'Friends with Benefits' sex does no psych harm - profs Boffins in Minnesota have a message for young adults: sleeping around is OK. Your prospects in terms of psychological health should you indulge in casual flings are every bit as good as they would be if you bizarrely chose to waste your wild-oats years in one or more doleful and ultimately doomed monogamous relationships. …
You seem to mix up "friends with benefits" and "sleeping around".
The first implies a more-or-less longstanding agreement between two people to quasi-regularly hit the sack together, the second may be one night stands and all such and can happen even in committed relations (or so I heard).
"The first implies a more-or-less longstanding agreement between two people..."
Perhaps that should read "The first implies a more-or-less longstanding agreement between two or more people..."
Hell, for that matter, even long-standing romantic relationships can happen between more than two people.
I know it wasn't in 1990, 'cause I was in a US-funded sex ed class at that time, and they said all sorts of things, including "condom", "diaphragm", "IUD", "nonoxynol-9", et al.
I've tried doing some research, but all I can find is contradictory assertions by advocacy groups -- half of which imply that the US funds ONLY abstinence-only classes; the other half implying that the US funds ONLY contraception-based sex education classes. That leads me to believe that it's more a state/local decision and these groups are selecting data to make this molehill look like a mountain.
However, as I've said, I haven't found any primary evidence. Can you provide primary evidence for your claim?
"I've tried doing some research, but all I can find is contradictory assertions by advocacy groups -- half of which imply that the US funds ONLY abstinence-only classes; the other half implying that the US funds ONLY contraception-based sex education classes."
The US Gov-funded sexual health programs are required to be abstinence-only based. It does not mean they can not mention contraceptions, they just can not "advocate" their use. "Advocate" is, of course, loosely translated anywhere from "mentioning it at all" to the more reasonable "You should always use a [insert-contraception-of-choice-here] in all sexual encounters" lecture. They can simply mention the existence of--and the purported (supposedly reported) effectiveness of--the various contraceptive options.
A case-and-point of "advocacy" rulings was the termination of a local school teacher for handing out pro-gay/lesbian information during a sexual health class.
-Paris, because we all know what would be in her "sexual health" curriculum.
Might I suggest Victorian regulations in a "melting-pot" of a country is just bollocks?
...but not on this "evidence". You'd have to study people (not just a one off quiz) throughout their adult life to see what effects having multiple sexual partners has. You'd also need to take into account other factors of course. Doesn't make for such a snappy headline though does it?
Another great bit of "science" then :-)
They asked some twenty year olds if 'no commitment' sex had any downside and they said no. No shit Sherlock, ask them again when they are sixty and maybe had a chance to review their life choices.
Mind you I'm not saying they are wrong.
P.S. Anyone looking for an smelly short ugly old bloke as 'friend with benefits'?
Well, I'm 50ish, had my share[1] of casual sex in my teens and 20s, and one long-term "friends with benefits" mid-20s thru' mid-30s, one child resulted. I'm still a friend of hers, and the kid calls me "daddy", has her second degree, and is married. I'm in regular contact with both of them. All three of us are sane, IMO.
Today, I'm happily married to a woman I met in my late 30s, and intend to stay that way. The ONLY regret I have about my past is that I never adopted my daughter (I am listed on the birth certificate, but the mom didn't want me to be "official" at the time ... today, she regrets it, too).
Sex is a thing humans do. Once the hormones start doing their job, it's inevitable. Trying to suppress it is pointless ... And probably contra-indicated, when you consider that rebelliousness is also a normal state of adolescence. I am NOT advocating youngsters fucking like bunnies, but I suspect that ramping up on realistic, non-judgemental sex-ed, and proper access to contraception, would be a good idea on a long-term basis.
Note that I realize that I am a "sample of one", and thus a testimonial, not a scientific survey ... but I'm far from alone. Contrary to what the VeryVocalMinority[tm] bible-thumpers would have you believe, not all Americans have hangups about sex and the consequences thereof.
[1] Maybe more than my share, considering I was/am a computer/networking nerd ... It probably doesn't hurt that I was raised in a barn ;-)
Minnesota seemed an unlikely place for picking up sailors, since it's almost in the dead centre of North America, but then I realised that it does have wet bits: it adjoins one of the Great Lakes. So there might be a sailor round there, though not a salty one.
Paris? Well, she has exposed wet bits too.
It becomes obvious that federal [insert topic here] policy is arse backward and reflects only the silly opinions of a few megalomaniacal busybodies and lacks real information and hard data. What next, will we learn that "gateway drugs" aren't real but "gateway suppliers" are? Stay tuned for the next episode of "No shit, Sherlock."
Amazing... absolutely amazing.. the full article states that the results are from a MAIL-IN questionnaire and it only happened over the course of one year. This take into account very little of the actual psychological profile of a person. This is a terrible horrendously done study. The release of this kind of information has a tremendous effect on people before of the use of the internet. This survey will be dug up and used as a bat against people how have more sense to realize that the actions you take DO have a psychological effect on you.
They might not show up in a mail-in survey, but they will show up in how you act in the real world. What happened to science these days?
> sexual activity outside of a marital relationship is likely to have harmful psychological consequences.
Which mean that those setting the policy are jealous that "kids today" are having a better time than they had, and that they're not going to stand for it. Kids today should be made to suffer just like... and so on.
Hey if "kids today" can managed to have a better time than I managed then good luck them, perhaps there is some progress in the world.
....and I thought everyone here was a virgin.
And what about the long-term effect of spending one's 'salad days' nurturing a 'conquesting' mentality at the expense of learning the tricks of how 2 people can spend their lives together without killing each other?
Quantify that!
HI, its time for a wake up call, there is no new sin under the sun that hasn't gone on for thousands of years. Wake up you are shortening your life living in sin. I hope and pray you realilze this before its too late and you die. Accept Jesus Christ now!
Sin according to whose religion, Kemosabe?
Do you follow all the laws in Leviticus & Deuteronomy? No? Then you are UNCLEAN, sinner!
While I have your attention, which of the three gospels that mention Jesus's last words actually got it right?[1] How do you justify the fact that at least two of them are obviously in error?
[1] That's Matthew 27:46, Luke 23:46 & John 19:30, if you didn't know, and I suspect you didn't. While you are at it, why can't the gospels agree on what the sign over Jesus's head said?
> Do you follow all the laws in Leviticus & Deuteronomy? No? Then you are UNCLEAN, sinner!
Absolutely right! That's the point. The whole concept is that the person has failed to meet the requirements of the law and the lamb takes the punishment for the wrong-doing.
Sleeping around does no harm... and we can see that there's been no impact on the stability of the family, no increase in grief-causing, financially-devastating divorce, no increase in single-parent families (with its associated requirement for the main care-giver to work), youth depression cases etc since the 1950's, despite the introduction and widespread use of contraception which facilitates sexual choices based on whim, in the 1960's. Nope, nothing to note here!
Did I mention that NuLab's survey said people want ID cards, 8/10 cats prefer whiskers and my anti-wrinkle cream takes off 10 years for the low, low price of...
Ooh let's tell people what they want to hear and watch the grant-money flow in!
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