Sexual friendships

What is the effect of removing sex from its usual relational context?  The first study of the "friends with benefits" cultural phenomenon finds:

“We found,” Dr. Levine said, “that people got into these relationships because they didn’t want commitment. It was perceived as a safe relationship, at least at first. But also that there was this growing fear that the one person would become more attracted than the other.”

Yet, he added, the overall qualities of the relationships appeared to be true to the name. On standard psychological measures, they appeared more like friendships than romances.

Friends with benefits scored in the middle on a scale assessing intimacy and low on passion and commitment, the study found. “When scores were compared to previous findings with romantic couples, scores on all three dimensions were lower, with the largest differences observed in commitment followed by passion,” the authors wrote.