FWB = Friends With Benefits.
Genuine question. I'm interested in the concept but wanted to know more about how that actually works out.
How does that type of relationship start?
Is it healthy?
Can it be really unhealthy?
Anyone here have experience with a FWB type relationship and how did/is that for you?
I had one as a junior in college. We were very good friends first, very comfortable with each other, so I think that's how it slowly turned into benefits too. No commitments, no exclusivity, just that one +, without pressure or obligations. Good age/place for that, obviously. But idk if that's something that can be deliberately sought out, and a lot depends on your attitude. For me, at times it felt I did want more and felt jealous. And then, many years later, it turned out they wanted more and felt jealous more, and I had no idea. It didn't end up unhealthy for me. I had so many complexes around sex, and that's how I lost my virginity, in a very safe environment, so to speak. But I can also see how it can be very very unhealthy because of the actual mismatch in actual expectations that I mentioned above. So honestly I'm still very ambiguous about FWB as a stable concept.
Thanks you so much for sharing. This is exactly the kind of insight i was hoping to get.
I think your dead right about it not being something that can be directly sought out. It sounds like it has to develop naturally.
Was it hard to stay on the same page, so to speak, with your FWB through out the duration of the relationship?
On the one hand, it was explicitly understood between us that this was a strictly fwb thing, so any "claims" beyond that were never discussed, even though, as it turned out, they could have been. On the other, we had been friends before, and after the benefits eventually petered out we still remained the regular types of good friends. In a way, we've never not been at least 80% on the same page. So from my perspective it was a more or less smooth sailing and a positive experience while it lasted. You don't really fight with your friends, or at least I don't. And then there was a 3 year break when we hadn't seen each other at all due to moving to different cities. And after we found each other living in the same place again, that's when some underwater weirdness came out. Both in the sense that we could discuss our past experiences afresh, but also because my friend would now get explicitly jealous about my new partners.
Making things clear from the get go seems like an important part of making a FWB thing work and your story sounds like an example of how to do that
How did you deal with the jealousy when you reconnected after three years?
at that point i just had to acknowledge but move on. it felt malicious ("give me all your attention") rather than "i love you" to me anyway