Friends With Benefits, Making Love, and the Truth About Sexual Compatibility: A Talk with Emily Choi

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To hear our conversation in real time, listen to the full episode below. Make sure you tune into the show. You’ll get all the raw, unfiltered moments and deeper insights.

Podcast Episode: Emily Choi Talks Sex & Emotions

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There’s a moment in almost every woman’s life when she realizes no one actually taught her how to talk about sex. Not her mother, not her church, not her school health class. She just figured it out — through trial, error, and a few relationships that either confirmed or completely rewired what she thought she knew.

That’s exactly where this conversation started. I sat down with Emily Choi for an episode that was supposed to be about “sex in a relationship” and ended up being about a lot more: the difference between friends with benefits and casual sex, whether making love and having sex are really the same thing, why sexual compatibility matters more than people admit, and what a healthy sex life actually requires.

Emily and I come from different generations and different backgrounds, and we’ve each taken our own path when it comes to relationships and intimacy. I’ve been with my husband, Kalief, since I was a teenager. But the more we talked, the more it became clear that the real differentiator isn’t age or experience. It’s communication. Here’s what we uncovered.

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Friends With Benefits Isn’t the Same as Casual Sex

We started by trying to define our terms, because honestly, most people use “friends with benefits” and “casual sex” interchangeably without ever agreeing on what either one means.

For me, friends with benefits has always meant one specific person — someone you’re close with, someone you talk to, someone who becomes a “what are you doing tonight?” kind of call, but without a title. Kalief and I actually started that way back when we were fifteen and sixteen, decades before we ever called each other partners. Casual sex, on the other hand, felt more like a one-time or short-term thing with little to no ongoing connection — the Tinder-and-gone version.

Emily saw it a little differently. She defined casual sex as something that could repeat with more than one person, with no emotional thread attaching it together, while friends with benefits still implied some kind of underlying like or trust between two people — even without commitment. Neither of us thought there was a universally “correct” definition. What mattered more was that both people involved were on the same page about which one they were actually in.

That’s a theme that shows up everywhere in relationships: it’s rarely the arrangement that causes pain, it’s the mismatch in expectations around the arrangement.

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Making Love vs. Having Sex — Is There Really a Difference?

This might be the part of the conversation I think about the most. Emily made a distinction that stuck with me: making love is a soul-to-soul connection expressed through the body, while sex is simply pleasure. For her, that difference has nothing to do with how long you’ve been with someone — it’s about the depth of the connection in the moment.

I’ve always drawn the line differently. I only use the phrase “making love” with Kalief. Anyone before him, it was just sex — no illusions, no soul-tie language attached. But when Emily broke it down her way, it reframed how I thought about it. The words themselves aren’t as important as the intention and spiritual weight you assign to the moment. If you’re having sex with someone you feel a genuine, soul-level pull toward, it can absolutely be “making love,” regardless of your relationship status. If it isn’t, calling it that doesn’t make it true.

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Sex Before Marriage, and Why “Waiting” Isn’t a Dealbreaker for Everyone

Emily wants to get married someday — it’s part of the life sequence she was raised to expect. But she’s also more open than most about the fact that if a partner wanted to wait until marriage to have sex, she’d respect that. Her reasoning went back to an early experience of feeling objectified during sex as a teenager, which shaped how she now prioritizes emotional connection over physical urgency. Her sex drive, by her own description, isn’t especially high, and she’d rather know someone deeply than rush into physical intimacy before the emotional foundation is there.

I landed in a different place, and I told her so honestly: for me, sexual compatibility has to be established before marriage, not after. I’ve been with more than one partner, and I know firsthand that bodies — and the way people move, listen, and respond in bed — are not one-size-fits-all. I’m not willing to commit to a lifetime with someone without knowing whether we’re physically compatible, because incompatibility doesn’t stay contained to the bedroom. It bleeds into resentment, avoidance, and — for some couples — infidelity.

Neither answer is more “right” than the other. That’s the point. Sexual timelines are personal, and they’re shaped by faith, past experience, and what each of us needs to feel secure.

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Should Sex Be Planned or Spontaneous?

We agreed on this one almost instantly: sex should never feel like an item on a to-do list. The idea of scheduling intimacy — blocking off “9:00 to 10:00 p.m., Tuesday” — turns something that’s supposed to feel exciting into a chore. Real desire doesn’t wait for a calendar invite. It shows up in a look across the room, a hand on the small of your back while you’re cooking dinner, or that unmistakable Sunday-morning energy when you both wake up and just know.

That said, life — especially long-term, married-with-kids life — does shift the rhythm. There have been entire weeks where Kalief and I looked at each other and realized we hadn’t been intimate in days, simply because life ran us ragged. And that’s normal. The frequency isn’t the marker of a healthy relationship. The willingness to stay connected, even when frequency dips.

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Sexual Compatibility Isn’t Vanity — It’s Foundational

One of the more candid parts of our conversation was about physical compatibility itself — the reality that bodies and technique matter, not just chemistry. I’ve had experiences on both ends of the spectrum, and it taught me something I now hold as a non-negotiable: if the physical connection isn’t there, I will avoid intimacy every chance I get, and that avoidance quietly poisons a relationship from the inside.

Emily pushed back gently, and I think her perspective is worth sitting with too. She’s never had a genuinely bad sexual experience, so for her, physical mismatch feels more like something you can work around if the emotional and relational foundation is strong enough. If someone communicates well, shows up for her emotionally, and does “everything right” outside the bedroom, she’s more willing to be flexible about physical chemistry than I am.

According to relationship researchers, we’re both onto something real. Sexual compatibility isn’t just about physical attraction — it’s the alignment of needs, desires, values, communication styles, and emotional connection between partners, and couples who talk openly about their intimate needs consistently report higher relationship satisfaction. In other words, whether you’re in Emily’s camp or mine, the throughline is the same: talking about what you need, out loud, is what actually protects the relationship — not whether you happen to be a “perfect” physical match from day one.

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Who Initiates — and What Happens When Someone Says No?

We also got into initiation dynamics. I’m rarely the one who starts things with Kalief — maybe 10% of the time — and because that number is so small, on the rare occasion I say no to him, it can land as a bigger rejection than it would in a 50/50 dynamic. Emily described something similar in her own past relationships: she tends to wait rather than initiate, and she’s found that anticipation actually intensifies desire rather than dampening it.

We also touched on something that doesn’t get talked about enough — how differently we treat rejection depending on gender. Society tends to frame men as constantly “supposed” to want sex, so when a man says no, it can register as a red flag or a sign something is wrong, in a way that a woman saying no rarely does. That double standard shapes a lot of unspoken tension in relationships, and it’s worth naming out loud instead of just absorbing quietly.

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What Actually Makes a Healthy Sex Life

By the end of the conversation, Emily and I landed in the same place, even though we’d taken very different roads to get there: a healthy sex life isn’t measured by frequency, position, or how “compatible” two bodies happen to be on paper. It’s measured by whether both people feel safe enough to say what they want — and safe enough to say no without guilt.

For Emily, that means a partner who understands her lower sex drive and doesn’t pressure her outside of it. For me, it means a partner who’s okay with a “no, let’s just cuddle tonight” without making me feel obligated to perform. Psychologists who study sexual communication consistently find that couples who talk openly about their intimate needs report higher satisfaction and stronger connection than couples who assume their partner should just “know” — and that tracks with everything Emily and I found ourselves agreeing on, even from opposite ends of the experience spectrum.

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Key Takeaway

Sexual compatibility, timing, and even the words you use for intimacy are deeply personal — there’s no universal rulebook. What actually protects a relationship isn’t matching every preference perfectly; it’s the willingness to talk honestly about what you need, what you don’t, and what you’re still figuring out.

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A Note on This Conversation

Everything shared in this post reflects personal opinions and lived experience — mine and Emily’s — not professional or clinical advice. If conversations about sex, intimacy, or compatibility are bringing up something deeper for you, a licensed therapist or sex therapist can offer support this blog isn’t equipped to give.

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Continue the Conversation

This post only scratches the surface of everything Emily and I got into. Hit play on the full episode, Emily Choi Talks Sex & Emotions, to hear the entire conversation — including a few stories we didn’t put in writing. Listen now on Sherley’s Show, and while you’re there, drop a comment letting us know: where do you land on friends with benefits vs. casual sex?

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Related reading on Sherley’s Show

• How To Survive In A Relationship — Sherley and Kira on communication, boundaries, and setting standards early
• Say Goodbye to Being the Side Chick — questions to ask yourself when you’re settling for less than you deserve
• Why Is Therapy Important? — solo, partnered, or group therapy, and what it can actually do for you

Outside sources referenced

• Psychology Today — “Which Couples Are Better at Sexual Communication?” —
• TreatMyOCD — “Are We Sexually Compatible? Why It Matters and How to Figure It Out” —

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