From friends with benefits to a relationship: can it?

It is almost impossible to imagine nowadays: a friends with benefits situation. Most people have probably dealt with it at some point. And yes, it does seem quite ideal, right? You can definitely find it with each other (hence the ‘friends’, of course), you feel comfortable with each other, and you also regularly get your needs met (the benefits). A foolproof plan. Well, for a little while at least. Because I do have the feeling that such a friends with benefits situation is always temporary. At some point, something has to change, right? You can't just stay friends for years and still share a bed. That is bound to go wrong. Now it turns out that there are also a number of rules attached to the successful progression of friends with benefits, five in total. Keeping those five rules up for a while, I dare you. You won't succeed.

And then you have to make the choice: cut it off or continue as serious lovers. Difficult, difficult. Fortunately, modern science has researched just about everything, including these friends with benefits situations. Of the 191 people (of which 72% were heterosexual) who had a ‘fwb’, it turned out that after a year, little was left. 25% remained bed-sharing friends, 28% returned to non-bed-sharing friends, and no less than 31% cut everything off, including friendship. Great. Some did take the step to lovers: 25%, but of that number, only 15% were still together after a year. Yikes.

Enough percentages and figures. Science is clearly stating something here. But how nice is it to occasionally have a buddy who is also there for you when you want to be intimate with someone? Now I have to be very honest that in my surroundings, there are particularly few successful relationships that have come from a fwb (that's what I'll call it from now on). Movies like ‘Friends With Benefits’ and ‘No Strings Attached’ sound a bit utopian. It's nice that the main actors of both films, Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis, did go from a ‘fwb’ to a relationship. In Hollywood, anything is possible.
 

 
So I'm curious: is it really such a recipe for disaster? In my ideal relationship, my lover is also my best buddy. But maybe it's not so smart to friendzone someone for that and then share a bed together. I'm still a bit in doubt about this. The key to success here, I think, is mainly that you can have sex with each other without feelings. And yes, I'm particularly bad at that. So if I were to end up in this situation, I would obviously be the sucker who falls head over heels in love. The one who misunderstands the whole concept of ‘fwb’ and is left with the broken pieces. Okay, I've made up my mind: don't do it. Unless someone can delight me with an incredible success story.