And no it’s not because “someone will always fall in love,” which is a ridiculous, trite and reductive notion about love, relationships and people only found in movies. The real reason why FWB often don’t work out is because people don’t take them seriously. Communications professor Dr. Kendra Knight, PhD interviewed 25 college students to conduct a qualitative study about FWB relationships to examine how communication affects friends with benefits relationships. While Dr. Knight was looking only for subjective data, she began to find a pattern amongst most of the students. The issue she uncovered was that because people believed FWB were supposed to be “casual” and “easy” they did not believe it was necessary to have discussions typically associated with relationships like conversations about boundaries and limitations. Basically, everyone is so busy playing it cool that no one ever knew WTF was going on and the result is that people needlessly hurt each other. Refinery29 notes, “Several female participants shared a fear of coming off as the “crazy girl” if they tried having a “talk” about the boundaries of their FWBR, though a general anxiety about seeming possessive or clingy was expressed by male interviewees, too.” When everyone is so over-concerned with coming across the wrong way they never speak up and when you don’t vocalize what you want or expect then you’re never going to get it. A key part of having a healthy FWB is talking about the terms of your relationship because while it isn’t a typical romantic partnership it is a relationship nonetheless. [Via. Refinery29/ Shutterstock/solominviktor]