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.”