Freunde lieben. Die Revolte in unseren engsten Beziehungen

Why we need to rethink friendship. Friendship and sex do not go together. This is the claim made by countless relationship guides, romantic films, and often our own surroundings. Nevertheless, more and more people are seeking friends with benefits. Traditional family images and the ideal of one great love seem to be completely overloaded with expectations and demands. So is "friends with benefits" just an escape attempt from compulsive romance? Or does it serve as a model for new ways of intimate relationships? Ole Liebl looks at the development and practice of this unusual form of relationship. He addresses both its emotional and ethical conflicts as well as its utopian potentials: Is there really no escape from the romantic norm and its claims of possession? Are our intimate relationships merely subject to market mechanisms? What sexist narratives shape our ideas of friendship and where do they come from? Is there a friendly eroticism? And in what ways do we allow ourselves to love our friends? Radical, critical, and visionary, Ole Liebl formulates a utopia of friendship and provides us with a long-overdue perspective on how we can think about friendship differently and find a more just coexistence: self-empowering, taboo-free, and deeply familiar.