Carrying on a casual fling can be great for your self-esteem, your mental wellbeing, and even your physical health (sex is good for you!). But if you’re not prepared for the rules and realities of it, you might embarrass yourself, or break your own heart (when that’s exactly what’s not supposed to happen). Let us walk you through the particulars.

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Ladies, at one point or another, we’ve all had that “back up guy” on deck in case we needed a quick date or some male company. You know the type: he’s more than a friend but nowhere near anyone we claim as our man. But have you ever wondered if you were someone else’s back up chick? In matters of the heart, lines can get blurred and many things can get lost in translation when you’re ignoring signs or being deceived, so here are some ways to tell if the guy you’re into is into you back, or if you’re simply his back up chick.

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Having a friend with benefits is one of the greatest perks of the modern age. You get all the physical and emotional health benefits of having regular sex, you keep your libido up between relationships, your self-esteem sky rockets, and you don’t have any of the emotional roller coasters of a real relationship. BUT, that’s only if you do things right. Here’s how:

Women are emotional beings whereas men are logical and more objective.

This has always been the rationale behind the differences between men and women, particularly when it comes to maneuvering through this often convoluted terrain we call love and relationships.  I always thought that to be bulls**t. If anyone ever doubt the emotional proclivity of men, they must have never sat in the presence of men watching sports or read a story about a man brutally killing his ex in a fit of jealous rage.

However, this hasn’t stopped folks from believing that women are not able to sustain friends with benefits relationships the way that men do. The basis has always been that women focus on the friendship, men on the benefits. And while it may start out with a lustful tryst, it eventually turns into more because you, as a woman, are emotional and thus prone to falling in love.  That’s the general belief anyway.

Last night, I was watching Friends with Benefits, a film that came out last year starring Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis. In the movie, Kunis plays a young and outgoing woman, who was recently dumped and currently works as a corporate headhunter.  As part of her job, she secures a job for Timberlake’s character as a photo editor at GQ magazine, who too was recently dumped. Anyway, besides a working relationship, the two soon form a friendship where they party, play Wii and write ish all over each other’s faces when one passed out drunk.

One night they are sitting on the couch, watching some sappy Hollywood rom-com (so Meta) when Kunis’s character says: “God I miss sex. Sometimes you just need it; it’s like cracking your neck.” To which, Timberlake’s character agreed and offered this insight: “Two people should have sex like people play tennis. Two people play a game and shake hands and go with their s**t.”  Then Justin suggested that they should “play tennis” together. After swearing on a bible app on Kunis’ iPad, the two agreed to have unemotional, uncommitted sex while just being friends. Without spoiling the entire film, let’s just say that their arrangement doesn’t exactly end the same way it started.

But that’s Hollywood for you: they certainly know how to wrap things up in the most optimistic and simplistic packages. In real life though, no strings-attached sex is a little bit more complicated than it implies. I have heard plenty of horror stories from girlfriends and strangers alike about their own misgivings with no strings-attached sex. While sex does not always lead to intimacy, it can often form a feeling of it and can sometimes actually make it occur. And despite initially believing that they could handle the situation, eventually those emotions would kick in, which would cause their lover to either lose interest or distance themselves. Next comes months of frustration, disappointment and in some cases, personal blame for involving yourself in a sex with benefits arrangement.

I also know from my own personal experience in the past where I had fallen head over heels with a guy, whose relationship stopped at my respective bedroom. I remember it un-fondly: we met at a community festival where we both were volunteering for a local non-profit. After a day of flirting, by the end of the night, I was butt naked on my couch. We would see each other several times afterwards, both in purely platonic situations and in more intimate settings. However, after I had confessed to him that my feelings were stronger than what we did with the lights off, he began to alter his interactions with me.  Let’s just say that we didn’t end up like Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake.

This kind of confusion and drama is what normally happens when folks engage in relationships with people that they actually want to have something more real and sustainable with. They think that by making themselves available on their lover’s terms, their lover will one day see the light and realize that the person whom they were looking for was in their lives the whole time. But it rarely works out like that, now does it?

But on the other hand, while anyone can make themselves physically available, those who have had some past trauma from prior relationships and even from childhood or are simply are too busy for a relationship do not have the wherewithal to maintain or invest in a personal and more emotional relationship. And unfortunately, it is the person, who above all undeniable evidence holds out hopes that, their love – or in this case sex – will conquer all previous damage, who will ultimately bear the brunt of the damage.  I know this from once being the hoper and eventually becoming the emotionally unavailable party.

Yes, it is true that women too can be unemotionally unavailable, which means that they too are fully capable of entering into not only a no strings attached sexual relationship but purely platonic friendships with the opposite sex. While the desire to love and be loved by one person is a legitimate desire that many women have, for some women that ambition is not currently in the cards. As such, they are fully prepared to play the field or sex whoever they want to while they work on their internal issues – both free from guilt or commitment.

But generally speaking, those kind of arrangements rarely fair well for anyone.  For one, there are way too many risks including pregnancy and the threat of STDs. But even if you are the most protected person on the planet, there is no hiding from the fact that folks, regardless of gender, are naturally emotional beings. And eventually someone will end up investing feelings. And that’s when the real drama begins…

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