Sex and Friendship - Can friends be lovers?

What happens when the line between friendship and sex is crossed, when friends become lovers all of a sudden? Perhaps Dr Evil said it best in Austin Powers when he sleeps with his evil henchwoman, Frau Farbissina - “It just got a little bit weird, didn’t it!’

The Christmas Party Moment

We can spend years erecting the most intricate emotional boundaries, reinforced by complex sexual undercurrents, and coded with the most cryptic communication. We feel completely protected.

Then one night at a Christmas party, or over a heart-felt outpouring about a relationship breakdown, a random thought just comes into your head. Perhaps all these months of talking about ex partners, and discussion about life and love weren’t just a purely platonic exchange. Perhaps I didn’t find this friend attractive to begin with, but now I think about it, I really love the twinkle in my friend’s eye. I love the fact when my friend says something cheeky, or when he looks at me knowingly when I’m about to get angry. Gasp, shock, denial! Maybe I have feelings for my friend.

Then suddenly the sexual undercurrent become like a bursting damn. The cryptic communication is cracked and your affectionate comments sound like a car alarm filling the midnight streets. The barrier between sex and friendship, lovers and friends comes crashing down, and suddenly you feel like Eve in the Garden of Eden, embarrassingly aware of your own emotional nakedness.

Crossing the Line

The onslaught of these feelings brings a new strangeness to your relationship. Conversations that were once meaningless exchanges become significant beyond words, bouncing in your mind again and again. His little barbs are like swords through the heart, and intimate jokes leave you light-headed. Oh my god - what a romantic nightmare! You can bare no more. Over a couple drinks, you share your feelings. He seems confused and unsure, but the passion is alive and intense, and that night you finally step across that line – the line you both swore you would never cross, become lovers from being just friends.

This typical story has many endings. Some read like Mills and Boon novels, others like Shakespearean tragedy, but many end up in that messy awkward middle, stuck between the comfortable distance of friendship and awkward vulnerability of sex or love.

A happy ending?

So, what’s the solution to this age-old tale? Can there be a happy ending after all? Can we retreat back to safety, away from the no-man’s land between sex, love and friendship? Or are we forever doomed to walk the earth, never knowing quite where we stand?

This is not an easy problem to solve. When we encounter this situation, the first thing we have to do is be honest with ourselves. What do we really want from this friendship? Have we mistaken emotional closeness with sexual attraction? Do I really want a love relationship of that sort with this person, or were they just there for me at a time when I needed them?

I think part of the problem we confront in such situations is that relationships don’t always fit into nice neat boxes. Sometimes we feel sexually attracted to people we couldn’t really form a friendship with. At other times we love people, but just don’t feel sexually attracted to them. Yet sexual attraction and emotions are never static. There is a fluidity and instability about attraction that can leave us unsure at times of what on earth we really feel. We have a belief, often informed by Hollywood romance, about how love and relationship form from being friends. Reality can be much messier.

The Golden Rule

My golden rule here is quite simple - never rush into things. Many mistakes are made by simply jumping in at the deep end without giving time for the murkiness to dissipate. There is nothing like time to give clarity.

by Bede Nicholson

There is no rush to decide whether sex or love between friends means more or if it means just that – sex.