Does sleeping with a friend ruin the friendship – or could it make the connection stronger? A viral post claims that sex between friends usually improves the relationship. The story is irresistible. The numbers, however, deserve a closer look.
One version of the claim says that 68% of people become closer, 35% experience no change and only 19% stop being friends. There is a small problem: those figures add up to 122%. They cannot be three mutually exclusive outcomes from the same survey.
Fortunately, there is actual research on what happens when friendship and sex overlap. And the findings are more interesting than the headline.
What happens when friends with benefits stop having sex?
In a 2013 study published in Archives of Sexual Behavior, psychologists Jesse Owen, Frank Fincham and Megan Manthos surveyed 308 university students about friends-with-benefits relationships. The median participant age was 19, so this was a study of young adults, not a representative portrait of every age group or culture.
The researchers found that most of these relationships continued as friendships after the sexual element ended. About half of the participants said they felt just as close to their former sexual partner, or closer, afterward.
That is a useful corrective to the familiar warning that sex automatically destroys a friendship. It does not mean sex necessarily improves it. Some friendships became less close, and some ended.
One detail is particularly revealing: participants who no longer remained friends were more likely to describe the arrangement as primarily sex-based rather than friendship-based. They also reported more feelings of deception. The study found associations, not proof that one factor directly caused the outcome.
So where does the famous 68% come from?
There really is a figure close to 68% in relationship research. But it measures something else entirely.
In research first published in 2021, Danu Anthony Stinson and colleagues looked at how romantic relationships begin. Across seven samples involving 1,897 people, a weighted average of 68.2% reported that they were friends before becoming romantic partners.
That tells us that friends becoming lovers is common. It does not tell us that sex improved 68% of friendships, that 68% of friends-with-benefits arrangements ended in marriage, or that sex with friends is objectively better.
These are separate questions. A romance that grows out of friendship is not the same thing as a casual sexual arrangement between two people who intend to remain friends.
Is sex with a friend actually better?
It is tempting to say yes. Friends may already know how to make each other laugh. They may feel less pressure to perform, have more trust, or find it easier to say what they want. These are plausible advantages, but the studies above do not establish that friendship produces more satisfying sex.
And familiarity is not a substitute for a conversation. One person may imagine an occasional encounter with no change to the friendship. The other may be quietly hoping it is the beginning of a relationship. Neither expectation is inherently wrong. Leaving the difference unspoken can make things painful.
The conversation worth having before the first kiss
Before changing a friendship, there are a few questions worth asking out loud:
- What are we actually looking for? Pleasure, curiosity, a relationship, or something we cannot yet name?
- What happens if one person wants to stop? Can we accept that answer without pressure?
- What do we tell other people? Privacy can matter as much as intimacy.
- What if one of us develops feelings? Is there room to discuss it without pretending nothing has changed?
No conversation can guarantee that feelings will stay neatly where we put them. But clear expectations and ongoing consent give both people a better chance to make an informed choice.
The verdict
Sex does not have to destroy a friendship. It does not automatically strengthen one, either. The evidence supports a less dramatic – and more human – conclusion: friends can remain friends after sex, while the outcome varies considerably.
Perhaps the most attractive part of the idea is not that friendship guarantees better sex. It is that a good friendship already contains something intimacy needs: the ability to be honest when the situation stops being simple.
Research: Owen, Fincham & Manthos (2013), Friendship After a Friends With Benefits Relationship; Stinson, Cameron & Hoplock (2021), The Friends-to-Lovers Pathway to Romance. This article is an editorial interpretation of published studies, not a claim about the people shown in the illustrative photograph.
Cover photograph: Yan Krukau / Pexels, used under the Pexels License. The people pictured are models and are not presented as study participants.