Friends with Benefits...good or bad idea?

I've played kissy face with more guy friends than I want to admit. And so have most of my friends. I think we'd all agree that it seemed like a really good idea at the time (most things do after 8 beers), but we'd also agree that our "friends with benefits" relationships definitely led to future awkwardness...game playing, prank calling, furtive glances, general stalking (kidding...sort of). It turns out that I'm not alone: The New York Times reported today on a "Friends with Benefits" Study conducted on students at Michigan State that labels these relationships as stressful: "These physical friendships often occlude one of the emotional arteries of real friendship, openness. Friends who could once talk about anything now have an unstated taboo topic — the relationship itself. In every conversation, there is innuendo; in every room, an elephant." About one-tenth of these "friends with benefits" went on to become full-scale romances. About a third stopped the sex and remained friends, and one in four eventually broke it off — the sex and the friendship. The rest continued as friends-with-benefits relationships. And hand-bitting awkwardness... - Laura Kenney