The True Meaning of Friendship (with Benefits)

I’ve been fucking my friend with benefits for over two years and we’ve never taken a selfie together.

If this doesn’t seem that strange to you, I should explain: I take selfies with almost everybody who matters to me. My romantic partners, my friends, my family. Sometimes random people I meet at shows, if they’re into it. It’s a small act of digital-age intimacy. And I’ve never done it with this person whose dick has been in my hands and my mouth and my cunt occasionally-but-repeatedly for almost two and a half years.

If he read this, he’d probably offer to take a selfie with me on the spot – he’s that kind of sweetheart. But the selfie isn’t the point. The point is that we’re trained to think of casual sexual relationships as emotionally inconsequential, and thus undeserving of intimacy, care, and consideration. I think these connections can provide so much more value than we give them credit for, and that they therefore deserve kindness and tenderness just like our romantic relationships – if not the same amount, then at least the same quality.

Like Carsie Blanton, I think we’re too precious with our usage of the word “love.” We wall it off inside a spire and reserve it for a tiny subset of the people who make our heart stir. Then we imagine, by extension, that only those people deserve our focused attention, our empathetic concern, our “Thinking of you!” texts and “I missed you!” greetings. When I’ve lamented my loneliness during slutty phases, these things are most of what I’ve wanted: the comfort and consistency of a relationship, by which I don’t necessarily mean a romantic one.

Days after my last brutal breakup, my FWB trekked to my parents’ house, which I was in the process of moving out of. We’d planned a sex date before all of this drama unfolded, and, against the impulses of my crushing depression, I didn’t cancel it. My room was piled high with half-packed boxes and half-used tissues; a heart-rending rejection is a great way to derail a big undertaking like a move. But his lanky, warm body filled the space with light I thought I’d lost. “I know you’ve had a hard week,” he said, throwing an arm around my shoulders. “We don’t have to do anything. We could just cuddle, if you want. I just want to be here for you.”

I didn’t cry. These words, uttered by a romantic partner, would’ve summoned the floods. But my tear ducts shuttered up instinctively; this boy was only my casual sex-pal. Our genitals knew each other better than we knew each other as people. It didn’t seem right. Still, I thanked him, and we went ahead with the sex we’d planned, because I wanted to feel wanted again. As he moved inside me, I reflected on how this thing between us had become more than sex but less than love. Maybe that’s what it feels like when a friend with benefits is truly a friend.

Our friendship, now, is verifiable and undeniable. He’s been to my birthday parties; he’s commented on my Facebook selfies; he’s chatted with my partner about cocktails in my kitchen. I’ve confided in him about things even some of my friends (sans benefits) don’t know: career anxieties, relationship hopes, depression struggles. We’ve exorcized our troubles in a sex-club swimming pool, ciders in hand, and then smoothed them over with kisses. We’ve been patient with each other’s bodies when they were uncooperative or hurting or menstruating. Sex with him has been a balm, a rock.

What strikes me most about this copulationship, compared to some others I’ve had, is that it’s built on a bedrock of genuine esteem and respect. He doesn’t reduce me to a wet hole he can fuck, nor does he assess our encounters by how much sex was had or how good it was; while the sex is partly the point of getting together, it isn’t the whole point. He checks up on me via text, asks how I’m doing, says he misses me. He makes me laugh and compliments my “magic vagina.” He treats me, in short, like a friend who he happens to be banging – which unfortunately isn’t always the case in FWB arrangements.

I’d like for these relationships to be acknowledged and understood as the powerful connections they can be. When asked, I say I have two partners right now – by which I only mean two sexual partners, but still, something feels good and right about acknowledging my FWB in the same breath as the person I hold hands with in public and introduce to family members and want to be with for a long time. These two relationships have different levels of commitment, of upkeep, of social validity and recognizability, but they are equally as valid and equally as worthy of my attention and appreciation.

I’ve never said “I love you” to my FWB and probably never will, because I don’t love him romantically and never have. But there are casual equivalents in our friendship, which make me feel safe and valued in the same way an “I love you” does – like the time he randomly texted me while he was at work to say, “By the way, I think you’re pretty neat.”

My First Threesome Was a Smash Success

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On Friday night I cracked open a fortune cookie and it told me my life is becoming more of an adventure… in bed. I didn’t give this prediction much thought, because, you know, it came from a fortune cookie.

But then, the next night, I had my first threesome, so maybe the cookie was onto something.

 

I have a beautiful, blonde, effervescent friend who I’ve known for almost 10 years. We met through Livejournal and bonded over a shared dorky enthusiasm for musical theatre. As it happened, we both ended up running in the same sex-positive feminist circles as we got older, so we’ve been reconnecting recently after a long period of mostly being casual-pals-from-afar.

She invited me over for what we thought was going to be a quiet night: dinner, conversation, and “Netflix and chill” in the literal sense. But then we went a little hard on the wine, some clothes came off, and we got into some slutty chats with her rowdy roommate… One thing led to another, and it was decided we should go out. My friend gave me a cute dress and jacket to wear, and we put on some sky-high heels and headed out to a loud underground bar.

She and I got to talking about a dapper dom guy we both know and have both banged, and we agreed (half-jokingly, except completely-seriously) that we should have a three-way with him someday. I am standing on the precipice of having a full-on Slut Phase and my blondie pal had agreed to be my mentor in this endeavor – my Slut Sherpa, or the Dumblewhore to my Ron Sleazy, if you will – and orchestrating a threesome seemed like a great way to kick that off.

When I get tipsy, I get flirty and text-happy, so of course we notified our mutual bang-buddy of our plan, not really expecting him to take us seriously. But, y’know, we’re foxy babes with feminine wiles, so he agreed pretty quick. “That’s a lot of babe for one dude,” he texted, to which I replied: “I think you can handle it.”

He met us at the bar and we cabbed back to his place. We talked for a long while, and did that tipsy thing where you all giggle over Facebook photos of your exes, and the boy let me borrow a pair of his socks because my feet were cold (quel gentleman). And then we migrated to the bed and cuddled a bunch. And boobs were (consensually) shoved into faces, and then she started giving him a blowjob while I kissed him… which I wish I’d been more alert/sober for, honestly, because holy shit, it was the logical next step in my blowjob porn obsession. Hnnnggg.

It’s often hard for me to remember the order of events in sex with just two people, because bodies blur together and pleasure makes brains into mush… so with three people, obviously this problem is exacerbated. Plus, when cute people are doing pleasurable things to me, my eyes tend to drift closed, making it hard to follow the action. But I do remember a cock in my hand, and mouths on my nipples, and a hand rubbing me through my panties, and fingers in my mouth, and a hand on my throat, and my tits being slapped, and and and… smiling-face-with-heart-shaped-eyes

Eventually my beautiful friend took off my panties and started going down on me. She had already displayed her blowjob prowess earlier in the night and now she was proving her cunnilingual skills too. I don’t know if you have ever had the experience of knowing someone platonically for a long-ass time and then having sex with them, but… wow. It is eye-opening and strange and fantastic.

If our threesome was a porn scene, what happened next would’ve been the centrepiece shot: he started fucking her from behind while she continued licking and finger-fucking me. His thrusts reverberated through her body so I could feel their impact too, so it was like he was fucking both of us. Ummm, yes.

I can’t remember too clearly but I think we wrapped things up with him coming in her mouth while I dozed beside them. (I am a sleepy person and had had a lot to drink, okay?!) And then we cuddled some more, and checked in with each other about our feeeeelings, and it was niiiice.

Afterwards, the boy asked me, “How many threesomes have you had before?” and I sleepily held up my hand in an “O” shape and said, “This many.” And then probably grinned like an idiot.
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When we got up to put our clothes back on, I found that my friend had neatly folded my underwear and the dress she’d let me borrow, and had put them in a pile for me. (Perfect sex partner etiquette.) We kissed our gentleman-pal goodbye and walked to the subway station together. She took this photo of me on the platform, and it sums up the whole evening pretty well: dishevelled post-sex hair, cute dress and jacket borrowed from her, warm boy-socks borrowed from him, red wedge heels I’d switched out for flats, and a goofy, sleepy smile on my face.

Shortly after this photo was taken, a random guy came up to us and asked us how our night had been. We burst out laughing, and my lovely amiga told him we’d “cemented our friendship” that night. He kept pressing us for details, and I don’t know if it was because I was tipsy or tired or just bursting to share the news with someone, but eventually I told him, “We just had a threesome with a guy we’ve both banged before.” The dude’s eyes practically fell out of his head, and we just laughed.

 

On Friends, Lovers, and Sex Toys

My friends all know that I review sex toys, and they’re all pretty stoked for me. Some will even ask me, as a routine part of every visit we have together, “So what are you reviewing right now?” and then I will take them up to my bedroom and pull out whatever treasure has been frequenting my orifices that week. Really, my friends are great.

There are so many awkwardnesses surrounding the sharing of sexuality with your friends in this culture, though.

Recently I went through my toy collection and made a list of toys I never use and don’t need or want to own anymore. They’re all sterilizable and none of them have been in my butt. I sent out a message to a few select friends containing the list and some links, and asked them to choose anything they wanted to have.

Admittedly, I was nervous about doing this. My friends are extremely sex-positive and toy-positive, but I worried they would freak out, call me gross, and admonish me for even bringing it up. Luckily, they didn’t – and next week I’ll be passing on some under-loved, high-quality toys to my sweet friends.

My boyfriend thinks this is all a bit weird. Maybe it’s a relic of male culture – you know, all those ideas about how overly-intimate friendships are icky and how sex is something you share with your hos, not your bros – but he gets visibly squicked out when I mention that I’m giving a toy of mine to a friend. He’s fine with using my toys himself, but that’s because we’re fluid-bonded and I guess a sexual relationship is considered a socially acceptable environment for sharing toys.

I remember when I was 17 and my ambiguous friend/lovergirl bought a rabbit vibrator. Having owned a vibrator and a dildo but never a dual-action toy, I was very curious about her new purchase. So one night, when she came over for a little party I was having at my house, she stowed the rabbit in her bag and passed it to me surreptitiously. “Go try it out!” she said.

I scampered away from the party guests and into the bathroom, where I tried out the toy, sans lube (ugh, youthful stupidity). It didn’t blow me away. It didn’t even really turn me on. (This is no surprise to me now, since I’ve tried a re-skinned version of that same rabbit and had the same mediocre results.) After I had satisfied my curiosity, I removed the toy, rinsed it off, and brought it back to my lady. She asked me what I thought and I probably kinda shrugged.

So what’s my point with all this? Honestly, I’m not really sure I have one. I guess I’m just intrigued by and curious about the social norms surrounding sex toys. Some of them are there for good reason – you don’t want to accidentally transmit or contract an STI via a borrowed and unsterilized toy, of course – but some of them just seem silly. So what if I want to give my friend a vibrating hand-me-down? If she’s okay with it, and I’m okay with it, and the toy is clean, what’s the big deal?

What are your experiences with giving or receiving used sex toys? Do you consider it off-limits, and if so, why?