Sex With Friends

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.

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.

Let them know what you know (and what you don’t know)!

Or 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/

Knowing what you don’t know is helpful when you’re changing the dynamic of a friendship.

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 allBut 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.

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.