The Surprising Truth About Your Relationship After ‘Friends With Benefits’

We’ve always been torn on the concept of ‘friends with benefits’. It’s a well-recognised fact that when it comes to relationships, it’s a lucky dip. Sometimes you luck out, and bag the best partner you could ever hope for… other times, you’re more single than Mr.Bean dragging his teddy to bed. So, we can 100% understand how sometimes you fall into the ease of ‘friends with benefits’. That friend who you’ve shared a mild flirtation with suddenly becomes the source of a great sexual chemistry that overspills into the bedroom. The only problem is you’ll be left listening to countless tales of how ‘fwb’ ruined a friendship between X and Y, who apparently have an identical story to yours. Well there’s some surprisingly good news for anyone who’s taken the plunge and is suddenly feeling a tinge of regret. A new study has said that bedding a bestie doesn’t have to end in an awkward fallout. Published in the Archives of Sexual Behaviour, researchers found that the majority of couples were able to maintain their friendship, even after they cut out the added benefits. Drilling down into the bedroom behaviour, the team recruited 308 college students to determine the state of a friendship post-benefits. A surprising 50 per cent said they remained as close, if not closer than before with their former bunk buddy, while a further 32 per cent admitted that while they had remained friends, they weren’t as close as before. Just 19 per cent of those said the friendship didn’t work out – but admitted the relationship was more based in sex than friendship anyway. The paper concluded: “FWB relationships, especially those that include more attention to friendship-based intimacy, do not appear to negatively impact the quality of the friendship after the ‘with benefits’ ends.” Although the only warning to take on board is that some of those 19 per cent did feel like they had been deceived by their friend, feeling lonelier than ever after they parted company. The most important thing to remember? Stay protected (and maybe don’t fall into bed with a best friend unless you know you’re strong enough to pull through the other side).