“Benefits” used to mean life insurance and 401Ks. Now it means sex.
And, yes, Friends With Benefits is so much more fun than actuaries. But here’s the question: If he’s a friend, and you’re, the benefit—or visa versa, or either way—will it go anywhere? I guess what I mean is, if you like him, will you ruin things by being just a benefit rather than the investment? When Elaine tried it back in the Seinfeld days with Jerry, the whole thing was a big nada, nada, nada.
Anthony Paik, PhD, a sociologist at the University of Iowa, set out to answer that question in his new study. Using 1995 data on 783 adults ages 18 to 60, Paik found that one out of five had gotten together with their most recent partner via friends-with-benefits or hook-up sex. He also found that these weren’t particularly faithful couplings. “For women, if you start with casual sex, there’s a 44 percent higher chance you’ll end up in a non-exclusive relationship in comparison to those who start out in a serious relationship,” says Paik. By that he means that you’ll have multiple lovers; your partner is even more likely (48 percent) to cat around. Jumping into bed within the first week of meeting a guy similarly predicted a non-monogamous future.
Mind you, this is data from 1995. Today, supposedly, FWBs and hookups are even more rampant. And if drive-through sex is not the best route to the altar, as Paik’s study suggests, you can just see the writing on the spreadsheet…. husbands going the way of pay phones, Father Knows Best returns as The Orgy Bunch, the whole, sad, “demise of dating,” as one New York Times op-ed put it…
“I don’t agree.”
Hello? That’s Helen Fisher, PhD, on the line. One of the best-known love scientists around (and a biological anthropologist at Rutgers), she’s written five books on the subject, the last of which is called Why Him? Why Her?
So why, then, doesn’t she agree?
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