This friend of mine runs and does pull-ups while I race walk and lift weights. We did this the other evening and then drank wine on the porch, having the odd conversation we have each year: his fantasy is to have a Friend With Benefits, and of course we know that friend would be quien esto escribe.
I am only interested in Affairs and Relationships, not Half Measures. Catholic, this Friend finds my attitude odd. An Affair is far more immoral than a Half Measure with a Friend, says he. If a Half Measure with a Friend would not Feel Right, how could an Affair? If an Affair is better than a Half Measure with a Friend, does that not mean Nice Men Lose?
My view of the matter is that this Friend is not as virtuous as he believes: he wants availability on demand, and strictly on his terms, which is not really all that Nice. As far as I am concerned, Affairs win over Half Measures with Friends because there is more in them, for one thing. There can also be far more mutuality in them – even in Affairs with Rakes – than in a Half Measure with an officially Nice but Reticent Person.
I have told this Friend that I know him too well to conduct a fantasy-like affair, that it would take energy I do not have to keep switching from Affair to Friendship and back again, and that I am simply not interested in Half Measures With Friends. Being Nice, he accepts these dicta, but being from – his planet of entitlement, I suppose – he does not understand them.
So far I am too polite to say to this Friend that what he wants is something he would have to buy, although this is what I think. He does not understand how it is that I had an Affair and a Relationship, each with someone less balanced and friendly than himself, but (as I keep pointing out) also far less stingy romantically. I am half tempted to say I will trade sex for something like electrical work: he rewires my house, I emit 3,000 volts.
But I am told my point of view is odd. Do you, then, know of anyone who would be interested in sharing what this Friend offers – or as I see it, in donating what he asks for? I am perplexed because I have been told I do not make sense and I am turning down someone Nice.
I think I make as much sense as is necessary, but that yet more sense could be made of this. That is to say, I think there are object lessons in this story on several political topics, and that these may be worth drawing out.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
charmingly said! [though i do like half measures]
Graz, sonetero! 1/2 + 1/2 = 1, so it is too bad you are not in my postal code. 😉 I could also acquire a radish.
great story. made me laugh, too. i’m too tired, my brain is, to squeeze extra analogies out of it, as you suggest. but this one is really written well.
“planet of entitlement”= “dude nation” (dixit Hedonistic Pleasureseeker).
having had both…relationships and been a ‘friend with benefits’ (FWB)….
i’d have to say that he might think he knows what he wants..but if he got a ‘real’ FWB, she would have the choice to see him or not and he could be dumped at any time for a ‘real’ relationship — which is what usually happens
it’s like that male fantasy where they want to bed two women…rarely does a fantasy live up to your own imagination….
Dude Nation, yes. There is something very odd about the whole line of reasoning. I think he has had FWB’s that dumped him for ‘real’ relationships before. He has also had ‘real’ relationships which cheated on him. All of this seems to be caused by his not wanting to be full time: his idea of ‘regular’ sex is infrequent, it turns out, as in, as rarely as once a month, how do you like that?! In any case, me, FWB, I still say that from my point of view it would not be a benefit, but a service. I’d choose adventures with strangers over this bland and ambivalent arrangement.
As I say, I have had this conversation with this man before, except that this time, it was worse. Just getting the proposition (again) is unpleasant. It feels demeaning.
What ticked me off the most was his latest theory/explanation: because men are afraid of vulnerability, they cannot have real relationships, and women need to accept and understand that. Sweet Jesus. Unreconstructed sexism and need for complete control.
In addition and at the same time, he believes that women have all the power. They manipulate men into getting married and then boss them around and take their money. La-de-da, men are just poor victims.
Hearing all of this … [vague hostility to my whole sex, perhaps?] from an official Friend is unsettling. I feel insulted somehow, but without the ‘right’ to be … ? I would go so far as to say that the very request, and the effort that went into handling it politely … this being a person I actually like and not some schmo in a bar … was exhausting and draining, and has left me unspeakably depressed.
“In any case, me, FWB, I still say that from my point of view it would not be a benefit, but a service. ”
You nailed it. That’s what I’ve been bitching about all along. THANK YOU!
PS: Twisty coined Dude Nation, not me! She has coined mucho.
It is entitlement. As soon as you were not available or he saw you stepping out on a real date he would get all stupid. Besides he has more of a chance to be satisfied. What would you do if your wiring was subpar? Or if he caused the whole house to burn to the ground from his incompetence? Take him to the BBB?
HPS, gracias! CM – yes! Actually this one would get the wiring right, but I am of course only joking. I mean, I think what he needs is a call girl. He would be horrified if I said that. But: no strings and available when he says the word (unless one has a prior appointment, which he would understand) – that is what he wants and I am practically quoting! It insulted my ears … I should perhaps not take it so seriously because it is just stupidity, but on the other hand, I think it exemplifies, or is emblematic of, a great deal and for that reason does bear discussion.
Meanwhile – the reason this irritates me is that I live in a semi-wasteland and most of my actual intellectual and emotional support is not physically present. I like this Friend because he is in many ways supportive – an actual friend, and not from the university but from another world. Refreshing. But at the moment he seems to have become a sort of black hole, wants more energy: like those classes which students are taking and you are teaching because they are required, and they could be interesting, but you have to put in 150% of your energy to even inspire 50% of theirs, or to elicit the 50% which is that 50% you most need for things to work out best for all. I am tired, tired – and somehow events with this Friend are emblematic of all that I am tired of, and it is depressing.
You are depressed because you’re being “required” to be dishonest, which is always depressing, I think, after you reach a certain level of consciousness. It’s not a question of semantics. He wants to have sex with you and–in the simplest sense–you just don’t feel the same way. Whatever our respective backgrounds may bring to the table, it seems to me that we often tend to become involved more or less at will, if everything at the moment is right. But he is apparently incapable of being intimate and you don’t find that attractive. Yet, as women often do, you are second-guessing yourself over it, as if maybe you’re wrong and should be bedding him, after all. Even though, intellectually, you have the situation (as has already been said) solidly nailed.
Not only should he be paying for sex (there is nothing shocking or demeaning about this, given what he’s asking for–and wanting), he should be paying you for the “foreplay” he THINKS he’s involved in with you already. Ask a prostitute. Some of them get paid to listen.
Oh, yeah. And he’s no friend. He’s someone you know who provides companionship and does maintenance on houses, but is trying to trick you (yes) into bed. You, on the other hand, out of need for companionship and house-maintenance, try to pretend you don’t recognize his attempt at trickery and it is this pretense that is exhausting and depressing. And it’s the rather shallow attempt at trickery that takes “friendship” out of the equation. As long as he’s allowed to continue the conversation, he’s going to see it as tacit approval for his continued attempts to “scale the wall of China.” All part of the game. With the outcome, in his mind, up in the air.
I remember a professor chasing me around his dining table when I was in grad school. I didn’t let him catch me and we never said anything out loud about the incident or what was really going on. But I couldn’t protest because I would have put my degree in jeopardy. What nauseates me still about it: I couldn’t even scream, “Stop chasing me, you asshole! I don’t want to fuck you!”
“You are depressed because you’re being ‘required’ to be dishonest, which is always depressing, I think, after you reach a certain level of consciousness. It’s not a question of semantics.”
Correct!
“With the outcome, in his mind, up in the air.”
Oh Lord, that’s surely true, I hadn’t thought of it.
“And it’s the rather shallow attempt at trickery that takes “friendship” out of the equation.”
I hadn’t articulated this, either. Oh, dear.
“Stop chasing me, you asshole! I don’t want to fuck you!”
And it is interesting how carefully I was brought up not to throw such things in peoples’ faces. With the professor, I would have had the opposite reaction, i.e. I would not have felt any compunction about saying it, because there was a whole institutional structure that would have been on my side on the issue. In this situation it is what I want to say … but I am a little like the grownup version of the child Nezua describes here, being polite.
LOL!
I’m sorry. but..
LMAO!!!!
How was I to prove that my perception of the tenured professor was correct – lie detector tests? It was his word against mine. I would simply have “failed” exams or something.
Later that year, my major professor actually kissed me in the middle of a street one day (catching me completely off-guard) and told me he was “in love with” me. I almost had a heart attack trying to say “the right thing” and not cut my own throat professionally. This was before he signed off on my thesis, by the way! Several years later, he did, in fact, marry one of his students. And the pisser was: he was really attractive and cool in many ways, but I had other fish to fry (more school elsewhere).
I can’t remember when I got over being as “polite” as I was certainly trained to be. I think it was when I finally got too old to get so many on-slaughts. Wonder if there’s a connection there…? Or if maybe I just don’t get so many on-slaughts because I’m not so polite. ;^)
CS and everybody, this is important: you do not have to prove sexual harrassment unless you file a formal grievance, and you cannot do that until you have attempted to resolve the situation informally. The way you do that is, get him off your committee, discreetly explaining to the chair why. I have further details on how to handle such situations in case anyone has one *right now*.
Major professor, with a thesis almost done, that is sticky. I had a woman who did not sexually harrass but instead took it into her head to be emotionally and professionally abusive … and I thought it was too late to change chairs (it might have been, although it is what I would advise someone in a similar situation now).
It was hard to figure out how to resist her utter c*** enough so that I could still survive as a person, but be polite enough to still get through the program. And I did not understand the situation well enough to be able to make my case coherently before anyone else. I have done a lot better resisting sexual harrassers effectively, but I guess this experience should give me an idea of what people who do not, have gone through.
Sexual harrassers at school/work, I seem to be immune to. In the rest of life, less so … as this post indicates!
So I just entertained, by telephone, one of my prisoner friends, definitely working class, with Stephen Bess’ Lucille Bogan post and then the tale of this whiteman. Does Friendship With Benefits constitute a form of prostitution? I asked. If it is on your terms, said he, then no. However, if it is on his terms, then definitely, “he has to kick out.” Vindication. Hah!