Friends with Benefits Club

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Question: A couple months ago I broke up with a longtime boyfriend and I am not looking for a relationship now. Still sometimes I have needs. My friends and I have formed a “friends with benefits club.” If you are feeling lonely you call a club member up and say you want to cuddle and he/she comes over, or says no. It can be someone to watch a movie with or a night of sex with no strings attached. People can always say no or leave the club at any time. No jealousy allowed. Am I crazy or is this the perfect plan?

Answer: This idea is awesome! Just like Communism, nuclear fusion, or Esperanto if you can make it work it could revolutionize the entire world. People could feel connection and comfort, they could find sexual pleasure and release and no one would ever have to get their feelings hurt. Fantastic.

Unfortunately there tend to be problems in taking a concept as complicated as this and making it work in the real world.

It is impossible to have any relationship with no strings attached. A relationship be it a friendship, a business partnership, a relative, whatever, is a connection. A connection is a string.

So lets say you call a club member up to watch a movie. Why would you want to watch a movie with someone you don't like? You wouldn't. So you would only call a person that you wanted to spend time with. People that you like and continually spend time with are called friends.

I have never encountered a situation where friends “hook up” where at least one of the partners does not develop feelings for the other. Then if it does not become a romantic relationship someone is going to get hurt.

But what if you are not really friends, you just need to hook up, to not feel alone for awhile, to feel desired? Hooking up with people you don't care about is like drinking alcohol on a cold night to warm up. The burning might make you think you are warm, but eventually it will leave you colder and numb.

Even if you find the rare people who can have sex with people without feelings forming, and without feeling empty later, they still don't win. These people end up divorcing physical intimacy with emotional intimacy. The specialness of each is diminished when they are not locked together.

Someday I hope my children will only combine sex and other physical intimacy with deep emotional intimacy. I'm not saying they have to wait for marriage so God won't be mad at them. I'm saying they should wait for true connection so they can make love for their entire lives and never have to settle for having sex.

If the goal of your club is to have connection without strings I'm sorry but I think you are on a fool's errand. If your heart is still too raw for a romantic relationship then listen to it, and wait. If you need connection in the meantime then become emotionally intimate with friends without sharing physical intimacy but realize that even that may lead to a great deal of pain.

Good luck, and let me know how it works out. If you can make it work then maybe the President will have you take a crack at health care.