How do you navigate going from buddy to booty call? Dr. Justin Lehmiller has the answers.
The line between friendship and a romantic relationship blurs when sex comes strutting into the room. How do you navigate the complications of going from buddy to booty call?
Thankfully, we’ve got an expert with the answers: Dr. Justin Lehmiller. He’s a social psychologist, Kinsey Institute Research Fellow, and the creator of Sex and Psychology.
Justin was part of a team that conducted a year-long study of 200 friends-with-benefits relationships. And what he found can help us all unweave this type of messy, sexy, and downright “oh my god what have I done??” relationship.
A few curiosities you’ll uncover in this episode:
Did You Know?
According to the study Justin worked on, 25% of subjects hoped their friend-with-benefits relationship would turn into a romantic relationship. However, friends-with-benefits relationships play out how people want them to only 17% of the time.
Credits
Curious State is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast hosted and produced by Doug Fraser.
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Doug
The following episode contains some adult language and content. If you're into that sort of thing, stick around. Let's say you have a friend, but then there's a stray glance at a party. A few beers, a little time alone, and it arrives in a flash: a kiss. Suffice it to say things escalate. “Yeah, baby.” The line between friendship and a romantic relationship blur when sex comes striding into the room. How do you navigate those complications when you go from buddy to booty call? Thankfully, we've got an expert with the answers.
Justin
My name is Dr. Justin Lee Miller. I am a social psychologist and research fellow at the Kinsey Institute. I also run the sex and psychology blog and podcast. My job is to study the science of sex and communicate about it to a broad audience so that people can live happier, healthier sex lives and have better relationships.
Doug
Justin conducted a year-long study of 200 “friends with benefits” relationships, and what he found to help us all unweave this type of messy, sexy relationship. So my friends with auditory benefits, let's undress our preconceived notions and get in bed with our old friend: curiosity. I'm Doug Fraser. And this is Curious State. We all know what friends with benefits is, but just so we're on the same page, how is it defined in the research that you've done?
Justin
Well, it's messy. And you're gonna get a different answer, depending on who you ask. But really, the key thing is that you have this interesting hybrid of both friendship and sexual activity without romantic commitment present.
Doug
With that definition, these are typically non monogamous relationships?
Justin
Typically. Now there's always variability with every kind of relationship, but I've been studying friends with benefits for more than a decade. And one of the questions that we ask in every survey we do is whether there's a sexual exclusivity arrangement between the partners. And the vast majority of people who are friends with benefits don't have any exclusivity expectation, but depending on the study, somewhere between a quarter and a third of them do, so some of them are monogamous friends with benefits.
Doug
Are you just in a relationship at that point?
Justin
Well, you know, and this is another thing, like a lot of people don't necessarily like to label their relationships and the language that people use surrounding this is always evolving. And so you know, that's one of the things that makes studying these topics tricky is that we can have our scientific definition and understanding but that might not be the lay definition that is being used. And so that's why we always need to be super clear about what we're asking, to try and get our participants on the same page as us.
Doug
Plenty of us look at relationship labels and get a little seasick. Could friends with benefits be the Dramamine we're looking for?
Justin
One of the benefits of, say, an established romantic relationship over being friends with benefits is that they have more established communication patterns. And so they're more likely to talk about what it is that they want sexually and what brings them pleasure. So there's this somewhat greater level of sexual communication with romantic partners that you don't see in friends with benefits. And I think that helps to explain why on average, people in romantic relationships are actually a little more sexually satisfied than people who are friends with benefits. And I think it's because they're communicating about sex more.
Doug
That's not to say communication is completely lacking in friends with benefits relationships. In fact, traditional romantic relationships have a thing or two to learn about communication, from friends with benefits relationships.
Justin
One of the areas where friends with benefits kind of have a leg up over romantic partners is that they communicate more about the sex that they're having with people other than that partner. So there's more communication about what we call extra dyadic sex that's sort of the scientific term for you know, when you're having sex with people other than just your one primary partner, so they're more likely to talk about safer sex practices and Friends with Benefits are more likely to use condoms and contraception and so forth. So you know, the sex tends to be safer in a friends with benefits arrangement because people understand it's non monogamous. They're communicating more about things they might be doing with other people, but they're not necessarily communicating as much about their desires and wants and what it is that brings them pleasure.
Doug
There are plenty of benefits in a friends with benefits relationship, one of which is extracurricular activities.
Justin
Now there are also some interesting differences in the sexual practices of Friends with Benefits and romantic partners. So I find that romantic partners are more likely to practice kinky and BDSM sexual activities. And I think that ties in with their greater level of sexual communication in general. But friends with benefits are more likely to have threesomes and group sex, right, which makes sense because these are non monogamous relationships. And it might be easier to introduce that idea in the context of a friends with benefits arrangement than it is with a romantic partner where there's more often than not that expectation of exclusivity. Something that we've seen in some of our studies is that in some of these relationships that aren't labeled as being romantic, people say that there is sort of a trial period to make sure it's going to work. Because they might find the idea of breaking up to be embarrassing, or shameful in some way, or they're worried about what other people would say. And so and maybe they have a history of relationships that just didn't work out. And so they just want to make sure it's right before they announce it to the world.
Doug
This has me thinking about how these fires get sparked in the first place. Who tends to initiate the hanky panky perks of friends with benefits?
Justin
They do find that men, on average, tend to be more interested in having friends with benefits than women. And so there might be more initiation on the part of men just because they tend to have more openness to it. And I think friends with benefits for women, in some cases is more palatable than having, say, a one night stand or, you know, something that is very uncommitted. Very, very casual. Because we know that women tend to be judged more harshly than men for casual sex and hookups. But when you've got this sort of emotional connection, and there's a little bit more of a relationship to it, it might seem more palatable in that way to women who tend to have more discomfort, on average with casual sex. But also women might be more likely to get what they want sexually out of a friends with benefits than say, a one night stand. And we know this from research on the orgasm gap, right, where we know that men on average tend to have orgasms much more consistently than women do in sexual encounters. But the biggest gap is in a one night stand. So that's the case where we see the biggest discrepancy between men and women and their likelihood of having an orgasm. But the more hookups that a woman has with the same male partner, if we’re talking about heterosexual relationships here, the more likely she is to have orgasms with that partner. So I think Friends with Benefits can help to provide more pleasure to women, because you've got a partner who prioritizes your pleasure more, and where there's more partner specific learning where they can understand over time what works for your body and what it is that brings their partner pleasure. For people who are in same sex friends with benefits, those on average tend to work out a little bit better because people are going in with more similarity in their expectations and what they're hoping to get out of it. And also, for example, if you talk about gay men, specifically, they tend to have more comfort with the idea of casual sex in general, compared to say, heterosexual women. And so when you're talking about casual sex arrangements, there are some differences based on sexual orientation. But again, it all comes down to what is it that you want? What is it that you're comfortable with?
Doug
Friends with Benefits isn't just for the young and restless. Far from college campuses and Florida beaches packed with Spring Breakers is another hotspot for sexual activity. And it may just make you see grandma in a whole new light.
Justin
When we do these online surveys of Friends with Benefits, we routinely get people in their 50s and 60s and sometimes beyond who have a friend with benefits, right, which I think is interesting in and of itself, because a lot of people tend to think this is a young college student phenomenon, but it's something for people across the lifespan. It can work in any type of sexual orientation, any type of arrangement. Really, you know, I think there's an important conversation to be had around sex and aging because a lot of people are just really uncomfortable with it. So they don't talk about it at all. But there's really no definitive endpoint to our sex lives to when we stop feeling sexual desire, stop wanting sex, stop having sex. You know, this can happen for pretty much our entire lives. And that's part of the reason why in nursing homes and care facilities and elsewhere, you do see patients who are very sexually active. And in that particular context, friends with benefits can be something that happens because they're getting that emotional connection to another person while also having that sexual outlet, but not necessarily having that committed relationship structure that they might have if they were sort of living independently and you know, pursuing a different life. But in that particular environment, it might lend itself well to starting your friends with benefits relationship.
Doug
Friends with Benefits seems rife with fun, and novelty and possibility. It's enticing. It's exciting. It's basically Christmas. But you know, in your pants, “Oh, Christmas isn't just a day, it's a frame of mind.”
Doug
This kind of relationship has plenty of complications, of course. In fact, when it comes to friends with benefits, there's a hidden Grinch waiting to rear its ugly head.
Justin
So I think the single biggest con I've seen in the research is that people often go into these relationships with wildly different expectations. And this is particularly true when you're talking about heterosexual men and women. So I've asked people, you know, what is it that you hope to get out of this relationship, and I find that men, heterosexual men, tend to hope that it's going to be kind of this open ended arrangement where casual sex is going to be available long term, whereas women, most of them are hoping that this is kind of a temporary arrangement, and that it's going to change form. So they're having sex now, but they're gonna go back to being friends, or they're friends with benefits now, but they're going to become romantic partners later, right? So women are often hoping there's going to be this relationship transition, whereas men are less likely to think that.
Doug
And that lack of communication then sounds like it can be cause for quite the risk down the road.
Justin
Yes, and this is where I see one of the biggest risks is that when people go in with these discrepant expectations and never communicate about it, well, somebody or everybody is not going to end up getting what it is that they want out of that relationship. So one of the things we see is the biggest predictor of problems in these relationships is not getting on the same page up front about what you want out of that relationship. And so one of the studies we did was actually a one year Longitudinal Study of friends with benefits, where we followed about 200 people for a year who had a friend with benefits. We asked them at the beginning, you know how much they communicated about ground rules and expectations and what they wanted. And then one year later, we looked at what actually happened. And, you know, not getting on the same page at the beginning, not setting the ground rules and boundaries. That was one of the red flags, the early warning indicators that things weren't going to work out well. And those individuals were more likely to end up one year later, where they didn't have any relationship of any kind, you know, I guess you could say they became frenemies, if you will.
Doug
According to the study Justin worked on, 25% of surveyors hoped they're friends with benefits relationship would turn into a romantic relationship. However, friends with benefits relationships play out how people want them to only about 17% of the time, and those with the highest likelihood of success were ones that transitioned not into romantic relationships, but into friendships, and a whopping 48% of subjects hope their friends with benefits relationship would continue on as usual. How can people who have friends with benefits open those lines of communication, so you can actually, perhaps have a longer term version of that relationship?
Justin
So that's a great question. And there's one other thing I should say in terms of another big predictor of having good outcomes was having a solid friendship to start. So people who had sort of this deeper emotional connection in the beginning, I think that made it easier for them to talk about and communicate about the ground rules and expectations and open the doors to communication. So I think if you already have that sort of solid friendship, that that can be a good starting place for these relationships. But if it's somebody that you really don't know, well, then you have to do the extra work of creating a space to have those conversations about what it is that you're hoping to get out of this? And where do you want it to go? And so what you need to establish is really, you know, what is this relationship? What isn't it, right? So get on the same page about that, and then set your ground rules. Some friends with benefits see other people sexually, they date other people and so it's just sort of a temporary outlet for sex while they're pursuing romantic relationships simultaneously. So what are the ground rules there? What are you allowed to do sexually with your friend with benefits and what are you allowed to do with other people? You know, some people have a “no kissing” rule or a ‘no sleeping over” rule. So figure out what it is that works for you and your arrangement. And there are no one size fits all answers here, you know, it's highly dependent on the individuals and what they want out of it and what they feel comfortable with. Something that we see in casual sex more broadly is that it tends to be better when there is some emotional connection between the individuals involved. Because I think that makes it easier for people to get what they want to talk about, what it is that they want, and just communicate about sex more broadly.
Doug
Given all of the data that you've collected, is it actually possible for a long term version of friends with benefits? Do you think?
Justin
I think there are different ways to think about this. For example, if you think about friends with benefits in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, a lot of people became temporary friends with benefits during lockdown because they needed that sexual outlet, that way to connect with somebody else, physically and emotionally. And so friends with benefits for them, it was necessarily this very time limited thing, but it served a very important purpose. And so the fact that it didn't last long term doesn't mean that the relationship wasn't meaningful, or that people didn't do it right. It served its purpose in that particular time. So I think we always need to think about things in the broader context here. Now, in our longitudinal study of friends with benefits, we found that most of these relationships either dissolved or changed form in the span of a year. So some people were still friends with benefits after a year, but most either went back to being friends, some became romantic partners, and some just drifted off in totally different directions. And again, whether or not that's a good outcome kind of depends on what people wanted going into it. But I find that the people who tended to be the most disappointed were the ones who wanted a romantic relationship going in. I found that it was uncommon for friends with benefits to transition into romantic relationships. So if you're looking at them as a vehicle for starting and finding long term love, that might not be the optimal approach, unless it's also what your partner wants.
Doug
Do you think there's something to that year marker?
Justin
So I think there are a lot of things to think about here. So if you're thinking about people who are friends with benefits, they don't have that commitment to a relationship and so they're not building their lives around each other. In the span of a year, a lot can happen. Somebody might take a job in a different city, somebody might meet this other person that they want to start a romantic relationship with, or they really want to start dating that individual. And so they're going to shut off their other relationships, their other sexual arrangements that they've had, right? So I think really a year is a good amount of time for a lot of things to change in a person's life. And so I think that that's why these relationships just don't stay in their current form long term, because so many things can happen in such a short period of time when you're not building your life around this other person.
Doug
There's just so many layers to a thing that seems on the outside, just sort of looking at like, oh, friends benefits, it seems pretty simple: you're just friends who are having sex, but there's so much more.
Justin
And that's the fun and also frustrating thing about being a sex researcher is that every time you think you know something, and you think you have a handle on something, you realize just how little you actually know. That's part of the reason why my work is never done.
Doug
When the orbits of friend and lover intersect, they give way to an inviting temporary space, one that mixes platonic chats with pillow talk, lunch hangouts with letting it all hang out, if only for a little while, up to about a year, so the data tells us, but hey, in the search for human connection, be it for a night or a lifetime. It's nice to have a familiar face at your side, and sometimes between your legs. To learn more about Justin Lee Miller, visit sexandpsychology.com and be sure to check out his sex and psychology podcast wherever you get your podcasts. For more information about the show and where you can find us across the internet, check out our show notes or visit quickanddirtytips.com. Special thanks to the Quick and Dirty Tips team: Adam Cecil, our Audience Development and Podcast Manager, Morgan Christiansen, Podcast and Advertising Operations Specialist, Holly Hutchings, our Digital Operations Specialist, Davina Tomlin, Marketing and Publicity Assistant, and our trusty intern, Brendon Pika. Curious State is hosted and produced by me, Doug Fraser, for the Quick and Dirty Tips network, which is a division of Macmillan Publishers in partnership with Mignon Fogarty, Inc. Until next time, stay curious.