Dear Anna,
I slept with a good friend a few weeks ago, and now it seems like he’s ignoring me. Texts go unanswered, plans canceled and, overall, he just seems emotionally distant. Like, what the hell? I’m not trying to boyfriend him. I just want my friend back.
—Benefitless in Boystown
Dear BIB,
It’s tempting to react to a friend/gray-area-sex-buddy’s emotional distance by trying to close that distance yourself. But this rarely works. The more you push, the more he’s going to pull away, which is not what you want and not what will get him to come around and watch platonic “Game of Thrones” marathons with you again. So take a deep breath and step back. Sometimes the best thing we can do is nothing. Trust that he’ll come when he’s ready.
Perhaps your vagina gave him some feelz. Perhaps he’s dealing with other emotional operatics and simply hasn’t had time to give yours attention. Perhaps he feels the sex meant something different to you than it did to him.
We can’t know until he offers you that information. In the meantime, find solace in other friends and activities, and try like hell not to fixate and wonder and beat yourself up. You are only responsible for yourself, after all. He’s not being the greatest friend to you right now, it’s true, but you cannot control that.
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Sex is a messy and ragged endeavor. Whereas friendship is fairly straightforward, sex, whether we mean it to or not, comes with its own set of baggage. In fact, a study published by Kendra Knight, a communication professor at DePaul University, found that friends-with-benefits relationships offer their own cruel set of paradoxes. Perhaps the most depressing finding was the tendency of one partner to shut down when the other wants to talk. Communication, which is insanely important (in every relationship, but especially those involving sex), was thought to be too serious and complicated for FWB situations, which are supposed to be casual and nonstop fun like beer commercials.
In a more heartening study, researchers surveyed almost 1,000 college students about their FWB experiences, and 80 percent of the 300 who had a FWB relationship that had already ended said they were still friends, according to Psychology Today. So the odds are in your favor.
You are completely in the right to want to talk to your friend about what happened because adult conversations, regardless of how awkward or fraught they may be, are the key to making sex between friends work, even if it’s not going to be a repeat endeavor. After you’ve given him a little time and space, initiate a conversation in which you reinstate your boundaries and intentions, and let him know it’s not cool to disappear on you immediately after you’ve heard the wounded animal cries that constitute each other’s orgasms.
Anna Pulley is a RedEye contributor.