As a young woman, my Facebook news feed is constantly bombarding me with posts titled along the lines of “Friends with Benefits: Why They’re Harmful for Our Generation.” The idea that a man and a woman can remain emotionally unattached in such a relationship is challenged in movies, such as Friends With Benefits and No Strings Attached, and TV shows like my all-time favorite Sex and the City.
Hollywood’s answer to the million-dollar question was usually a resounding “no,” that at least one person involved ends up emotionally attached; thus, it can only really end in catastrophe. I’ve seen it happen to enough of my friends and family to know that Hollywood isn’t completely full of it, and science agrees.
When I ask my friends why they date guys, they usually respond with a confident, “Um… Well… Uh, I guess, uh, to get married someday?” Sure. That’s the accepted notion – we meet someone, date them, introduce them to our parents, maybe move in together, get engaged, get married… and then maybe file for divorce and spend six months fighting over that “Dogs Playing Poker” painting in the kitchen. The point is: Society has a clear accepted relationship path. Friends with benefits is a different path with the intended end being the two people will eventually part ways to seek healthy, fulfilling relationships elsewhere when they’re done. “Man-friends” and “Lady-friends” are different. It isn’t a different path as much as a deviation. And in a way that’s almost worse.
This is new territory here – the somewhat emotionally complicated relationship without the Facebook status or the boyfriend for the busy woman who doesn’t want the responsibility but does want a guy to snuggle with when she has a runny nose. In a way, these relationships are often selfish and self-serving, but on the other hand, in a culture so dominated by “convenience” over quality, are we really surprised?
When an unofficial couple breaks up, the damage is usually minimal, and if you’re raised believing love always ends, doesn’t that appeal to you? The flip side is the more I see these relationships arise, the more convinced I am that, even in the cyber age, humans still crave emotional connection. We haven’t become robots-yet.
The real question to leave with, though, is this: Will the path from meeting, to dating, to marriage, in that perfect uninterrupted state, ever exist again or are these grey-area relationships the new normal?