A twofer from August 24, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

Okay, two questions.

1) Say you were hooking up with (OK, sleeping with) a guy for a month. Literally every night. Also you’ve known the guy for a year, pretty well, and been friends. He gets out of your bed one Saturday morning and asks you what you’re doing later that day. You then don’t hear from him for oh maybe three weeks. Then you call his machine to point out you have a bunch of his clothes at your apartment. Then you find out he’s been going out with his ex girlfriend and a lot of your “friends” know about it and have not told you. Then say you feel really depressed not to mention you feel like a really really big tool. Say you are normally a cool person. What do you do? Thanks, please help, I need it.

Now my roommate:

(more…)

Two new movies starring four very attractive people pose the questions: (1) Can “friends with benefits” arrangements work? and (2) Natalie Portman?! On (1) I’m leaning no, if only on the grounds that I would definitely fall for Justin Timberlake.

But Tracy Clark-Flory of Salon.com gives the matter deeper consideration. But her bottom line is basically this: “When you talk to people who have been there and done that — and even those who are continuing to do that — the response is overwhelmingly negative. As my own former ‘friend with benefits’ put it, ‘I’ve been in so many of these situations and, basically, they work until they don’t.'”

Read the rest (Tracy does a bunch of reporting and covers a lot of thoughtful ground) and let us know what you think: Does FWB ever benefit anyone? Under what particular circumstances? Share away, ’cause don’t worry; we won’t expect anything more from you than a good time. 😉