I've always liked the term "Friends with Benefits". It's one of those phrases like "Mile High Club" or MILF that everyone can appreciate.

We've all at the very least had a friend we would have enjoyed taking benefits with. This is a situation that infiltrates work place relationships, long term buddies, casual acquaintances, students, neighbors, and every other combo of friendly forces.

There is nothing wrong with healthy sexual urges. What consenting adults choose to do is nobody's business. Casual sex between two (or more) willing friends can be everything from safe and normal, to the beginning of something more.

Or it can be the end of the friendship. And everything else.

It's been my experience that in general women handle casual sex much differently than men do. The women I've been with, and the women I have as friends, have all been fairly poor at maintaining friendships with sex-benefits or at having any kind of casual sexual relationships. It's my opinion that women - straight, bi, or gay - tend to fall in love with their lovers. Even the majority of the promiscuous women I've known were actually looking for something permanent.

It's also been my experience with the men I've dated and the men I have as friends, that they are much better at separating love and sex.

Both men and women fall into situations involving Friends with Benefits; gay, straight or bi. I'm just saying in my frame of reference that the men I know seem to have a more realistic grasp of what is actually happening then the women do.

One reason for this is that women assess people from the instant they meet them. They think: is this someone I want to date, want to spend my life with, want to never see again, or want to just be friends with.

When a woman puts you in the friend zone, thought has gone into it and it is generally a fairly final decision. This is why friends with benefits is a difficult thing with many women. Odds are if she's open to sleeping with you, it means she hasn't eliminated you from the potential life mate zone. It means you haven't been banished into the Friend Zone for ever. Yet. I heard somewhere a woman has decided within the first 5 minutes of knowing you, if she's ever going to sleep with you.

On the other side of things, men tend not to assess every person they meet immediately. Men tend to be more relaxed about this. They don't categorize too quickly. They wait and see how things develop.

Women tend to decide quickly exactly what your fate is in their relationship world. Men tend to wait and see. Assuming everyone is being honest, this sheds light on some stereo types like that old joke: What does a lesbian bring on a first date? A moving van.

Straight couples are the ones that seem to have the most trouble in the Friends with Benefits arena.

I'm sure there are exceptions. Hell, I'm one of them. But this is the basic outline.

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All text is original content by Veronica.

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