Friends with benefits

Salty said:
I think the truth lies somewhere between your and sky chasers communicated positions. Women are without a doubt biologically predisposed to emotionally desire children, but not all women actually do. But, It’s not a stereotype either. It’s far more ingrained in the dna than that.
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I think you're probably right.
 
Salty said:
I think the truth lies somewhere between your and sky chasers communicated positions. Women are without a doubt biologically predisposed to emotionally desire children, but not all women actually do. But, It’s not a stereotype either. It’s far more ingrained in the dna than that.
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If you happen to believe that mankind isn't born inherently good and choosing the best way - which explains some of the miscreants we have to deal with - and our own kids behaviors - then it is no surprise when some are born with different levels of issues they are born with, including desiring things that are not good for themselves or the preservation of life. Some people probably are "born this way."
 
Life would really be boring if there was no free will. If we all just acted based directly on how we're coded to act. But it would be infinitely easier to understand. I am not a subscriber to the fact that we do not choose. There are definitely drivers, but inevitably you choose your path. JMO, and I know it's not terribly popular these days.
 
Salty said:
Life would really be boring if there was no free will. If we all just acted based directly on how we're coded to act. But it would be infinitely easier to understand. I am not a subscriber to the fact that we do not choose. There are definitely drivers, but inevitably you choose your path. JMO, and I know it's not terribly popular these days.
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Right, and people, even if they are born one way, certainly should "choose" not to be murderers, thieves, or whatever.
 
RyanShort1 said:
Right, and people, even if they are born one way, certainly should "choose" not to be murderers, thieves, or whatever.
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This is as far as I'm willing to go in the discussion to stay well away from breaking any rules. Suffice it to say that I do understand why people want to throw away free will. The simplicity of "nobody is responsible for anything they do" is alluring.
 
I dunno. I think that you can still uphold responsibilities even outside social moires. I have observed that, anyway.
 
Salty said:
This is as far as I'm willing to go in the discussion to stay well away from breaking any rules. Suffice it to say that I do understand why people want to throw away free will. The simplicity of "nobody is responsible for anything they do" is alluring.
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True.

But how can you choose to “throw away free will” without having free will? I think most of us intuitively believe we have free will, though, and are accountable for our choices.

Now then, if we accept the premises that physics is deterministic and that free will exists, then logically there must be an aspect of life that isn’t physical.
 
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RyanShort1 said:
If you happen to believe that mankind isn't born inherently good
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Is this because of man or because of the relative nature of “good”? Every action, even ones that look self destructive, are intended to accomplish something the person believes is better on some timeline.

Our most frequent mistake is assigning our motivations to those actions and misunderstanding them.
 
In all this, no one has asked, “can you really consider the girl at In-N-Out who makes sure you burger is wrapped in lettuce a friend?” :)
 
Dave Theisen said:
In all this, no one has asked, “can you really consider the girl at In-N-Out who makes sure you burger is wrapped in lettuce a friend?” :)
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Hmm, that is a good question. Maybe. I expect that as a minimum. If I conversate with my Burger Girl as to where we talk about personal life situations, I would consider her an acquaintance. If we hang out and go kayaking outside of the burger place, I would consider her a friend.

I mean, and there is the next level. Somewhere between marriage and friendship. Which is what the thread is all about.
 
Sac Arrow said:
If we hang out and go kayaking outside of the burger place, I would consider her a friend.
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Eh, so here’s the deal… For me, it’s VERY difficult to just be literal friends with a female. When people say guys and girls can just be friends, I tend to disagree, as it can only work in very specific situations. If I’m hanging out with a girl, it’s usually going to progress to more or the friendship will be ending. No in-between for me.
 
RyanB said:
Eh, so here’s the deal… For me, it’s VERY difficult to just be literal friends with a female. When people say guys and girls can just be friends, I tend to disagree, as it can only work in very specific situations. If I’m hanging out with a girl, it’s usually going to progress to more or the friendship will be ending. No in-between for me.
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Yeah, um, true. Same here, I can relate. There is the volume factor, though.

I've heard.
 
Sac Arrow said:
Hmm, that is a good question. Maybe. I expect that as a minimum. If I conversate with my Burger Girl as to where we talk about personal life situations, I would consider her an acquaintance. If we hang out and go kayaking outside of the burger place, I would consider her a friend.

I mean, and there is the next level. Somewhere between marriage and friendship. Which is what the thread is all about.
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RyanB said:
Eh, so here’s the deal… For me, it’s VERY difficult to just be literal friends with a female. When people say guys and girls can just be friends, I tend to disagree, as it can only work in very specific situations. If I’m hanging out with a girl, it’s usually going to progress to more or the friendship will be ending. No in-between for me.
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“Women can form a friendship with a man very well; but to preserve it, a slight physical antipathy most probably helps.”

― Friedrich Nietzsche

Translated this means an ugly girl. Then you can be friends.
 
Didn't Nietzsche more or less go from living with his mom to living with his sister, dying alone except for that sister, broke, and nuts? Maybe he was a smart guy, but to me he seemed to be wrong about pretty much everything.

If you're an adult male, and you can't have a platonic friendship with an attractive woman, then you're not really an adult male yet.
 
RyanB said:
Eh, so here’s the deal… For me, it’s VERY difficult to just be literal friends with a female. When people say guys and girls can just be friends, I tend to disagree, as it can only work in very specific situations. If I’m hanging out with a girl, it’s usually going to progress to more or the friendship will be ending. No in-between for me.
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Even if that girl is a cousin?
 
Albany Tom said:
Didn't Nietzsche more or less go from living with his mom to living with his sister, dying alone except for that sister, broke, and nuts?
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Hemingway was among other things a faithless womanizer, alcoholic, and eventual suicide, but he wrote good books.

As far as Nietzsche is concerned, I see him as a gifted observer, not necessarily a role model. And he exaggerated as a matter of principle. “The true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything”.

Now, if you want to talk about an author/philosopher who lived an illustrious life, and a pilot besides, there is Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, “Wind, Sand, and Stars”. Well, he allegedly dabbled with Charles Lindbergh’s wife but that was the thug life, so to speak.
 
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I can’t have female friends. Women fall for me hard and they can’t handle it. I mean just the other day the barista smiled at me while handing me my tall Pikes. I could tell she was burning for me. I had to cut it off there and leave. I hope she is doing fine. Rugged good looks, a pilots license, and Ray Bans don’t help.
 
I agree with Billy Crystal in When Harry Met Sally.
Someone wants to F someone.

That doesn’t make the man juvenile. It’s nature.

Controlling your urges and acting appropriately makes you a man. Healthy straight males want to bed females. We’ve adjusted our outward interactions for current social norms (workplace, church, family functions) but internally it at least flickers. “Ohhh?! Wait, she’s my boss.”
 
Albany Tom said:
If you're an adult male, and you can't have a platonic friendship with an attractive woman, then you're not really an adult male yet.
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The secret for me is maintaining consistent eye contact with my female friends.

Once I lose focus, my baser self starts browsing, then the friendship is doomed. "Physical antipathy" certainly limits browsing, but really doesn't eliminate it for me as an equal opportunity base male who will give anything a once-over.
 
EdFred said:
Sweet. I'll use that as a defense in court to get tried as a minor.

"Motion to be tried as a minor."
"Why?"
"Because there's a girl that makes my lettuce burgers I call a friend, but I really want to bang her, and some guy on the internet says I'm not an adult male because of my attraction to her."
"Motion denied."
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You phrased it wrong for today's world, it should have been: "I identify as a minor of unspecified pronoun"
 
I'm a guy, 59-years old, married for 34 years. Even during my dating days before marriage, I learned something important about myself: Sex really isn't much fun or fulfilling unless I have some emotional attachment to my partner. My friends in college were always on the prowl for one-nighters and seemed to be having lots of fun. I'd do it and end up feeling kind of lousy. As such, I can't imagine having a "friend with benefits" working out for me (that is, if I wasn't married). It's just the way I'm wired because I'm not religious or some judgmental moralist.
 
ETres said:
I'm a guy, 59-years old, married for 34 years. Even during my dating days before marriage, I learned something important about myself: Sex really isn't much fun or fulfilling unless I have some emotional attachment to my partner. My friends in college were always on the prowl for one-nighters and seemed to be having lots of fun. I'd do it and end up feeling kind of lousy. As such, I can't imagine having a "friend with benefits" working out for me (that is, if I wasn't married). It's just the way I'm wired because I'm not religious or some judgmental moralist.
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Maybe you were doing it wrong. ;)
 
ETres said:
I'm a guy, 59-years old, married for 34 years. Even during my dating days before marriage, I learned something important about myself: Sex really isn't much fun or fulfilling unless I have some emotional attachment to my partner. My friends in college were always on the prowl for one-nighters and seemed to be having lots of fun. I'd do it and end up feeling kind of lousy. As such, I can't imagine having a "friend with benefits" working out for me (that is, if I wasn't married). It's just the way I'm wired because I'm not religious or some judgmental moralist.
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I understand completely. Meaning, I understand. But I cannot relate. To me, having sex, or killing people on the battlefield, is something that I need to disassociate with emotionally. I am not saying that the two are mutually exclusive, but, for me, one cannot overtake the other.

I guess I didn't state that quite right. I cannot associate love and sex in the same capacity. Again, I am not saying they are mutually exclusive, but its easier for me to separate the two.
 
RyanB said:
Eh, so here’s the deal… For me, it’s VERY difficult to just be literal friends with a female. When people say guys and girls can just be friends, I tend to disagree, as it can only work in very specific situations. If I’m hanging out with a girl, it’s usually going to progress to more or the friendship will be ending. No in-between for me.
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Have there been many restraining orders?
 
EdFred said:
Yeah, who cares if someone's SO is cheating. Oh, I don't know maybe the person being cheated on might care. As to the second point, desires change. Every single person I've known thats had a FWB relationship, at least one of the parties has always changed their stance on how they felt about the other person. Always.
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Cheating is when one party violates the established rules. If you and your SO have a rule that you are to be each other’s one and only, then either of you stepping out is cheating. If you both agree to have an open arrangement and set other rules, then you aren’t. Just as every game has different rules, different relationships can have different rules. It may not make sense to someone in a closed relationship, but cheating can still happen even in open relationships if there are rules that are violated.

Yes, desires might change, it monogamy doesn’t guarantee that that won’t happen either. The important thing is to communicate. It can be so damned hard, but it comes with the territory of being a grown-up.
 
SkyChaser said:
I happen to think it's morally wrong, but it also tends to turn out poorly eventually. No personal experience, but having watched this happen to girls I knew in college, I think in "relationships" like that, the guys tend to come out on top. The girls usually agree to that status because they like the guy or are crushing on him, and for some stupid reason think that having sex with the guy will make him want to turn her into his girlfriend. Pretty soon, the guy finds a girl that actually attracts him and makes her his girlfriend, and the "friend with benefits" ends up super messed up emotionally. Just to make it clear, I'm not blaming the guy, because it is always the girl's own fault for agreeing to a relationship that has only an infinitesimally small chance of working out the way she is hoping it will.



I don't think the "one will inevitably want more" argument is infantilizing adults. It's the honest truth, and the one who wants more is usually the woman. Assuming she hasn't had sex with a whole bunch of guys before, when she has sex, she creates bonding hormones with the man. Those bonding hormones make her want to have a relationship with the man, and the longer she has sex with the same guy, the stronger that desire gets. A woman can go into a friends with benefits situation with no desire for anything other than the occasional sleepover, and end up wanting the guy to marry her. Even if she tells the guy that, it helps absolutely nothing if he doesn't want to marry her. How can you "come to a consensus" if the guy doesn't have feelings for her and wants to continue on as things are and the woman has feelings for him and wants to get married?
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You are infantalizing when you insist that you personally know what’s going to happen and use your opinion to decide that something is wrong for all people. It may not be a choice you want to make for yourself, and that’s fine. That girl you knew in college isn’t a cross-section of society. I happen to be the one who comes out on top. Men chase me. I don’t need to chase them.

And you are grossly wrong blaming women who get hurt over men who aren’t honest about their intentions. This is like saying someone shouldn’t have a home if they don’t want to get burgled.

I’ve had sex with enough men that I skew the average upward. I can still bond with men through sex. It’s more than just the act. In fact, intercourse itself isn’t even necessary to bond. Two strangers can give each other a hug, and that doesn’t mean snuggles with a loved one later means less. It really is completely fine to not want something for yourself while still supporting the rights of others and the choices they make for themselves.
 
PaulS said:
I don't think she said that at all. And I think what she said makes sense. You need to read it again, she clearly states she thinks women who do this know what they are doing. But at the end of the day I still haven't figured out how women think after being married to one for almost 40 years. I've given up trying, and I definitely wouldn't take one to task like you did for speaking so candidly.
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We aren’t a monolith who all think the same way. Try seeing individual people as individuals, and get to know them on that basis.
 
SkyChaser said:
That's true, although a woman who doesn't want emotional commitment or security most likely has serious emotional damage at that point and probably has a history of trauma. I think most of the risk in a relationship with a woman like that is risk for the guy...
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Ooorrrrr she doesn’t want to be saddled down in a partnership yet, but still enjoys sex. Not all people want a relationship all the time. For the vast majority, a relationship means less freedom as many decisions are made between both people. Presuming you’re married, how often do you take off for a month without your partner? Perhaps you want alone time to go explore, or to go somewhere your partner doesn’t care to see, or whatever. Chances are you wouldn’t since society wonders what kind of issues there are if two people aren’t joined at the hip. Do you make big decisions first, then tell your partner later? Or are those subject to your partner’s approval? Many people don’t want that, nor do they want celibacy.

FWIW, I’m married, and I do have that freedom, as does my husband. We also travel together. RIght now he’s in California for a week off doing whatever he wants, and our daughter and I are kicking back this week (today she got to go up in a Cessna on a discovery flight I arranged so she could go up, and the PIC ended up letting me fly a lot of it, which was amazing, and it ended up logged time, which was a bonus!). Our daughter sees that marriage doesn’t make you half of a whole,. It makes you an enhanced, but still full, individual. I’m polyamorous, and he supports me. Our daughter knows and she supports me. I enrolled in flight school and had my first flight logged before event telling him I enrolled. We DO have that kind of relationship set up, but it’s very uncommon. Having what I have usually requires not being in a committed relationship.

Also telling, though, is that you only seem to think that only women are emotionally damaged for not wanting commitment. That’s why you’re coming across as sexist. Men can get hurt for being the ones who want more. Men can be emotionally damaged. This isn’t sex-specific.
 
SkyChaser said:
No, it is a biological fact that women struggle emotionally and mentally when they have sex with multiple partners, and their ability to bond diminishes with every new partner. I can go find the studies and all that if you would like, because they exist and have for years.

If I was stating my own limitations, I would say that I couldn't be in any relationship where I was simply a "friend with benefits", even if I was single and even if it was not morally abhorrent to me, because I get very emotionally attached to people I care about, and being that intimate with someone requires a huge emotional attachment for me.
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Funny. I’m MORE bonded to my husband because he supports me being polyamorous. Sex is fun and can be a bonding activity, but so can most things. While it’s true that the act of intercourse can release certain bonding hormones, this doesn’t mean we’re set up to be hurt, or that not being hurt means we’re emotionally damaged. The emotional and mental struggles are more likely to stem from the stress of judgement from people like you, who look down on women and blame women while excusing men. I have people in my life who support me doing what I want to do, and that kind of freedom and support is as freeing as being in the air.

A lot of those studies were done before the very recent beginning acceptance of women’s sexuality being accepted by a good chunk of society, and so those studies didn’t take into account when the struggled were due to a fear of judgement and guilt.
 
Katamarino said:
Both the examples you just gave are absolutes; i.e., they are true for literally 100% of British men.

You're therefore stating that you think literally 0% of women are capable of being in a "healthy" NSA relationship.

This makes me curious as to what other activities you think 100% of women or man are incapable of, based on their gender?

It's not that long since some "scientists" thought that women's uteruses would fly out of their bodies if they travelled too fast by train, so until I see a high quality study to back up your beliefs, I'm unconvinced that it's as black and white as you're claiming.
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In the 1940’s, WASPs were barred from flying on their periods since the “smart” and “doctor” men in charge though that that week meant women weren’t capable of anything. Applicants had to be under 35 in case the war went on longer than 5 years, since they weren’t going to allow women to fly part 40 because they thought that menopause would mean not being capable of anything.

Um…which way is it? Periods mean being incapable? Not having periods means being incapable?

It’s not as black and white as she’s claiming. A lot of issues in those studies fail to account for when the feelings of guilt and sadness over casual sex stem from having casual sex drilled in as making someone less worthy. Go survey women raise in purity culture about how casual sex would make them feel, and 100% will say they see it as a sin and giving a piece of yourself away and that they’d feel bad. That crap is why Elizabeth Smart didn’t leave when she could have. Being raped left her feeling unworthy. Interview women when society still treats you like trash for sexual openness, and of course many will have mental and emotional issues. Hell, even today you can pick and choose who to interview, and get a study showing all women WANT casual sex, or that all women will ONLY feel okay waiting until their wedding days for their first kisses.
 
Katamarino said:
Clearly the only way to settle the debate is for someone to go and have a lot of NSA sex and report back to us.
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I submit my application. I’m at north of 20 partners, and can’t name them all. I’m also married and a mother and still poly and can have other relationships and my husband supports me. Anyone else wanna apply?
 
ETres said:
I'm a guy, 59-years old, married for 34 years. Even during my dating days before marriage, I learned something important about myself: Sex really isn't much fun or fulfilling unless I have some emotional attachment to my partner. My friends in college were always on the prowl for one-nighters and seemed to be having lots of fun. I'd do it and end up feeling kind of lousy. As such, I can't imagine having a "friend with benefits" working out for me (that is, if I wasn't married). It's just the way I'm wired because I'm not religious or some judgmental moralist.
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And that’s fine. Not everyone likes the same things in the same ways. These days, there’s actually a term for people who need an emotional bond to enjoy sex: Demisexual. And that’s fine. If that’t you, then that’s you, and no one should make you feel bad. My husband is demisexual. (I know some people call these terms “woke” and such, but they’re helpful as a way for people to define what they want in relationships, and anything that that helps facilitate communication is good.) I happen to be someone who only needs to find someone attractive, regardless of sex, and that attractiveness can be physically or mentally. We work together because we accept each other, and we bond over that acceptance and our shared experiences and goals.
 
Josie Flies said:
I submit my application. I’m at north of 20 partners, and can’t name them all. I’m also married and a mother and still poly and can have other relationships and my husband supports me. Anyone else wanna apply?
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Sac Arrow might be interested.
 
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