Two movies are tackling the topic of (casual) sex, romance and friendship right now, and both don’t do it justice. One is the Hollywood “Friends with Benefits” which, despite the title, is very little about sex between friends and a lot about the only Hollywood-approved kind of relationship – romantic love and exclusive sex. The other, “Shame” is discussed at length in “In Defense of Casual Sex“.
Both of them do neither casual sex, nor romance nor friendship any justice. So I’m trying here to sort things out. Starting by really seperating the three concepts and inspecting them individually as well as where they meet. I will use “romance” as the term for romantic love, because “love” is a highly ambiguous term with many meanings, while “romance” is somewhat better focussed.
Because these are all independent concepts, and it is dishonest to attribute emotions or reality to only one of them. Friendship is the easiest to seperate, as normality includes friends for whom we have neither romantic nor sexual desire for almost all of us. Friends of the same sex are usually the most obvious cases (if you are strictly heterosexual). And yet, friendship is deeply emotional. Not only like, but also trust and vulnerability are important. I will focus on the last two – towards our friends, we show ourselves as more vulnerable as to the world at large, because we trust them and also we build this trust by showing our vulnerabilities.
I don’t have to explain that romance is mostly an emotional experience. In a good relationship, your spouse is also a friend. But romance is not a superset of friendship – we can fall in love with someone we barely know, and many partners stick together even though hate has become a more common emotion than love. Romance bonds people differently than friendship does. One thing both have in common is that we learn about each others vulnerabilities and trust – even in a bad relationship that mostly consists of conflict – is a vital component. Like all emotions, trust is not single-valued – I can trust you to not leave me and the kids, but I may not be so sure that you’re not getting it on with that co-worker of yours.
Sex may need the most explaining, due to cliches and other nonsense. I maintain that Sex is always an emotional experience. The way our brains are wired up, you can not not feel something when you’re having sex[1]. However, the emotions are not necessarily romantic. Lust is an emotion all in itself, and can be quite powerful even in the absence of love. Or in the negative cases, maybe you feel dirty and abused or ashamed. No matter how good the sex-experience, again in sex we reveal ourselves as vulnerable. Not only has there been some interesting recent research into the psychological effects of nakedness, there is also the part where the man actually enters the womans body – if you know about boundary violations, the emotional power of this seemingly simple act becomes obvious. And once more, sex requires trust – but not the same kind of trust as friendship or romance does.
The final step of understanding the concepts as seperate is to understand that they are all exclusive, at least in theory. With friendship, that is easy. It is more difficult, but at least not stigmatized with romance – yes, you can be in love with someone without having sex with them. While this “pure love” is the dream of some religious eccentrics, it is quite common in the real world in the cases of lost love. And while western society still has trouble accepting it, you can have sex with someone you neither love nor are friends with. You may not condone it, but you can’t live in the real world and not claim that it doesn’t happen.
But that is not what movies and culture portray. In “Friends with Benefits”, a relationship starts as friendship, proceeds to sex and then escalates to romantic love. The movie sells itself on a taboo, but what it really does is tell a standard romantic comedy story with a small twist of changing the order of things a little.
Having some experience with both casual sex and friends with benefits, that the movie couple would end up as a couple was immediately obvious. What the movie shows during most of its running time is the 2nd phase in Helen Fisher’s theory on love, the focussing phase. Actual friends with benefits don’t hang out and have sex exclusively with each other all the time. “Exclusively” being the key word here, for both parts. One of the defining features of friendships is that you usually have more than one. In fact, we consider people who only have one real friend at least as suspicious as people who have more than one person they’re in love with.
Sex is the odd one out in this group-theory approach, because it is an activity, not a type of relationship. So a quick re-definition later, we consider sexual relations instead of the individual act and that makes things easier. Maintaining a sexual relationship does not necessarily require either friendship nor romance, and you can have both sex without love and love without sex (lost love, temporary phases, etc.).
It turns out that drawing your own map of the territory can be enlightening. Here is what I think the ideal map looks like for most people:
Your lover is also a friend, and you have exclusive sex with her and nobody else.
There’s a bit of romance outside of friendship here, symbolizing both the parts that don’t belong to a friendship (aside from the sex) as well as the fact that sometimes in a relationship, you are nasty to each other. Something that most people accept as unavoidable.
And then there is what people in open relationships are looking for:
Sex and Romance aren’t identical, but there is a large overlap – your partner. Seperating sex from love this way also reveals that you love each other apart from the sex more clearly, though a similar effect can occur in the monogamous example (that I didn’t draw romance as a superset of sex above reveals something about me, I guess).
There is another overlap between friendship and sex – this may or may not exist. Some open relationships avoid sexual encounters with people they know as friends. Swingers are an example for couples who seperate their sexual and non-sexual relationships.
There are more subtle hints here that one could discuss. Does the overlap between friendship and romance (but without sex) have a meaning? Non-sexual polyamoury? It is suggestive. One could draw sex as a superset of romance to make it more obvious that the romantic relationship is exclusive, but the sexual is not, like shown to the right.
And then there is what reality looks like for too many people:
Where the two smaller bubbles should have “or what’s left of it” appended. Or maybe I am just pessimistic.
Aside from these, I believe almost every way to lay out these three areas is something that happens in our reality. Some are more common than others. But even long-term good relationships without sex or with sex exclusively outside the relationship do exist.
This kind of simplified drawing is by no means intended to be the last word on the topic. However, it did get me thinking about the emotions involved, about where concepts overlap or seperate and also about expectations. So draw your own map, it might have the same effect on you.
Related articles
- The Good and Bad of Friends with Benefits (lolitalane.com)
- Friends With Benefits (psychologytoday.com)
- Friendship vs Love (h3artfeltwordz.wordpress.com)
- Why You Should Kick Your Addiction to Romance and Learn to Love (psychologytoday.com)
- Can Men and Women Be “Just Friends”? (collegerelationships.wordpress.com)
- [1] I am talking about consensual sex here, not rape, not acting (i.e. porn) and not rendering a sexual service (i.e. prostitution). I don’t have any first-hand experience in either so I can not speak about them with any authority. ↩
