Hello everybody!
I feel like sharing my personal FWB experience with you and listen to your two cents/suggestions.
My FWB's name is Luca. I've known him for more than ten years. We've always been very close, good friends, but JUST friends until two years ago. We knew there’s always been that sexual “spark” between us, and we’ve always joked about that, but absolutely nothing ever happened until two years ago, because I wasn’t really in love with him, and I was involved in other relationships back then.
He had his share of relationships - although they were bad relationships – ad he told me more than once that he cheated on his girlfriends (mainly one-night stands).
We’ve always talked a lot, shared things with each other that nobody else knows, we do trust each other and I know I can rely on him no matter what – and he can rely on me as well. We've seen the best and the worst of each other.
Then two years ago he asked me if I'd have liked to start having sex with him. I was kind of recovering from a painful relationship, and I had been without a man for a long time, so I said: "Why not? We're adults, we know each other better than we know ourselves, we can talk about everything. I'll bet we can manage this".
And we started seeing each other more often, we started having sex. And it was just AMAZING. I needed that badly, and so did he. Then he met this young woman who was obsessed with having a child, and she got pregnant very early... Luca thought they could start a family, although he wasn’t really in love and he didn’t want to marry her, and we kept seeing each other. In the end, their baby was born at the end of 2012, but she lives with her parent in another town (far from here), while Luca lives here. They usually spend the weekends together + holidays.
Things between me and Luca have become pretty intense over the past months, as he's very tired of the mother of his child, of her attitude, her behavior. He really needed me.
He kinda likes this arrangement ‘cause during the week he’s on his own, he works and then in the evening he can do whatever he wants to. Don’t get me wrong: I do like this arrangement as well. I gave up on love a few years ago, and I’ve been focusing on other aspects of my life. Having a friend like him is just perfect!
The only problem is that Luca is not so available or free as he claims to be…I know he's concerned about his child. But I know the mother of his child is pretty manipulative and still controls him somehow.
For instance... this week we were supposed to meet and spend a night together (we had organized a very special night), but he called me two days ago telling me that SHE decided to take a few days off work, and came here to stay for a few days... so he can't do anything.
He was mad, and I was (I still am) even madder... and in moments like these I'm aware that this situation can become a burden and not something that actually makes me feel better.
Luca has always told me I'm his safe harbor, the only person he can turn to, he can share his deepest feelings, worries with. Our moments together help him face his daily challenges.
I read several articles about FWB, and almost all state that this kind of arrangement is supposed to make both people satisfied and happy. And everything works when she's not around...
The problem is that it seems that EVERY TIME we plan something, well she appears...
I recently started feeling something more for Luca, but I guess that depends on the intimacy we share. I don’t know whether to broach this subject with him. I need our moments together... but it's become a roller-coaster, full of ups and downs...
You know, when I'm angry and frustrated like today, I tend to overreact and think that there won't be a next time, that I have to finish this... but at the same time I know we both enjoy our times together………and I don’t want to lose our friendship.
I should add that I'm the only one he's spending his free time with.

Thank you for listening.

Lara

You aren't going to like my opinion. But since you asked. Sex is not a recreational sport. Its something to be shared between two people in a long term committed relationship.

P.S. I moved your post from the Forum Help area. Forum Help is for questions about using this site. Please choose a more appropriate forum in the future.

Thank you. I realized too late that I chose the wrong forum.

Not unusual for such loose attachments to be interrupted by reality. It was great at first but like any interaction gets complicated by outside things that are beyond your control. Am I right to think this FWB has made you substitute a healthier life style for one of convenience and your comfort zone is challenged? Of course it has, made you really lazy and unwilling to take risks beyond scratching an itch. FWB is nothing more than an excuse which you think are lower risks and no commitment.

He has another life it seems, and you don't. Go get one with better benefits in the long run because FWB has become just another affair behind someone's back. A distraction neither of you needs. An excuse that justifies staying in a comfortable arrangement, that you have made bigger than it should be because it's too important for you to sustain and be happy yourself.

All relationships go through this but how you adjust to it either keeps you together or will keep you apart. Your options are limited by the lack of commitment, and the adjusting for the reality of his expanding life and responsibility to a child and baby mama. Don't be jealous, get a life. You have no choice but to change, but right now aren't willing too. Until you are, your options and opportunities are severely limited to his schedule. The downside to FWB.

How will you deal with the changes reality has brought you?

No condemning, just the fact you need to understand that friends with benefits is not a regular schedule, it is sex when both parties are free. It is not the main part of each's life, each person is suppose to have a other real life. This is not for emotional support, ( as soon as you said, he needed you) then FWB was over and it because a relationship.

It is suppose to be just sex, for the fun of having sex. It may be once a week or once a month, just depending with both people are free.

Other things like Chilldren and another girlfriend is suppose to come first.

He has other obligations, you don't, so you are and have become jealous of his time. Instead you should be glad he has a child and support him to see his child more.

A FWB is more a booty call for both parties,

Geez Charles, that's the problem. She can't get her booty call on when she wants it.

Exactly, Talaniman, that's what's bothering me, or better, us. He doesn't want a relationship with her, he's barely putting up with her because of their child.
But that's not my problem. He's the first one to tell me he's available, he needs and wants to see me, to spend some time with me, etc... I've always been very respectful, never asked for anything - just our moments together.
Perhaps I should just tell him how I feel... I do treasure our friendship.

I think you are mistaken if you think that the mother of his child is the one causing all the disruptions in your plans with your FWB.

Seems to me a little too coincidental that it is his plans that are disrupted because he needs to, wants to, prefers to, chooses to, be with her, and his baby.

He paints himself as a man in a relationship with a woman, only because she bore his child, and says nothing positive or nice about her, yet, he maintains a relationship, even to the point where she visits him- I presume with the baby.

He sees her more and more- and you, in the meanwhile, have started to develop feelings for him, as you said, yet had not brought up the subject yet.

If he wanted nothing to do with his baby's mother, he would file for access, and step up and pay child support. He needs only a minimally cordial relationship with her, in order to establish a relationship with his child. Millions have gone this route, why hasn't he.

At the moment, because he is spending more time with her, and his baby, I would encourage you to think of that as a priority in his life. He needs to be involved in the care and support of his child, and the child's mother cannot be avoided in the process.

His circumstances with a new baby in the picture, should be the only priority in his life right now. A FWB relationship can wait- as was said, it's really only a recreational sport anyway, right?

A guy with a baby mama, and a chick on the side says what it takes to keep them both available. Sorry but she is not your enemy you both share the same guy is all. To think you have the upper hand in this is false thinking because he does.

Share or get a new friend, or a new benefactor.