You slept with a friend...now what?

Hooking up with a friend is all kinds of confusing. But it doesn't have to f*ck things up...

- Saumyaa Vohra

There are few things easier than sleeping with a friend. It has all the fixins of an easy hook-up—proximity, familiarity, chemistry. Friends always have chemistry, and, as Phoebe Waller-Bridge says on Netflix's Crashing—“Everyone fucks everyone…eventually”. Whether it's a drunken club night blurring your farsightedness, or a post-break-up moment of loneliness that turns a shoulder into a warm body, there is an inevitability about it that seems omnipresent. It's always right there, within reach—simple and sexy, ready for the taking. And yet...

It's a TV trope that's been twisted seven ways to Sunday. Jeff and Britta on Community hook up and the friendship survives, but by the skin of its teeth. On Friends, Monica and Chandler fall drunk into bed at Ross' wedding, and end up falling in love—as do Nick and Jess on New Girl. On Gossip Girl, the same happens with Chuck and Blair—but is a life-ruining mess when Nate and Serena hook up at a wedding (though that also involves cheating and betrayal). While friends hooking up on screen almost always leads to love, the same isn't true in life. Screenplays have the luxury of writing characters that can start as friends but have always been right for each other. Reality is different, because there is no omniscient plan for the aftermath.

There are many reasons it ends up happening. A Psychology Today study [2016] found that a big part of the reason it happened was alcohol consumption and lowered inhibitions. It also suggests that women are more likely to regret engaging in casual sex altogether, which doesn’t bode well for a casual hook-up with a friend. A 2020 Psychpost longitudinal study involving 191 individuals in friend-with-benefits relationships found that 25 per cent hoped it would evolve into a romantic relationship.

Another study mentioned in