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Why Friends With Benefits Don’t Work As You Get Older

May 3, 2017 | By Julia Austin

Friends with benefits can be a lot of fun when you’re younger. In fact, you probably had a few FWB setups in college and your early 20s. Those were lawless years. You had “responsibilities” but they weren’t real responsibilities. You had a job that you could be hung over at (if not drunk), you had classes but the lecture hall sat 200 people so nobody noticed if you weren’t there, and you were surrounded by friends who were lovable train wrecks. Having friends with benefits just fit your lifestyle back then. But when you get a bit older, the chaos, spontaneity, and ambiguity of a FWB relationship just aren’t things you vibe with anymore. You can give it a shot, but you’ll probably find it isn’t worth the hassle. Here is why friends with benefits don’t work as you get older.

People you actually date aren’t down with it

Maybe in college, if you went on a few dates with a guy and he found out you had a friend with benefits elsewhere, he would accept it—everybody was doing whatever they wanted back then. But now, most guys you casually date won’t be okay with you having a friend with benefits.

You’re under real stress

What real stress did you have in college or your early 20s? Trick question—you had none! But now you’re an adult with truly stressful issues on the brain. You can’t just dive straight into sex at the end of the day the way you used to.

You’re tired

You just don’t have the stamina you used to. You can’t crank out a nine-hour workday, an hour at the gym, make dinner, clean up your place a bit and perform acrobatics in bed. Maybe at 10 am you’re horny, but by 10 pm, you want to call the whole thing off.

You’ve experienced enough health scares

By this point, you’ve had enough urinary tract infections and questionable bumps down there that landed you at the doctor’s office. If you’re going to sleep with someone consistently, you want to know they aren’t sleeping with someone else and picking things up. But you can’t ask that of a FWB.

People are busy!

You have a hard enough time finding a day when you and your best friend can get together for lunch. Meeting up with a friend with benefits is just one more thing to plan. You may go weeks without being able to see each other, and that just kills the momentum.

And scheduling defeats the purpose

The mere act of pulling up your calendars, tossing dates back and forth and trying to move plans around kills the mood. The entire purpose of a friend with benefits is spontaneous sex.

You want your space

Unless you love the dude, you don’t want him taking up half of your bed or being there in the morning, eating your cereal. In your 20s you could handle that stuff but now that you’re older, you want things your way.

You can’t afford the hangover

Let’s be real; it’s hard to have a friend with benefits situation without a little booze. The true emotion isn’t there so you have to manifest it through liquid. But you have a real job that you care about in the morning—you can’t afford the hangover.

You need to be wooed more

You’re just not the sexpot you used to be. Your hormones have calmed down. Today, it takes a lotto get you in the mood—more than most friends with benefits are capable of doing.

You have a lot of plus one events

Everybody is having an engagement party, wedding, and anniversary party these days. You have a lot of plus one events to attend. It’s awkward to attend with your friend with benefits—how do you explain that to people?

You want to really meet someone now

You’re getting to a point when you’d actually really like to meet somebody special. You only have enough time for real dating or your friend with benefits, and you’d like to dedicate that time to dating.

Life has become too coupley

In your 20s, your life was a blur of beach days, boozy brunches and even boozier nights. You could keep the FWB relationship all about drinking and sex back then. But now, your days are filled with more trips to Bed Bath and Beyond and the Farmer’s market. When the friends part of your FWB relationship involves coupley activities, it’s hard not to just become a couple.

Sex just means more now

You can’t explain it…you just don’t really want to have sex with someone unless you could potentially see a relationship there. Otherwise, it can leave you feeling sad.

You end up being more friends than anything

Since life isn’t as social and exciting as it used to be, you and your FWB end up watching a lot of Netflix, having real conversations about your day and ordering takeout together.

You realize a FWBmakes a great boyfriend

You know what you figure out as you get older? If you genuinely enjoy hanging out with someone—if somebody makes you laugh and smile and feel good about yourself—and you love having sex with them, that’s what makes a great boyfriend!