F*ck Buddies: Good for You, or Good for All of Us?

Sigmund Freud was famous for pointing out the sexual symbolism in everyday acts; polite society was grossed out.  “Respectable people” said he was a dangerous nut. Yet, when he opened a meeting of his disciples by putting a big stogie in his mouth he reminded them that, “sometime a cigar is just a good smoke.”

I applaud this well reasoned approach, and does him one better.  So too with sex, I say.  Yeah, yeah, sex with love is special and all that, but can’t a good lay sometimes just be good sex?  And aren’t we all pro sex?

Look at what one of Carl Jung’s followers had to say on the subject:

Sex without love is an animal relationship that doesn’t last. At a certain point both feel that it is empty and it gives them nothing more than an ephemeral pleasure.

Sex without love is pure immorality, because there is no respect for the human body when there is no feeling between the couple. It is also craziness, because it leads to more immorality and absurdity.

Think about prostitution, treason, rape, all the violent manifestations of immorality and absurdity of our world, and you’ll realize that sex without any feeling or any spiritual relation between the couple can only provoke much damage to the human psyche.

Most mental illnesses have their origin in illegal and immoral love affairs that have very tragic consequences.

Pure immorality? Treason and rape? The end of life as we know it?  Get real and grow up!  Look at history.  Look at the “natural” world.

Biologists distinguish between “genetic monogamy”, which means exclusivity of mating arrangements between partners, as opposed to “social monogamy”, in which mutually exclusive pair-bonding doesn’t require reproductive exclusivity. While “genetic monogamy” is fairly rare across animal species, “social monogamy” is common among birds but atypical of mammals.

History shows that most societies recognize this; while they openly promote both social and genetic monogamy, they typically tolerate social polygamy with a wink.  There have always been brothels, every army has “camp followers”, and without love affairs there’d be almost no literature.

In the interest of accuracy, I did an informal and totally non-scientific poll.  By a margin of 934567 to 1, men (when not in the presence of significant others) have no problem with casual sex among consenting life forms.  (The 1 no vote was from Richard Nixon.)   Women are split, with some feeling that copulation without relation is degradation.  Interestingly, these are often the gals who most stridently demand gender equality.  Even 4 out of 5 dentists recommend casual sex to their patients who have sex.

Now, I consider myself a radical feminist on the subject of sexual equality.  I believe there ought to be a 28th amendment to the US constitution guaranteeing continued stimulation when one, or more, members of a sexual liaison don’t come.

Sex is a major source of joy and good, clean fun.  Obviously people in committed relationships violate that commitment if they dabble outside that relationship without the knowledge and consent of the other member.  Aside from that, hook-ups should be available without preconditions, just like it is among bonobos or traditional Polynesian societies.  Good clean fun.

More than half of all US marriages end in divorce.  Add abandonment and murder and the number is more like 96%.  (OK maybe that’s a slight exaggeration, but I’m sticking with the unscientific thing here.)    Imagine how many of those failed unions were founded mostly on lust, and how much misery and expense-regrets to all you divorce lawyers-could have been avoided if sex among consenting adult life forms weren’t such a big deal.  Poor old Eliot Spitzer would still be the respected Governor of NY instead of just another talk show whiner.  Men and women would openly share sex tips with each other, instead of whispering them in single gender cliques.

That’s why I like the “friends with benefits” concept.  You don’t need love, and you don’t need “commitment” or false promises uttered in the “heat” of the moment.  And it beats anonymous whoring around.  You don’t go to a ballgame with an anonymous hooker (unless you’re Larry David and you really want to use the HOV lane), so wouldn’t it be better to boink your friend than screw a stranger?  This would amend the premise of “When Harry Met Sally” that big boys and big girls can’t just be friends.  We’d expand our friends group and all get more of it and better at it.  Does that sound like a bad thing to you?  I know I’m not alone here.  Read this poem:

Sex Without Love

by Sharon Olds

How do they do it, the ones who make love
without love? Beautiful as dancers,
gliding over each other like ice-skaters
over the ice, fingers hooked
inside each other’s bodies, faces
red as steak, wine, wet as the
children at birth whose mothers are going to
give them away. How do they come to the
come to the come to the God come to the
still waters, and not love
the one who came there with them, light
rising slowly as steam off their joined
skin? These are the true religious,
the purists, the pros, the ones who will not
accept a false Messiah, love the
priest instead of the God. They do not
mistake the lover for their own pleasure,
they are like great runners: they know they are alone
with the road surface, the cold, the wind,
the fit of their shoes, their over-all cardio-
vascular health–just factors, like the partner
in the bed, and not the truth, which is the
single body alone in the universe
against its own best time.

Go Sharon! And go screw a friend, but in a nice way!

[Editor's note:  This article, written by Max Rantz, was meant to be humorous.  The "study" referenced did not take place, except maybe in the mind of Max Rantz.]