Last update: Augusts 08, 2016
Some time ago, an advertisement circulated on the internet promoting a rather unusual product: a perfume based on pheromones. The announcement specified that this fragrance was 100% effective. "The opposite sex will go crazy for you," he promised; after that, there was a detailed "scientific" description as to why no one could resist the incredible effects of the magical aroma.
The idea that love has much more to do with biochemistry than with the symbolic world seems to be very much in vogue. There is also a widespread notion that the main problem to be solved in love is riuto seduce the other, to enchant and bewitch him. Also, a common fantasy is to win as many admirers as possible.
"Sex without love is as empty and ridiculous as love without sex."
(Hunter S. Thompson)
Nowadays a contradictory desire about love seems to take hold: to have many partners who feed our ego and our need to experiment or who fill our loneliness; at the same time, there is the desire to leave a special corner of our heart so that, at a certain point, an extraordinary person occupies it and becomes the love of our life.
The "friends of bed"
In this frame, the friends of the bed present themselves on a silver platter. For the few who don't know what it is, bed pals are those who maintain a friendly relationship in which sex is practiced on an occasional basis. The trick is that they both understand that having sex does not stop being friends and that the existence of a friendship does not prevent having sex.
Agreements between "bed buddies" have implicit rules that both of them must abide by if they want it to work. Among them the basic pact is not to fall in love. Neither of us wants to have binding commitments, therefore sex fulfills its primordial function: that of satisfying a purely physical desire.
Another rule to be respected, and on which the success of the rule of "not falling in love" depends, is that of not intervening in any way in the life of the other. In other words, the "benefits" have a very specific limit. The benefit is to touch, to look, but it does not go so far as to allow the friend to demand time, attention or understanding.
The golden rule of "friends with bed" is the categorical no to exclusivity. Each of the two "bed friends" can have other relationships with other individuals. In no case should there be jealousy and the decision of one of the two to sever the sexual bond should never be questioned.
Friends of the bed or free lovers?
Unfortunately for supporters of such friendships and sellers of perfumes with pheromones, the human brain is an incredibly complex organ in which the body, affection and emotions are inseparable. The fact of occupying the tip of the pyramid on the evolutionary scale has consequences, including the impossibility of living a reality without symbolizing it in the territory of subjectivity.
It is impossible for a human being to have sex with another person without connecting that experience to what is, what has been, and what will be. It is not even conceivable that the bed partner is only the representation of a piece of meat, to be discarded after the act.
The other always leaves something. An echo that resounds, at times timidly, and that speaks of self-affirmation or self-denial, of expectations and fantasies, of emotional needs and shortcomings.
Bed friendship seems above all to be an extreme representation of fear or despair or both. The fear of loving and the countless possibilities of suffering that love contemplates and the desperation that resides in having given up on expecting anything from life other than fleeting and accessory experiences. Those who choose relationships of this type find themselves under the influence of an impossible desire: to touch the fire without getting burned.
For this reason, bed friendships tend to end badly, especially if those involved are not true cynics, but rather frightened individuals who are just playing at not needing anything. and nobody. Generally speaking, they don't work. One of the two is injured or both end up fueling their insecurities and demanding neurotic efforts from themselves that only generate or increase confusion.
