Friends with Benefits

There's a social script for how romantic relationships are supposed to develop, and that script can make it hard for us to become physically intimate with friends and keep being friends—nothing more, nothing less. In this episode, we try to understand what would be possible if we didn't draw such stark lines between sex and friendship, and how to repair things when the line-crossing gets messy.

Additional resources:

Experts in this episode:

Quill Kukla is professor of philosophy and a senior research scholar at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University

Cassie Herbert is an assistant professor of philosophy at Illinois State University

To learn more about ideas in this story:

Stepping Off the Relationship Escalator: Uncommon Love and Life by Amy Gahran

Sisters of Pornography by Reba Maybury and Esra Padgett, which features interviews with the guests from our episode, Lotus Lain and Ana Foxxx

"'She Is My Roommate:' Why and How Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Individuals Deceive Friends About Their Sexual Orientation" by Yachao Li and Jennifer A. Samp in The Palgrave Handbook of Deceptive Communication

"Sexual violation and the language of repair" by Quill Kukla, Cassie Herbert, and Ari Watson, forthcoming in Philosophy of #MeToo

Special thanks to the following musicians:

Theme Music by Infinity Knives

"In Bloom" by Moses Sumney

Connor Moore from CMoore Sound

Connor Lafitte

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