QUESTION: I came out of a long relationship last year aged 46 and have since joined two online dating agencies, but all the men my age are looking for someone ten years younger. So when an attractive long-standing male friend of mine suggested we have a fling, I thought that’s probably the best offer I’ll get. The sex is great, but I know that he also has several other women on the go. My friends think I’m mad to agree to the arrangement, but I can’t bear the idea of consigning myself to a chaste spinster life. What should I do?
ANSWER: The arrangement you have made with your male chum is what the Americans call ‘friends with benefits’.
In other words, you add sex to the menu of an existing friendship, with the understanding that no romantic commitment is involved.
On the face of things, it can look like a convenient and mutually beneficial deal. After all, you get to spend even more time with a person you really like and find deeply companionable.
Some women also cite it as a way of avoiding those gloomy, long fallow periods in between relationships that can make you feel like a nun.
But the thing I can’t help noting about the concept of friends with benefits is that men don’t talk about it in the same way as women.
In my experience, they tend to view the whole arrangement as just good old-fashioned casual sex - even if it is with someone they adore - whereas women find it harder to avoid some degree of emotional commitment.
The question you need to ask yourself is, if your friend asked you for an exclusive relationship, would you be thrilled?
If the answer to that query is ‘yes’, then you are deluding yourself about what’s actually going on here. Because you have to assume, for your own sanity (and in the lack of any hard evidence to the contrary), that he regards your encounters merely as pleasant interludes on the way to something more enthralling and meaningful - for him.
I know that sounds harsh, but that’s the nature of the deal you’ve signed up for.
What worries me - and doubtless your friends - is the strong probability that you are avoiding the quest for someone more suitable, who is properly committed to you, while your emotions are wrapped up with your ‘sex buddy’.
I know there’s a theory that you’re more attractive to other people when you’re sexually active, but the hypothesis doesn’t work if you’re fixated on the person who has caused that arousal; you simply won’t have eyes for anyone else.
The other thing you need to consider is whether you’re jeopardising a long and valuable friendship.
The longer you carry on this part-time affair, the greater the chance you will become deeply attached, and the higher the risk things will end badly.
How much future friendship do you want to risk for sexual gratification now? Friends with benefits only works if both parties are as detached as each other.
Since this probably isn’t the case here, I would advise you bring things to an end now.
Doing this will give you and your friend a chance to reflect on the intimate side of your relationship - to see how much you miss it.
It is possible your friend will only truly value what you had and take it to the next level if you exercise a little denial.
The truth is, if he doesn’t learn to prize it now, he never will. - Daily Mail