Friends with Benefits

This subject material may not be suitable for those under the age of 18. Parental Guidance is strongly recommended. It also has nothing to the with the movie of the same name. Sorry if you're disappointed. Please keep reading, though.

I’m no prude. I have no problem with sex. I won’t say I’ve had a lot of partners but I’ve had enough. I won’t say I’ve had many “normal” relationships but I’ve had a few which are probably described as friends with benefits relationships or open relationships.

I think that it depends on the person and the situation as to whether they work or not. If both people are in the same frame of mind then it can work beautifully. If one is only doing it for the other person, or think they should do it because it’s the only way they are going to get laid, or (worst of all) one develops actual romantic feelings for the other then it is doomed to failure.

The first such relationship started out as friends with benefits and turned into an open relationship. When we broke up he thought I would be more upset than I was. Truth was, I like being with him but he wasn’t my soul mate. I had no emotional connection to him beyond being friends. The fact we also slept together didn’t register on that scale. He is now married and has a child of his own, and I am very happy for him.

The second one was supposed to be friends with benefits but we both fell for the other. Finding out that your new friend, who you are developing feelings for, is very married is heartbreaking. I was completely devestated. He was upset at losing me but not enough to want to leave his wife (which is typical). He would have happily kept me on as a mistress if I allowed him to. There were times when I thought that maybe it’s all I deserved to be or would ever be capable of being. For many years after I told him I would no longer see him because he was married he still rang me to ask if I would like to “play”. Eventually I told him to remove my number from his phone and not contact me anymore.

I have also had many an offer of such a relationship and I wonder if it’s that they don’t want a committed relationship with anyone, or it’s just me that they don’t want a relationship with. I guess only time will tell on that point. If, within the next 12 months, they are in a relationship with someone, then it’s probably me. If they never settle down, then it’s them. Usually, it’s me. Usually, they are hanging out for someone better: better looking, better physique, higher intelligence, more sporty.

While I may have been all for a relationship with no commitments in my early 20s, now that I’m in my early 30s I’m looking for something a bit more stable, a bit more mature.  Maybe I just don’t look in the right places for the right guy. Maybe I shouldn’t be looking at all. Maybe I should be waiting for Mr Right to just magically turn up on my doorstep.

Sometimes I think it would be good to have a friends with benefits relationship now. The best of both worlds, so to speak. Except it’s not. It’s half a relationship. And when it breaks down you haven’t just lost a lover, you’ve potentially lost a friend as well. If you don’t mind losing the friendship, one has to wonder why you’d want to sleep with them, unless you’re being highly superficial.

I’ve always had a live and let live approach so if you’re in a friends with benefits relationship or an open relationship and it’s working for you, then good for you. If it’s not working then you need to look closely at why and maybe adjust your priorities.

For me, I have realised I’d rather be single than in a relationship that’s not going anywhere …

The 1000 Word Picture Challenge # 2

The second installment of my 1000 word challenge is brought to you by Paula Eddy of the USA. While she was not fussed with the style, she did provide this awesome picture ...

Do Unicorns exist? Have they ever existsed? Did they ever look like the one in this picture? Will the exist at some point in the future? It's strange, the idea of the unicorn, for the simple face that it's not really all that strange an idea. Horses exist, of that I am certain, having seen one with my own two eyes. Animals with horns exist, they too I have seen (Rhino's and Narwhals to name but two). But never a Unicorn. Alas, not a single one to have ever graced my presence.

One of my favourite quotes is about Unicorns. It comes from the Tom Stoppard play "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead" and it goes as follows:
A man breaking his journey between one place and another at a third place of no name, character, population or significance sees a unicorn cross his path and disappear. That in itself is startling but there are precedents for mystical encounters of various kinds or, to be less extreme, a choice of persuasions to put it down to fancy; unil - "My God," says a second man, "I must be dreaming, I thought I saw a unicorn." At which point a dimension is added that makes the experience as alarming as it will ever be. A third witness, you understand, adds no further dimension but only spreads it thinner, and a fourth thinner still, and the more witnesses there are the thinner it gets and the more reasonable it becomes until it is as thin as reality, the name we give to the common experience ... "Look, look!" recites the crowd. "A horse with an arrow in its forehead! It mustlve been mistaken for a deer." I'm sorry it wasn't a unicorm. It would have been nice to have unicorns. (Guildenstern, "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead")
This quote epitomises the whole modern need to rationalise that which we do not understand. The unwillingness as a society to step outside the norms is evident in many aspects of alternative cuture. From witchcraft and magic to alien encounters to beasts of legend, the story is the same. We try to find a neat little hole to put the annectdotes in, to make those abberations fit neatly into the grand scheme of things.

There is plenty of literary evidence for Unicorns, from the early Chinese to Greek philosophers to African legends, but what real evidence is there, if any? There are plenty of historic heroes who claim to have seen or even riden the elusive Unicorn. No categorical evidence exists either for or against the Unicorn. There is no reason why it can't exist, perhaps it is just nature's twist of fate that such an animal, which could so easily possibly be real, is neither real or inspired by real animals, save the horse. It's a far more likely target for having existed that, for example, Pegasus. After all the wing span needed to lift the body of a fully grown horse would far exceed that which would be practical for the poor, unfortunate animal. A Unicorn's horn, however, does not pose any logicial or physical problems to its potential existence.

Many medieval merchants who sold "Unicorn Horns" at market stalls and many other places were actually selling Narwhal horns but what if they were really Unicorn horns? What if they existed and poachers caused their extinction? If this were true, of course, there would be DNA evidence to differentiate the Unicorn from the Narwhal. The horn was sold as decoration, charm and magical item.

I think that some of the Medieval "sightings" of Unicorns were highly decorated horses, possibly battle ready. Another theory I have is that the viewer saw knights practicing jousting, their long lance being mistaken for the horn when seen from the side. Of course I have no evidence for either of these theories, I just like the absurd logic to it all.

There were beliefs surrounding the Unicorn regarding it magical properties, usually held within its ho It seern. Some require the horn to be ground up and used as an ingredient, some require the horn to be hollowed out and used as a vessel. Whichever method you so choose to follow, it is highly unlikely that the horn possessed any form of magical properties even if it had actaully existed.

There is a Ukranian legend which asserts that Unicorn existed until the great biblical flood but that the Unicorn had boasted that it would swim instead of boarding the Ark and when the waters receeded the Unicorn was no more. I quite like the idea of Unicorns being real and herds of them roaming through the forests of Europe, much like wild horses. I think that if this were the case there would be many more reported sightings and, these days, much more impirical evidence of their existence.

I have, until now, forcused on the modern visual of the Unicorn (being basically a horse with a horn), yet in Chinese tradition the Unicorn is very different. Called the Quilin, it has the body of a deer, the head of a lion, scales and a long froth-covered horn. This image is far more in keeping with a dragonesque notion of mystical creatures. It is also a far darker image that the friendly picture of the western Unicorn.

The advent of scientific thought has spelled the death-knell for the Unicorn. It has been relegated to that category of mythical beast, with not even the status of the Yeti or Loch Ness Monster. They at least still have people searching for them despite the seemingly equal propostrousness of their existence. It seems no-one is willing to search for this apparently fabled creature when it is equally as likely that it exists, or has existed at some time in the past.

Like Guildenstern, I too think it would be nice to have Unicorns. These days little girls dream of owning horses but imagine if you could own a Unicorn ... wouldn't it be magical?