Courtesy of 2011’s romantic comedies -- No Strings Attached and Friends With Benefits -- the arrangement of one's friend doubling up as their sexual partner, without the commitment of a conventional romantic partnership, hardly needs an introduction. But for the uninitiated, the allure of a friends-with-benefits arrangement is the freedom and flexibility it supposedly offers. That’s precisely the appeal of situationships, too – another label that rejects labels. What they have in common is the reluctance to commit to one person romantically. This, however, doesn’t guarantee the absence of romantic feelings. So what gives – and why do we have so many seemingly redundant names for supposedly non-romantic relationships?

The differences, if any, are subtle. The trajectories of both friends-with-benefits arrangements and situationships further blur the lines between them. The former – a common premise in rom-coms – ends up with the friends ultimately falling in love with each other, embarking on a relationship, and living happily ever after. This is reminiscent of the trope where friends of the opposite sex inevitably end up together in Bollywood movies, too. According to dating columns, however, “[F]riends with benefits are just friends. But in a situationship, you might have a deeper emotional connection or even fall in love.” Evidently, pop culture and dating websites don’t have nearly the same perspective on the subject. They aren’t authorities on relationships either – leaving one to rely on little other than the real-life experiences of real people. Interestingly, incongruencies arise there, too.

"I'm still friends with them without the benefits. Both of us are dating other people -- we're happy for each other and chat about our lives occasionally," says K, speaking to their lack of emotional involvement in each other’s lives. On the other hand, V. prefers to "burn the bridges" with friends with benefits once the sexual intimacy comes to an end – according to her, owing to emotional entanglements between them, hurt that can otherwise follow. These are two distinct experiences. But a common question ensues for both: if the arrangements weren’t supposed to involve romantic emotions, why did they both necessitate moving on eventually?

In other words, maybe none of these terms ever meant anything specific or novel: everybody inevitably confronts emotions and existential questions about commitment at some stage during both. Studies on the subject, too, attest to the lack of clear distinctions between these manifestations of modern dating. In 2020, a longitudinal study of individuals in friends-with-benefits relationships found: 15% went on to become romantic partners, 28% became friends-without-benefits, and 31% broke off all ties. So, while a small percentage of people were, perhaps, never emotionally invested in the friends they were sleeping with, many of them were; some in the latter group had their feelings reciprocated, the others didn’t.

From the absence of commitment to wild emotional ambiguity, both friends-with-benefits arrangements and situationships have a lot in common – primarily, the fact they’re both driven by the need to constantly invent new labels to escape emotional accountability. Unlike with relationships, people opting for either rarely have a sit-down to discuss whether their dynamic fits the bill of one better than the other – since doing so would contradict one of the core traits of both arrangements: the unwillingness to be limited by labels.

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While labels can, indeed, be suffocating, non-label labels can be confusing, too. Irrespective of what it’s called, rarely is a dynamic between two individuals utterly exempt from any semblance of expectations, obligations, and responsibilities.

And so, lack of communication about what exactly one expects out of the arrangement can create a discrepancy in expectations. One of the individuals involved might desire nothing more than a physical connection from the arrangement, the other might enter the arrangement, secretly hoping for a deeper emotional bond to develop, over time. Yet others might fall in love in course of the arrangement -- a rather common phenomenon, in fact. In the absence of rules – and, of course, clear communication – inconsistencies in expectations set in. It can be all the benefits of dating, minus the security and comfort of commitment.

Commenting on friendships with benefits, Anisha Jain, a psychologist from Mumbai, tells The Established, "[The arrangement] involves gray areas and it can get complicated as feelings, thoughts and experiences evolve. It may sometimes unintentionally feel like dating or a relationship… Boundaries must be definitive, specific, and mutually discussed."

However, as part of a culture that glorifies stoicism, let alone discussing emotional needs and expectations, people often fail to acknowledge them either. Opening up emotionally can also be intimidating -- especially with the very premise of both dynamics being built on non-committal sexual encounters. Social norms around the arrangements, too, can discourage open and honest conversations about emotions and desires -- leading to a lack of consensus on whether it’s just two people having sex without any emotional investment whatsoever, or it’s a phase of testing the waters before making a full-blown commitment. Worse still, it could be a case of an individual attempting to sexually appease the person they’re besotted with, hoping it leads to a relationship while being unsure of whether their sexual partner desires that, at all.

The phenomenon of uncertain boundaries in people’s romantic and sex lives begs yet another question: is compulsory monogamy to blame for all this? It’s worth considering whether openness to more, rather than less, emotional commitments could help ease things. Moreover, the strict separation between platonic, romantic, and sexual feelings is a uniquely heteronormative phenomenon. “I’ve slept with most of my friends. I mean that literally — I’ve shared a bed and cuddled with nearly all of them. I know who likes to be a little spoon and who prefers to be a big spoon; I also know how loud each of them snores. On top of that, I’ve made out with a good chunk of them, given oil massages to some and had full-on sex with others. To me and many other queer people, this shit is normal. Physical, sometimes erotic, touch, is an integral part of many of our friendships,” wrote Ian Kumamoto in Mic. It’s only straight people, they add, who feel compelled to immediately decide or define what the relationship is once sex enters the picture.

Inevitably, the only choice they envision is a monogamous happy ending. In Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani from earlier this year, too, a similar situation played out: Rani (played by Alia Bhatt) kept terming her dynamic with Rocky (played by Ranveer Singh) as "just a fling, just a thing." Unbeknownst to her, however, Rocky perceived it as a much more serious relationship -- one that he saw transitioning into a marriage. Being a Bollywood romance, Rocky and Rani did resolve their miscommunication, broke up, fell in love, broke up again, and got married. But with life not being a Bollywood flick, such happy endings are rarer – and the lack of a consensus on what their dynamic even was, doesn’t make it easier.

One (kind of) practical way to tell situationships apart from friends-with-benefits dynamics is, perhaps, the nature of the friendship between the individuals. "One lasted couple of years; we weren't close friends, not even during the arrangement. It was more benefits than friendship. The second and third ones, however, I’m still friends with, but we'd only hooked up once or twice," B. says. Perhaps, then, in cases where the friendship outweighs the sexual intimacy, the monicker of “friends-with-benefits” is valid, to an extent. However, it could also qualify as friends falling into a situationship, realizing friendship suited them better, and transitioning back. All this can possibly be avoided, however, if we weren’t so concerned about the difference between the types of feelings involved, and instead paid attention to the fact that they all involve intimacy of some kind. As Mia Birdsong noted in Salon, “Part of this means squashing the relationships-hierarchy that says a monogamous romantic/sexual relationship is infinitely more important than the other relationships in our lives.” Really, then, there's little -- if anything at all -- that sets friends-with-benefits dynamics apart from situationships. Why, then, do we bother with different monickers? More importantly, why do people – who do, indeed, believe they’re distinct models of sexual and emotional intimacy – conflate the two? There are important lessons from queer culture here. Activist Shon Faye puts it this way, “Queer is about removing labels and replacing them with a question. It is a side eye and a challenge back to mainstream society and politics. It says, 'I don't know the answer, but why are you asking the question?'"

With labels often failing to accurately capture the depth and complexity of human connections – more so, when communication, too, is lacking – perhaps, continuing to pretend like friends-with-benefits arrangements and situationships aren’t two sides of the same coin is ridiculous. No matter what we call them, though, what the debate underscores is the importance of setting clearer boundaries, being aware of one's own expectations, and questioning our assumptions about the diverse – but no less intimate or important – relationships we get into.