It’s the hot thing right now in romantic comedy movies: boy and girl decide to have no-strings-attached sex for kicks and convenience. Then they fall in love after realizing that they are meant for each other … or something.
Hollywood has made this movie twice so far in the past year. The first version, No Strings Attached, starred Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher. The second, Friends with Benefits, which is out now, stars Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake.
Hollywood keeps making this movie because this fantasy sells big with late teen and 20-something women, many of whom think, at least on a subconscious level, that they can sleep their way into a long-term, committed relationship with someone who won’t commit right now.
These movies are obscene not because of the gratuitous sex, which you’ll find in most movies these days, but because of the falling in love part at the end, which is the big lie.
So many women are having sex with men they wish would commit to them long-term or longer-term — men who tell them they just can’t right now — because this is the degrading way women have been taught to have relationships or semi-relationships thanks to decades of feminist propaganda. Don’t expect too much from him. If you don’t sleep with him by date five, as Kunis’ character did in Friends With Benefits, someone else will. Plus, he expects it.
On some deep, dark level, many women are doing this because they hope these guys will change their mind. I blame this on the state of female self-esteem, which, particularly among teenage girls, has taken a beating in our society in the last few decades. That’s why this movie plot sells.
Contrary to popular belief, women don’t sleep with men they don’t ultimately want to have relationships with. (Sure, there are always exceptions to the rule, most of them alcohol-fueled.) Men fall into two categories for us: those we could see ourselves in a long-term relationship with and those we can’t. If she is sleeping with him, she wants a relationship with him, or a more permanent one than she has now, no matter what she says — or tells herself.
This once provoked confusion among male callers to my radio show, who insisted I was wrong about this; that women they’d dated had told them they weren’t looking for a commitment.
Yes, she told you that. But what would you have said if she told you the truth — that she’d like a long-term relationship, with potential for lifetime commitment? Right. So she fibbed. Either that or she wasn’t interested in dating you at all, and was trying to let you down easy.
We are now a country of people who can’t end most of our relationships when they should be ended — on date one or two. Men are hanging out for the sex, and the comfortable faux intimacy that comes with it. Women are hanging out, hoping to soften them up for a relationship. It’s completely dysfunctional and ultimately a soul-crushing way to go about relating to the other sex.
I wouldn’t give a rip about this if there weren’t children involved, but these days pregnancy is what comes next when the sleeping-together-for-now part doesn’t produce the long-term commitment. (They never seem to include this in the Hollywood version of the story.)
In Mecklenburg County last year, a little more than 40 percent of babies were born to single mothers, slightly higher than the national average. This is a disaster. After lack of a high school diploma, single motherhood is the biggest predictor of poverty for women and children.
Who are the women giving birth to out-of-wedlock babies? According to Princeton University’s Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing study, their median age at childbirth is 22. Nearly three quarters of them are in romantic relationships with the father at the time of the child’s birth. The fathers are described by the study to be “marriageable,” with few having drug, alcohol or physical abuse problems.
In other words, these aren’t teens having accidents. These are women old enough to know better who are getting pregnant on purpose, in the process settling for a baby with a guy who wouldn’t settle for them with a long-term commitment.
That’s not hip or glamorous. It’s pathetic.
This article appears in Jul 26 – Aug 1, 2011.
Tara,
I miss you on the radio but wish you all the success you deserve. For most of us, you had the common sense answer to a lot of thoughts and weren’t afraid to stand by your ethics. Your morality was such a great breath of fresh air for us older gals. This article is a prime example. I have two teenage granddaughters that I really have concerns about their future.
Thanks for all your hard work and continue to value your family.
Suzanne Newell
wtf is Tara? There’s no mention of the article’s writer.
This article is so true ! Friends with benefits is a great way for two people to be hurt , especially for us women. Most women that have sex with men usually in some way become emotionally attached. I have had experience with this situation myself. I had met a man as I was coming out of a marriage and we both agreed it would just be fwb. Well after the first few months of us being fwb’s I started to develope feeling for this man. He didnt feel the same, it was very painful . I have certainly learned my lesson ,sometimes our hearts can trick us. My suggestion is dont do it. Have some self respect and dignity and dont do the fwb someone always ends up getting hurt, and I also forgot to mention the guy I was fwb had a steady girlfriend I knew nothing about 🙁 What a loser !
Dear Ms. Servatius-
I am writing this letter in response to your latest piece (“You Down With NSA?”), the one that so callously attacked millions of women across this country for decisions that you consider to be “pathetic”. I should probably start by mentioning that I have read your articles fairly consistently for around seven years now, and though I have disagreed with your perspectives from time to time, for the most part I have always thought your observations were astute and rather enjoyable to read. However, this time you have not only completely lost me but also completely offended me (and a few women I know who fit your statistics so well). As I started reading this article- you still had me. You had me for a few paragraphs, until you decided to so shamefully blame our modern hookup culture’s woes on feminists (really?). As a believer in equality between the sexes, I take enormous issue with that. I don’t remember Gloria Steinem or Betty Friedan ever instructing women to give it up to men who didn’t want them, or to convince themselves they want less than they actually do. I’m pretty sure what you are talking about is the exact opposite of the “feminist propaganda” you so absurdly blame this modern cultural phenomenon on. I have read a few articles on this recently, and while several others tackling this issue have brought up possible other explanations, no other conclusion seemed remotely as thoughtless as yours. I guess it’s just easier to blame the feminists.
The second part of your opinion piece that truly lost me was when you started to go on about all that concern of yours for “the children”. Last year, I was 22, with the man I am with now, a man I love, and we had our first child. Yes, it was out of wedlock! According to your not-at-all-researched-or-cited-observations, you insinuate all of us women who fit into this neat little box are in it not because of “accidents”, but apparently we all just hate ourselves enough to get ourselves pregnant to keep a man. Well, to be honest, it was difficult for me to know exactly how to feel after reading such misogynist text, and quite frankly, I would have expected better from an author I know to at least possess some intelligence and skill at journalism. Two of my best friends are also in the same category, we have all had our children (gasp!) out of wedlock and in our early-to-mid twenties. And do you know what? We didn’t do it on purpose, we didn’t do it to “snag” a man (we were all committed and monogamous pre-pregnancy, as hard as that might be for you to believe), and sometimes accidents do happen, believe it or not. One of these friends graduated third in her class from Queens, (how well did you perform during college?). I guess she’s pathetic too. My other friend is graduating this fall, and despite taking some time off to stay with my son, I am graduating in May. So I guess I fail to see how in the end, we are all truly so bad for society. My parents have been married close to forty years, and while marriage can be great for them (and for others), it isn’t for everyone. I suppose it just baffles me that you read such statistics and automatically assume all these young women are nothing more than a bunch of sluts, trying to keep men by their side by popping out kids. I don’t want to get married. Not now, not ever. Why again is that such a bad thing? One of my friends was raised by parents who were unhappily married, people who slept in opposite wings of the house and hated each other, but “stuck it out” for the kid, and commitment’s sake. To this day, that friend stays in unhappy and abusive relationships, time and time again, because she doesn’t know how to let go of something once it has headed south. Is this a more pleasing scenario?
I can assure you that my son, born out of wedlock or not, is incredibly loved, taken care of, and by both of his parents. It is not necessary for couples to be married to love each other and take commitment and childrearing seriously. Your contempt shows how little you know about all of us and our families, and I don’t know if I have ever read such blatant misogyny in this paper before or will again (God, I hope not). Thanks for a good few years, Tara, but I’ll be moving on, and I’m sure I’ll be taking a few readers with me.
Sincerely,
Unmarried Twenty-Something Mother
Spot on! Friends With (or without) Benifits is not a new concept to our society. Free Love or Make Love Not War are very similar and different all at the same time. Guys who could not get action had to come up with ways to get girls to sleep with them without commitment or love.
Women, and society, have been lying to others and themselves when it comes to love, sex, and marriage. The first lie is that there is, “No one who will love me the older I get”. The other lie is, “How do I know we are compatible unless we sleep together?”. Another lie is, “This is my last chance to find someone to love me.”
A crass comedian made a very true statement. Women can fake orgasms…but men can fake love. Don’t buy the lies. And, to the woman who got angry with Tara, the truth hurts.
As a father, I will teach my daughter how to watch out for those lies, and I will give her guidance on how to find her future husband. I am committed to this because I love her more than any man will, and the day she gets married will be a new chapter on our relationship. Until that day, no man will ever be good enough to love my daughter.
You didn’t even bother to read the comment above, did you? Of course not. Pretty sure what I was saying has absolutely nothing to do with what you are talking about. “The truth hurts”? Perhaps you should READ before you comment, just sayin’. If you had, you would have realized that I’m not a fan of the hook-up culture that has so permeated our society, and I did not once defend it. The “truth” is that my partner and I have been in a monogamous relationship for years, the only difference between us and any other married couple is a piece of paper. We live together, raise a child together, split expenses and everything else down the middle, and infidelity has never even been a mild concern. I would suggest you pay more attention.
You can live however you want, but taking offense to what I or Tara says is slightly hypocritical. Are you saying the lifestyle you chose is working for the thousands of women who are on welfare? When you decided to group yourself in and take offense, you opened yourself up for criticism. I do not condone your lifestyle, but I also do not expect you to care what I think.
I am constantly criticized for my lifestyle, and I am ok with that. I think our society has cheapened marriage and has promoted selfishness. There is no love or commitment. Marriage is not a contract. Anyone who goes into it thinking that way is going into it for the wrong reasons.
I really do not care what you think about me, and I really hope that you are successful with your relationship, but there is an underlining problem with our societies solutions to out of wedlock births. The Government.