Friendship with benefits jako refleksyjny projekt budowania relacji intymnej w perspektywie młodych dorosłych
Friendship with benefits as a reflective project of building intimate relations from the perspective of young adults

Summary/Abstract: The process of entering adult life depends not only on the experiences of the individual, but is conditioned by one’s system of norms and social values. Following the political and economic transformation and changes in the models of society in Poland, how people thought about youngsters entering adulthood, and how they achieved the transition, also changed. The phase of youth, preceding the starting of one’s own family, became longer, while the period of searching for a partner and entering intimate relationships also became more protracted and varied. In the biographic narrative of young adults, prolonging the phase of growing up means consciously choosing to remain single; it means opting for provisional, temporary solutions where private life is concerned, and separating sex life from procreation and marriage. In sociological discussion the theoretical field of social constructivism is rather expansive as far as reflective scenarios of ‘being together’ are concerned; however, friendship, love and sex are still the fundamental dimensions of modern relationships. Based on western research, the short term pairing strategies described in the article and not associated with plans to form a permanent relationship are known as friendship with benefits, fuck buddy and booty call. The paper aims to present the findings of qualitative studies based on 42 semi-structured interviews with women and men, aged 27–38, living with their parents in Warsaw. The analysis focuses on illustrating the attitudes shown by young adults towards friendship with benefits as one of the forms of relations they practice in intimate relationships, as well as an appraisal of this new dimension of relations among their peers.

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