So, last week I made a video (did you think I was hot? How about serious? A person you could ask for advice? Or, like I did recently, did you let your own biases take over and think, after seeing an image of me: wow, that ruins the whole thing. I am embarrassed that I did exactly that with a short story collection I was really enjoying until I spotted the author photo on the back flap and, being the bastard that I sometimes am, simply was too distracted by the horrible shirt and the trying-to-be-flirty smile and the obvious weight problem and in-my-opinion poor hair choice of the poor young talent). Right, so, in this video I read one of the first letters I ever received here at Smart People on Bad Days and asked you to weigh in with advice of your own. Click here to read the original letter and all the great reader advice.
Many of you came through admirably.
Thanks for the advice!
And in light of what you’ve said, I’ll reconsider my original answer to the question. Let’s talk about what I got right and what I got wrong –and what you, dear readers, did too.
First, here’s what I wrote to Jessica all those months ago:
Dear Jessica,
I am a big fan of people fucking their friends.
I think, when done properly, it can lead to a deeper friendship, a less desperate couple of people, or even a great relationship. But we all know (because we have been told a thousands times) that, when the aftermath is not handled properly, it can cause all sorts of distress.
In the movies, when two long-time friends have sex, there is only one thing that can happen. The two friends think they have made a terrible mistake, there is some misunderstanding, one of them feels deeply hurt, and then, after a dramatic fight, they fall in loooooooooooooove.
Unsurprisingly, things are little more complicated in real life.
Sex can change things. But it doesn’t have to. You know what always changes things, though? When we act out of fear. And it sounds to me like you’re afraid of two things: 1. Your friend’s feelings for you. and 2. Potential awkwardness.
Your friend’s feelings for you are a little scary right now mostly because you don’t know what they are. You say you are unsure of what you want from your friend, but “pretty sure he wants to just be friends” with you. If that’s true, that’s not so bad. You loved being his friend before you boned him, and that doesn’t have to change. I think you’re afraid you might want him more than he wants you –afraid either that the friendship is more important to you than it is to him, or that you might want to date him and he doesn’t reciprocate those feelings. You feel vulnerable. And most of us are afraid of being vulnerable. But the thing is,you can’t know how he feels or what he wants because you have not asked him.
It’s okay to not know how you feel.
And it’s okay to be nervous about what he feels. You clearly value his friendship and you don’t want the fact that you did it to mess that up. But sex very rarely ruins relationships. Misunderstandings and bad behavior ruins relationships. So clear this shit up before anyone behaves badly.
One time, I was nervous about having my good friend, who was my ex-boyfriend, meet my brand-new boyfriend. I said to my friend, “Won’t it just be painfully awkward.” He said, “Amy, life is painfully awkward.” I have always remembered those words of wisdom. Awkward happens. But you are strong (and your friend probably is too), and you will survive the awkward. You can’t avoid it anyway. Things are already awkward between the two of you. It’s not like he hasn’t noticed that you don’t snuggle him and do cute shit with him anymore. He might even be hurt by that. So you need to explain, and tell him the whole complicated mess of your uncertainty and fondness and horniness and apprehension. And you need to listen to him tell you what he feels, too.
So: call him up, tell him you have to talk.
Make him come to your place. Have a drink or two if you need to. And then spill your guts. You’ll either end up snuggly and cute, still confused but somewhat relieved, or fucking your brains out. Any of that is better than living with the uncertainty and the potential for fear-inspired bad behavior. Check out my pointers on “How to Have Fraught Conversations” if you think it will help. And good luck!
Now, I stick by my original point: I am still a big fan of people fucking their friends.
I think there are lots of different kinds of sexual relationships, and while a few of them are a bad idea and have disastrous/icky/overly-complicated results, that most of them work well. Humans get value from sex –love, or just fun, good touch, nice feelings. And humans get value from our friends. Combining the two can be potentially fraught, but much of life has fallout we can’t anticipate before hand. And that’s okay, as long as we deal with that fallout respectfully, patiently, and with equal parts pride and humility.
But, after reading what you had to say, I’m rethinking a few other things. For example, Dig Reader e-nonymous, despite some indications that s/he hates women, and, well, men, had this interesting tidbit to consider: “if he is straight and into you, (and really happy you finally got beyond the 7th grade heavy petting stage) he is probably having an aneurism right now. ‘Gee I spent years getting into her sweatpants and now she won’t say anything to me, what did I do wrong? Was I terrible?
It’s my penis, it’s tiny isn’t it?
She’s making fun of me to all her friends right now telling them what a tiny-penised-lousy-lay I am and I will never have sex again, OMG!’ Do you think he is going to bring it up? He’s a guy, he deals with his emotions the way chimps deal with poo; he either hides it or throws it around in a wild temper tantrum. ‘Conversations’ and ‘feelings’ are generally the girl’s job to bring up in a relationship, even a friend one.”
I was, it occurs to me now, certainly remiss not to examine the crazy head-games we play on ourselves and each other in the wake of any kind of dramatic event in our relationships. E-nonymous is right. This guy probably was sitting around meditating on his penis and his anxiety regarding Jessica’s assessment of the little man, and, more importantly of him generally. I’ll bet Jessica was doing the same thing, actually –penis or no. It is rarely pointed out, but true nonetheless, that women also experience performance anxiety.
GASP!
Women, despite the fact that we are told from a very early age that men are simply indiscriminately voracious and will be satisfied if they get to blow a load into a johnnie that is near one of our orifices, still sometimes worry about weather or not we’re a good lay. And even that gets all fucked up in our heads; one of the great new things women get to do with their brand-new post-feminist freedoms is get ourselves into fun societal double-binds. If we were a good lay, we think, does that make us easy? Obligated to spread ‘em every time we subsequently see the friend who we fucked? And if we weren’t –if sex was awkward or unfulfilling or less than earth-shaking, what did we do wrong? If we can’t get both of us off in bed, does that mean we’re not really a woman? What if we don’t want to do it again? Does that make us frigid? Or worse, a cock-tease? And if we do? SLUT!
And both Jessica and the friend she banged deserve to have a conversation that clears the air. Even if they don’t talk overtly about whether or not the sex they had was good, an honest conversation between the two of them will at least go some way to assuaging the
“OMG! S/he is making fun of me to all our friends!”
feelings that e-nonymous correctly posits are probably swamping both of their poor young-people frontal lobes.
And unfortunately, e-nonymous is probably also right when s/he points out that Jessica’s man-friend isn’t going to be the one to start the conversation. I categorically reject that idea that “‘Conversations’ and ‘feelings’ are generally the girl’s job to bring up in a relationship, even a friend one.” Women have enough to do, thank you very much, without also being professionally in charge of men’s ability to express an emotion. However, it’s true that talking about feelings has traditionally been more the purview of women than of men –which, again, is retrograde and damaging to people of all genders at this point. There are lots of us who, as e-nonymous correctly and creatively points out, use emotions the way monkeys use shit: we wallow in them or hurl them in exasperation at other people. And the thing is, we can only control our own behavior. So Jessica, being the person who wrote to the column, is going to have to bite the bullet and bring this shit up if she doesn’t want it flung at her and doesn’t want to smear herself unhelpfully in it.
On the other hand, reader Jen Choi writes that she’s had some success with “brush[ing the whole sex thing] off like it was nothing.” Which kinda makes sense to me. I mean, I’m all for people talking. Shit, I never shut up.
But sometimes, we don’t need to verbally process everything to death.
The fact is, Jessica was concerned enough about the aftermath of her assignation to write to an advice column. So it seemed to me at the time that silence was causing her pain and anxiety. Hence, my insistence that the two of them talk it out. But I do want to go on the record as saying that Ms. Choi is sometimes right: some shit will just blow over. And that’s as it should be. The only really bad reason for being quiet is fear.
I’m also gonna go ahead an tip my hand here and just say that the Zach who commented on last week’s post is the same friend of mine who, many, many years ago told me that “life is painfully awkward.” It is enormously gratifying to me to see that he is still true to form. And still right. Sometimes things are awkward between friend or lovers. But we survive. There is no need to fear the strange conversations we all have to have sometimes.
And finally: if the best advice of the week award goes to Paige for simply saying “keep your wits about you,” the worst advice can probably be credited to Meghan. Although, even that has its place. For years, every time I rode the Orange line out to Sullivan Square I’d run into strange men who called me Sarah. I’d always say, “I’m sorry, I think you have the wrong person,” and then they’d just wink at me and say, “Okay, Sarah.” Out in that neighborhood, I’d sometimes even get drinks on the house from bartenders and baristas who hadn’t seen Sarah in a while and missed her.
So, you know, whatever works.
But really, thanks for all the great advice, folks. It doesn’t surprise me one bit that you all came up with interesting, helpful things to say. I’ve always believed what our good, anarchist friend Bakunin said: “there is a great deal more practical good sense and wisdom in the instinctive aspirations and real needs of the masses than in the profound intelligence of all the doctors and guides of humanity who, after so many failures, still keep on trying to make men happy.”
I’ll be back next week, with more dubious advice! So keep those letters coming!
PS: if you would like to tell me to my face what you think of my column, or just throw a drink at me, I’ll be reading from my fiction collection at Sweetwater Tavern at 7:00 on Saturday, April 30th.
MORE ADVICE AT SMARTPEOPLEONBADDAYS.COM. ALSO ON FACEBOOK.
Photos courtesy of DavidMatrynHunt, bre pattis, and laughlin.
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