Sex with friends
Many of us will, at some point, experience a seemingly sudden change in a friendship. An emotional disagreement might cause unexpected tension; or a particularly vulnerable and out of the blue conversation might create more trust; or (drumroll!) a previously platonic relationship becomes sexual! Woohoo (maybe?!)
Even when it is not the defining feature in a relationship, sex can still have an important impact. The hope then for bringing sex in to an already-established solid friendship, would often be that
1. Everyone has a good time and
2. The friendship does not deteriorate.
Ensuring you and your friend have a good time can be straightforward - you know each other; you enjoy each other’s company; you trust each other. Ding, ding ding! We have a winner!
Unfortunately the friendship-maintenance side of things can sometimes gets abandoned. Sometimes, people do not have the skills to deal with situations that they find uncomfortable. Your friends might disappoint you by not communicating respectfully, or at all. This is true for all situations - platonic, sexual, romantic and everything in between.
If you’re entering uncharted waters with a friend, the way that you communicate with each other is often as important as whatever is actually said between you. For example:
A friend tells you they have romantic feelings for you. You do not share those feelings, and you kindly and respectfully tell them this. There is no ‘wrong’ emotional response (e.g. hurt; frustration) but if that friend tries to make you responsible for their emotional response - this is disrespectful and it can damage a friendship.
Or maybe, a friend tells you they have romantic feelings for you. You are interested in either dating or sex with your friend, but you are unsure what exactly you want and you don’t want to commit. You need time to figure it out.
The stakes are higher because it is your friend. You might feel responsible for their feelings. Or you might be frustrated that you are in a situation which requires you to be honest about what you want.
You might feel uncomfortable about it and never bring it up again, or you might send a brief, unkind but honest message, or maybe you have sex with your friend and ignore the conversation about their feelings.
Letting awkwardness silence you (after your friend has opened up) can turn what could have been a respectful, honest and kind communication between friends in to unnecessary disrespect, insensitivity and a damaged friendship!
It’s still important for you to be honest - at least with yourself -if/when your feelings about a friendship change i.e. you’re interested in sex, or romance, or both, or neither! Sharing that honest approach with your friend may not prevent your feelings from getting hurt, particularly if your friend doesn’t know how to handle the honesty. But the potential for hurt feelings is not a good enough excuse to abandon your integrity!
So, let’s have a look at some of the ways that people mess up a good thing, and how to make any future friend-sexplorations as fun as possible.
Sure, you know yourself!
Oooh, do we though? It’s normal to have confusion around what we want from a new sexy maneouvre in the friendship, and it is important to at least get clear on what you know for sure, and what you’re still a bit uncertain about. For example:
‘I know I want casual, unemotional sex while seeing other people but I’m not so sure whether I want it to happen more than once.’
Or… ‘I know I want to have intimate, emotional sex with this person but I’m not so sure whether I want it to happen more than once.’
Or… ‘I know I want to have sex with this person more than once but I’m not sure whether I want to have intimate, emotional sex with them.’
Or… ‘I know I want to have frequent sex for the foreseeable future but I’m not sure whether I really want to have sex with this particular person.’
Knowing what you don’t know can be helpful when you’re changing the friendship dynamic!
Let them know what you know (and what you don’t know)!
Our next challenge comes when you yourself are clear on what you want and what you’re still figuring out, but you have not actually let the other person know, So the dynamic between you now includes either some assumptions and/or some guessing games that were not there before.
In a group of undergraduate students who had been in a friends with benefits relationship, about 50% admitted to having questions of uncertainty in the relationship,but 84% said they never initiated any discussion about it, and 73% said there was no ground-rules decided!
Bisson MA, Levine TR. Negotiating a friends with benefits relationship. Arch Sex Behav. 2009 Feb;38(1):66-73. doi: 10.1007/s10508-007-9211-2. Epub 2007 Sep 13. PMID: 17851750. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17851750/
Bringing up the “what are we doing here” bit might be uncomfortable depending on your pre-sex dynamic, and concern around rocking the boat or of someone getting hurt. We need to be mindful that:
Avoiding honest conversations does not prevent hurt.
Having an honest conversation and realising that you want different things may force you to change your dynamic again and e.g. spend less time together while those changes and feelings are processed, but it is not necessarily a death knell to the friendship!
Or maybe you assumed it’s not necessary to raise it at all. But let’s again try to categorise ‘sex with a friend’ as just another new way of interacting with that friend:
So just like any other new dynamic e.g. an unexpected argument or a surprisingly vulnerable conversation, it makes sense that we wouldn’t just pretend that it hadn’t happened, right?
And it makes sense that, once you understand what you feel or don’t feel or what you’re still confused about, that you would acknowledge that with your friend.
Acknowledging something does not have to involve an emotional, lengthy conversation, if that’s what you’re afraid of. It could just be a casual ‘I’m not looking to..’, ‘I want _______ if you _______’, ‘I’m still figuring out ______’.
Not holding yourself responsible for the other person’s response can help you to share your own experience in a more straightforward and respectful way.
Maybe it doesn’t come naturally to you to just start a conversation around the changes in your feelings or the boundaries of your friendship. The good news is that awkward conversations will not kill you and they get less daunting with practice! But they never get less important, especially when there’s sex and friends involved.
