Friends with benefits, Is it worth the risk?

Friends with benefits, is it worth the risk?
Eric Lenhart

As college students, there is many, many, and I do say many things on our minds. Anything from waking up in the morning just to hit the snooze button to walking up Shortlidge trying to walk straight after a rough thirsty Thursday. College students constantly are thinking and acting in order to ultimately obtain a degree and set for the future after graduation. Although graduation and surviving the next year and half are very important things to think about in life.  I'm sure there are students out there with other ideas in mind. Those other ideas you may ask? How about the best three letter word out there, sex. Well, maybe if you're a male it might be just sex, but the idea here is that students want a relationship. What is a relationship?, you may be asking yourself. A relationship is a bond connection between individuals that can stem into many other options.  To start there are people out there who do not desire a sexual relationship at all but instead just choose friendship and that's perfectly fine. Next there are the casual sex relationships or hooking up, where there is some emotional connection but the goal is the sex. Then there are the romantic relationships, a strong mixture of love,emotion and commitment to just one person. To finally our topic of discussion, friends with benefits. FWB for short is a non-exclusive no strings attached type of relationship centered around sexual needs and away from commitment.

The next question you may be asking, well does friends with benefits work out? For both the long run not just the short term? To attempt to answer this question I took to the Internet and found a psychology article by Aaron Ben-Zeev focusing on the idea of relationships, specifically fwb. You can find that article here Friends With Benefits.

What I gathered from this information is that fwb is consistent among all age groups but the majority of these relationship occur in people in their twenties. Research also suggests that 50% of people in the twenties age group had some sort of friends with benefits relationship. What this data helps show is that young people aren't ready for the commitment of a romantic relationship but seek sex through friends with benefits as a quick way of getting pleasure while at the same time practicing for the future. The idea of fwb outweighs the moral dilemma of feeling shallow for stooping to a one night stand. Both partners each consent to the idea of a non romantic, friendly sexual relationship. Data also showed that men where more in it for the sex, while the female in this hypothetical wanted a friendship. So back to my key question is it worth the risk?

Friends with benefits have a lot of short term positives that make this idea a grand slam. First with fwb there isn't much emotional ties, its all about the pleasure having no strings attached. Fwb also helps people that fear commitment, while at the same time helps individuals learn for commitment and from the sex. These seem like great positives to fwb, but there are many down sides later on. It is  uncommon but there are people who start off as fwb but ultimately it develops into a romantic relationship but for the most part these relationships have no meaning and dissolve when the partners get tired of the sex. Looking long term like I mentioned, most of the time these relationships break apart but there are the few cases where they last. A negative to fwb in the short term, is that its common that one partner starts to develop feelings for the other partner. The whole plan was with no strings attached and now emotions are stirring and its about to get awkward. What if the other person isn't on board to the idea? Talk about awkward. Another negative to fwb is the idea of being shallow. Having nothing but the idea of sex, partners see relationships as purely that. There is no sense of gaining romantic interest or commitment leading to instability and fear of commitment later on in life. When it comes to fwb, its completely up to the individual. It seems the short term outcome outweighs the long term outcome and that is why so many seek the pleasure. Personally, I would be down for friends with benefits. I know the future pitfalls that could possibly happen but the short term seeking sex with no commitment as a youthful college students seems like a no brainer. So is it worth the risk? In the short term yes, the long term very questionable and cloudy.