A
female
age
30-35,
anonymous
writes:so for nearly a year i've know this guy. we have similar interests, and we message each other and talk constantly. we try and meet up every week (if not more often) to just chat, and he has become one of my closest friends. to this point our friendship has been totally platonic: i think this has something to do with the fact i'm 18 and he's nearly 25 and being the really decent guy that he is, he doesn't want to force me into anything... but the fact is i'd love to go further with him than just friends, and i can be pretty sure he feels the same too. however being the guy that he is, i know he'll wait for me to make the first move... now i've been in relationships before; and so i would just make a move (its not like i dont know how haha), but there is a complicating factor: in that i am going away to university in September. and both of us have experience of long distance relationships not working out. so my options are : - either we can stay friends forever (safe option), - or risk it and have a relationship ( but if the long distance were to be too much , then i could easily wreck the friendship and hence loose one of my closest friends), - or the third option i have thought about is to just be friends with benefits?.... and then when i'm away at university, there wont be such a strain as there wont technically be a relationship... we can just pick up where we left off whenever i'm back home.... do you think friends with benefits might work? i just dont want to loose our friendship... does anyone have advice or experience with such a situation? i'd really appreciate some help. and also: any ideas as to how i'd suggest such an idea to him? thank you my dears ^^ xxx
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friend with benefits, long distance, university Reply to this Question
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reader, anonymous, writes (10 May 2012): This is verified as being by the original poster of the questioni'm not sure how much longer we can keep it casual tbh, maybe talking to him and just getting feelings out in the open would allow us to figure stuff out... oh i'm so confused, but thanks for the posts guys. they've been really helpful and yeah fwb would be a bad idea - thanks for helping me see this!i 100% appreciate your input. thanks for giving your time to help advise me xx
A
female
reader, k_c100 +, writes (10 May 2012):
 So Very Confused is right, the whole point of a FWB is to 'scratch an itch' i.e. when you are horny, you want to have sex with someone but dont want a one night stand with a stranger so you call on your FWB. It doesnt make sense to have a long distance FWB because when you are horny (or when he is horny) you wont be around!
FWB is basically sex with a friend, rather than sex with a stranger. If you have ANY feelings for him that are more than simply wanting sex with him, then a FWB is a very bad idea.
FWB hardly ever turns into a relationship, most men never take their FWB seriously because they see that this girl is easy, will have sex at the drop of a hat and is definitely not the kind of girl to take home to mum. So if you think you could have a FWB while at uni and then when you get back from uni become his girlfriend - it 100% wont work! He would never take you seriously if you became his FWB, he would only see you as sex and that would be it.
Stay friends and see what happens, that is definitely the best option for now. If you really miss each other and decide that you want to try a relationship despite the distance then great. But FWB is not the way to go!
I hope this helps and good luck!
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A
reader, anonymous, writes (10 May 2012): http://www.dearcupid.org/question/complicated-fwb-arrangement.html
http://www.dearcupid.org/question/he-still-wants-to-be-fwb.html
OP if you'd love to go further then fwb's is the worst idea in the world. You're proposing that you start sleeping with a guy you can't have but really want? What do you think is going to happen then? FWB's isn't going further it's a step back.
You already have feelings for him and that's the cardinal sin of fuck buddies. That's 100% guaranteed to hurt you and will ruin your friendship too.
Again do you really think adding sex to your already close friendship, when you already have feelings for him is going to be a good idea?
Sex ruins friendships OP. It confuses things. You're technically not together yet you're close friends and sleeping with each other that's not going to be some beautiful romance thing OP because fwb's is about sex. Now the most important rule of fuck buddies is no strings, no emotional attachment if you can't keep emotions out of the equation then it's never going to work and fwb's only works for a little while anyway because we're only human and can't control feelings and quite frankly being that intimate with someone can create very strong feelings.
If you think you can be fuck buddies with a guy you really care about, have sex without any meaning or emotion attached then you're deluded.
I have slept with a lot of my female friends, one night drunken mistakes and fwb's. All the fwb's ended badly, all of them one of us always gained feelings and wanted more and the other didn't or couldn't.
I've even tried what you're proposing and honestly when I look back I now see that I was an idiot. Because I wanted a relationship but the distance was too great to have enough intimacy to make a relationship develop. So we thought we could just take it to level beyond friendship and add sex to mix and that would take the toughness out of being in an LDR and feed our desire because sure if it wasn't a relationship and just sex we be casual and relaxed about it and we'd have the "more" that we both wanted. The reality though is it never works that way. Sex wasn't the more that we actually wanted, we wanted to be together and we still missed all the things you would miss about a boyfriend or girlfriend being so far away. So we had all the difficulties of the LDR but then we had all the difficulties of FWB's on top of that. Difficulties such as never feeling secure because technically we were both single which means any time they are out, at a party, meeting up with a friend of the opposite sex for a dinner or drinks there was always a degree of jealousy because there is nothing to say they can't end up with them or kiss them etc. Because FWB's are not exclusive.
In this situation then it wasn't about just liking the person and wanting more, it was about having just enough that you can taste that more but not being able to actually have it, being in a fake relationship just enough so we knew how good it could be but then being hurt immensely by the fact that we can't. So the times we spent together having sex, the cuddling, the full night and morning of being together like a couple were absolute heaven, I mean for that one night every week/fortnight we had what we really wanted but the down side to that then is the absolute torture then of not being able to see them for another few weeks, feelings of love did grow for me because those nights gave me that taste. That then made the torture even worse because you convince yourself the pain is actually worth it just to get your next fix but it's not.
It begins to grind you down after a while, your feelings grow and the sex is just not enough. So you go from wanting more to a very sad longing, instead of satisfying your need, sex makes your need grow into something that hurts. It hurts when you miss a person like that, it hurts to know they're not really yours, it hurts that you have exams for the next 2 weeks and won't be able to have that night for 3, it hurts to know they're in a different city free and single with another person showing interest, it hurts to know they woke up drunk in another persons place because they could have and probably did sleep with that other person, it hurts to not have that physical closeness often and above all it hurts to know that the "want" you had for that person has now turned into a need and you just can't have that need satisfied because there is a long distance and you're technically not together.
You tell me if your friendship could survive that.
"there wont be such a strain as there wont technically be a relationship... we can just pick up where we left off whenever i'm back home"
Sounds great in theory doesn't it? But come on you have experience of boys and romance, feelings never play ball with what you want to happen, they just don't. You can know for sure that it would be a bad idea to develop feelings for someone but do our feelings ever do what we want them to? No, they do what they want.
Either stay friends or try for a relationship. FWB's is strictly with someone you have absolutely no emotional attachment to at all. It's sex, nothing else.
A relationship while tough may work, it's not unheard of for LDR's to work and well if you both want each other then frankly I don't know what kind of long term friendship you can have anyway. You can't be friends with someone you want romantically.
I would say in ideal world stay just friends, but having feelings for a friend can be too tough, as soon as they start dating someone else it can hurt.
Sure relationships are a risk but sometimes they're one you have no choice but to take. If you really think you can go a summer being close and seeing each other all the time, having a few drinks etc and not end up together in some way then you're in for a surprize.
Just talk to him about this, but whatever you do do not settle for FWB's you can kiss your friendship goodbye with that one. In fact they should call that acquaintance with benefits because the only time it works well is when you're not friends.
Talk to him but take FWB's out of your mind, it's either a relationship or its nothing. Friendships can survive relationships but they rarely survive FWB's. There are exceptions of course but a friendship this good is not worth risking on the minute chance you're the exception.
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A
female
reader, So_Very_Confused  +, writes (10 May 2012):
 Stay just friends. that's my advice.
let him know how you feel but if you are going away for school in September and will be gone a few years it's probably better to keep it casual.
I would not sleep with him as that will muddy the waters and IF you guys are that good together, later on it might work out and sleeping together as FWB will probably wreck any chance of that. Movies like No Strings Attached are just that movies... it's very VERY rare for FWB to become more than that...
oh and FWB long distance makes NO sense since the whole point behind FWB is to be able to scratch an "itch" when the mood strikes and Long distance will not satisfy that.
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A
female
reader, oldbag +, writes (10 May 2012):
 Hi
I would keep him purely in friend zone, you will have a whole new life at University and could meet numerous guys who you would like to date. He sounds lovely it would be a shame to spoil the friendship. As for FWB, thats risky in that one of you could end up getting emotionally attached. If its meant to be as a long term thing then one day,who knows.
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