WHY ARE YOU AGAINST FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS MISSY? IS THIS TYPE OF RELATIONSHIP THE SLIPPERY SLOPE TO BEING A MISTRESS?

Question for Missy:

Missy, I want to know why you're against Friends With Benefits  I'm 21 and a senior in college.  I'm smart and I use contraception.  I have two friends I have sex with.  We think this is a good way to avoid having sex with partners who would want more with us.  We're not ready to get married to anyone.

Becky

UCLA - Los Angeles

Answer from Missy:

I'm for Choice and respect that the Friends With Benefits lifestyle is your choice at this time in your life. However, it's possible that you might be missing out on being completely available to someone else who might be an excellent choice as a partner in your life in your youthful stage.  Let's face it that as the years go by it's more difficult to meet someone to partner with, not impossible but more difficult. Many college students find their first partners while at school.  After that is a career building period, with many feeling themselves established seeking a first marriage in their late twenties. Into your thirties a great number of previously available potential partners are already in commitments.  I tend to think a woman should consider being a Mistress only after having experienced their twenties - early thirties. By then a person probably knows themselves well enough.

Right now you're sort of man sharing and maybe you'll also find that an interesting way to live your life as a Mistress.  Here at Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot we continue to try to define what a 21st Century Mistress is or is not.  We know being a Mistress does not necessarily mean adultery or being involved with a person who is married.  We also know that there are many who give it a try and do not like it.  The days of the Classic Mistress, a woman who is fully supported for her lifetime by a rich married man, may be over.  We also know that the best mistresses are not known to us. a

I tend to think that a woman should experience her sexuality and figure out where she's at with it before she partners. I also tend to think this, which I recently shared with a man I know.  I said to him - and to you - and my readers - that idealistically I think it should be that people get to experience loving in many ways and with many people - with everyone in the know and unbothered by jealousy - but pragmatically we choose commitment to have and hold family.  In the Western world the majority do marry and attempt to restrict their lives to just one partner, making those in Open Relationships or who share a partner with someone else in the minority.

And though there are women who Keep men, and there are women who have more than one lover at a time, it's usually men who have arrangements such as this.

So check in with yourself Becky, and ask yourself if you're the type to happily remain independent and relatively unattached, and what it would be to have great sex with someone you love rather than with a friend you like.  Will you be OK when one or both of your Friends With Benefits partners end it with you because they found someone Special?

Missy