Friends with benefits and a free sexual relationship exist only rarely

Friends with benefits - a rather temporary exception

Friendship with sexual benefits is the exception to the rule that everything comes at a cost. A friend gives fun and sex, expecting nothing in return. This sexual interaction is long-term or repeated multiple times and is preceded by a rational decision. It is not a fling under the influence of circumstances. Friendship with benefits is not to be confused with a normal love affair or an affair. It is similar to a love affair but without the emotional commitment - without the energy for feelings - without the emotional baggage.

In my experience, it's usually a temporary relationship for some objective reason. Or an imbalanced relationship where only one partner is happy and the other would like a relationship with a friend or another person.

Friendships with benefits are more common after the age of 40 or 50. Either they are divorced or engaged unused partners or, as a rule, an older man helps a younger woman with children financially. That's where it even easily spills over into a relationship.

I've had friendships with benefits with two girls. It's a huge boost of energy, health and confidence. It's relaxing, healthy fun. I estimate maybe 20% of us will experience it. The main downside is the risk of emotional breakdown of the psyche of one or of the mates. But if the friendship with benefits doesn't emotionally shatter the feelings of either friend, it's a blast. In the future, when people have more healthy self-esteem and don't need to cling to others as their crutch or fortress, friendships with benefits will become much more common than they are now.

In a true friendship with benefits, neither partner is financially or emotionally dependent on the other, or more accurately, has no emotional or financial expectations of the other and expects only to have fun. Both are merely taking sex and psychic energy out of the relationship and basically not paying for it. It's high energy and very rare.

Even more intense is the cohabitation of friends with benefits in the same household. I've only experienced a hint of it. A friend was going to study abroad after the holidays. Due to lack of time, she didn't want to look for a boyfriend here anymore. We had arranged for her to spend the holidays with me learning English, drinking wine and having sex. When we arranged it, we were in an ecstatic haze and very excited. I cancelled for objective reasons beyond the two of us that I cannot disclose. If I had to go back and do one thing differently in my life, it would be this.

Free sexual relations exist only very rarely

A free relationship is based on emotional fidelity and a relatively large amount of sexual freedom. Of course, it must be on a mutually voluntary basis. A mistress or sex slave is definitely not a free sexual relationship :). A free relationship is a close companionship with benefits. It is similarly unstable for the same reasons, but involves feelings separate from sex and is therefore much more rare than friendships with benefits.

It's not a sexual deviation, but it's definitely a fairly large deviation from the social norm. A free relationship is not to be confused with flirting - a casual sexual adventure or infidelity. A loose relationship is also not to be confused with a dysfunctional or ending relationship. An open relationship is not even an occasional visit to a swingers club together, a swapping of partners, or an occasional permitted sexual adventure with another person, but it may be close to that line.

There is even less demand for a loose relationship than for a friendship with benefits. Neither partner usually wants a free relationship. My guess is some 1%, including those who will reasonably tolerate infidelity. Or maybe less. In my lifetime I've spoken intimately with maybe 400 men and 200 women. One man and one woman besides me wanted a mutually free relationship - the nymphomaniac in the customer's story who was not in favor of free relationships and only accepted sex with others. I am, by the way, also a satyr (the term for male nymphomania). That works out to 0.33% people with a desire for a mutual free relationship. A unilateral free relationship would be desired by maybe 20% men :). Physically maybe 40%, but they realize the moral unsustainability of a one-sided free relationship. There will be significantly fewer women with a desire for a one-sided free relationship.

People with a desire for an open relationship are just out of luck. The probability of meeting a man and a woman who prefer an open relationship is 0.33%x0.33 % i.e. 1:91827. There are no dating sites for open relationships and I have not seen anyone looking in this way. I repeat a sexual free relationship is not a fling, an affair or infidelity. But let's assume that such people are sought via the internet. Then the likelihood of them meeting and having a relationship would go up an order of magnitude or two. Thus, out of 900 - 9000 couples, only one couple lives in a mutually and voluntarily wanted free relationship. I don't know of such a couple, nor have I ever heard of them. It's much more common to have 3 or more people living together. But you only read about multiple people having sex once every few years. And you don't know how much of it is really preferred and how much is just a life situation that you respect for convenience or necessity.

Is there any way to overcome a partner's reluctance to have a free relationship? No. Sometimes it is only possible to temporarily deform the relationship, e.g. in the style of: Give me money and do whatever you want. Your partner continues to live with you for a while for certain reasons or out of inertia, but is dissatisfied. Such a deformation of the partner is not moral. Moreover, it is no longer a free relationship, but a form of abuse or use of money or status.

It is also possible to imagine a free relationship where one party voluntarily leaves sexual freedom to the other party without dependency and does not demand it. For example, for me, the most powerful sexual experiences were when I left my girlfriend to my friends (sexual deviance gandaulism). My wife's sexual freedom while maintaining my fidelity is voluntarily acceptable to me. Better something than nothing :). But my wife doesn't want to hear about it :)).

Loose relationships actually work to some extent in couples where one or both of them feed on sex (typically pornographic couples). There, however, it is a life situation or necessity rather than a preferred relationship choice.

There are also small cultural communities in the world where there is greater sexual freedom, for example until marriage. However, it is more about testing partners and gaining experience at a young age and not about free sexual relations in the sense we understand them in today's society.