What the hell is a fubu?

What are fuck buddies? I think it's more accurate as a label than, "friends with benefits", if the nature of a relationship involves mainly sex - as no friendship is implied. I have taken note of this before, but probably I am more sentimental about friendship, than I am about sex. This puts me in terrifically awkward contortions whenever anyone asks me about fb/fwb arrangements.

The reason is, I think, most people compartmentalise their self-control hierarchies along the lines of something like, "sex and eroticism is less controlled by the ego, and more by the id", whereas "friendship and business is more controlled by the ego, and less by the id". I don't really have this distinction ... I'm quite whimsical about business, and all of friendship, including the subset of friendship which is sex, is just business to me.

So people who SAY they are looking for fb/fwb arrangements ACTUALLY mean that they want more conscious, self-controlled relationships, than when they would OTHERWISE be in less self-conscious, less self-controlled relationships. And then when I absentmindedly react along the lines of, WOW YOU WANNA BE FRIENDS / DO BUSINESS WITH ME, YES I AM READY FOR THIS LOVE, they tend to recoil in horror as that is not how they view their friendships. Paradoxically, when people ask me for love, I usually say that is just business, and that is also not what they like to call it - which is to say, the people looking for a fb/fwb should just tell me they are looking for love, to get the language they want from me.

Alas, I have lost too many friends this way. It is particularly difficult when friends' aversion to (verbal) intimacy cannot be detected because they experience trauma from the activity of verbal analysis. Because I fail to speak to their verbal needs, I therefore become unwelcome as a provider of their carnal ones as well.

Slash wrist cry.

Upon reflection, maybe I should treat people who ask for fb/fwb relationships immediately as AvPD cases until otherwise evidenced. This seems like a viable strategy.

Always seek to be kind / the first goal of therapy is relief.