Friends with Benefits
And other lies.
“I am not looking for a girlfriend, to be honest, I already have a long distance relationship with a woman 10 year younger than me who lives in Spain, and we meet twice a year.
I like you as a friend, and I do not want lose that, but together we could have some amazing time (read sex), the passion and chemistry between us is so strong.
We can be friends with benefits, we can have the best of both worlds, without emotional complications (read exclusivity).”
Verbatim — in the same breath and down my neck — while we were kissing, true story.
This was a friend I had been knowing for a year, who still felt entitled to a kind of foot-in-the-door, when I had already made it clear that I was not looking for something casual. Of course, I blamed it on my round face and that tattoo on my forehead that only I and selected few can see that says I don’t deserve better.
I know, probably naïve of me, but I still get caught off guard in front of the magnitude of bullshit people tell themselves, and then try to sell to others.
I am also shocked by how many lives people think they can inhabit in the very same moment. If you have a girlfriend but you are looking for sex elsewhere, then you do not really have a girlfriend, you just have sex with different people. To even mention a current girlfriend while kissing someone else is anywhere between ridiculous and sad, mostly sad. People who engage in multiple relationships simultaneously, to avoid emotional complications, fear the void, their own emptiness, they are basically trying to escape themselves, and good luck with that. How do I know? I just do.
Friends with benefits, let’s dissect that, shall we?
Friends do not need benefits. My bar for friendship is pretty high already.
Benefits, is a word that reminds of entitlement, of social security payments, of making up for scarcity. Thanks but no thanks.
Friends who invoke benefits, tell themselves and others a lie. Nothing to do with friendship, shocking right? They simply are not ready to embrace the fear of the unknown nor the maturity of commitment, but desperately need to cuddle in reassuring familiar arms. And of course I use they, but let’s be honest, who hasn’t been there? Silence.
Wanting the cake and eating it too, and possibly without getting caught, we are not friends with benefits, we are only human, I guess.
