It is possible to date a friend with benefits and still keep the friendship alive.
The potential pitfalls of dating friends and remaining friends can go array, so guys have to make sure that it doesn’t go wrong in the first place. Dating friends can backfire unless you set and follow guidelines that you have set in place from the beginning.

Attraction is what made being friends possible to begin with.
Guideline 1- Watch for negative emotions.
The major pitfall is the potential for negative emotions to arise when one partner may start feeling as if they are being used. The issue with this is that if your friendship starts to sour, the fact is you often share the same social circle and that can really affect all the communal friendships. When you’re dating a friend, or when you’re in a sexual relationship with a friend, and it doesn’t go well, you may lose friends in the process.
Guideline 2- Friends with benefits.
Let’s talk about the friends with benefits scenario. The first component to this is just being a little bit discreet about the relationship in the early phases. You don’t want to go and tell all your other friends about it. Somethings are just better left in secret, especially in this type of situation. Make sure you know where it’s heading before you start bragging about it.
As the relationship progresses, they’ll most likely find out about it anyway. But if you can keep it discreet initially, you give both of you the freedom to try it out, see how it fits, and if it doesn’t fit well then you can end it and no one else has to know about it. It doesn’t put any extra pressure on the two of you. And no one knows what happened, or if anything actually did.
Guideline 3- Always be honest and have clear expectations.
You must be honest from the start about what you are looking for. If you are only looking for friends with benefits dating, it’s important that you make that clear. If you intend to go out and approach and have sex with other girls, it’s important that you make that clear. You want to be able to set up some basic friends with benefits rules, like what would be acceptable behavior when the two are you are out in a social setting.
I know there’s been times where I’ve been in a friends with benefits relationship and I haven’t done a good job of setting clear boundaries, and then when I hook up with another girl, the friends with benefits girl doesn’t respond well at all. That was my fault for not communicating that clearly enough to begin with.
Guideline 4- Try to maintain the original friendship.
The reason that you guys were attracted to each other in the first place was because you had this mutual friendship, you were great pals and truly enjoyed each others company. A lot of the time people feel like that they have to change the way they act around their friend. They think they have to treat them more like a girlfriend than a friend and it’s the wrong type of thinking.
It will actually hurt you as you move into a friend with benefits scenario. Just continue to focus on chilling out like you normally do, but now you just have the added benefit of having a sexual connection as well. It is possible to be friends with benefits and still remain friends, but it does take effort and awareness.
