experiences to be secretive or private with limits as opposed to freeing and exploratory within themselves and their relationship. If there are unresolved past conflicts, then the repeating could perpetuate the difficulties attempted to be soothed in the casual sexual experiences.