Assembly-line friendships

OK. So, what did my time with 'BB' teach me? (*Apart* from how to dodge a nifty right hook. But that's a whole other story).

We met in the fag fug of Horsemeat Disco, when I was blearily exiting a previous relationship, and had been looking for nothing more than a bit of fun. A fuzzy frolic by the pool table, led to coffees and (oh how noughties gay London) further dates - workout dates - at Soho Gym in Waterloo.

It soon became clear that 'BB' was driven by a number of things...but, actually, most of them pretty straight-forward. The categeries of Top Trumps that he was particularly interested in?

• Muscle (and it was about SIZE)
• Furriness
• Masculinity

But basically, what he was looking for was strokes. The 'warm fuzzies' that he got when a guy who ticked all the attractiveness boxes gave him a little bit of attention. And it was that most powerful of motivators - insecurity - that gave him his drive.

Now, us gays are generally pretty fluent in the language of attraction and the dynamics of desire. And we have diversified our relationship structures to accommodate them... So, for many in the 'straight world', non-traditional and non-monogamous relationships may seem worthy of a 'behind-closed-doors-exposé', but I've been living the intricacies of friends in 'trouples', and navigating my way around the politics and politeness of couples with open relationships since I came onto the scene.

Now it's pretty clear what's going-on within these relationships - it's real-world and real-time and plain to see. But with the rise (and rise) of online social networking, what happens to monogamous couples when the online networking seems to move beyond 'social' and into 'sexual' territory?

With 'BB' I knew the offline stuff that happened. He had a broad circle of friends, and loved to be chummy with the hottest guys on the scene. He got a lot of strokes that way. But it was something that I knew about, and didn't feel threatened by.

But when 10 or 15 hot new 'friends' appeared on his Facebook profile every day (and each profile picture was a variation on the theme of - you guessed it - muscled, hairy torso), then I started to wonder what was going-on. What was he getting from these guys? And how did it reflect on our relationship?

My conclusion is that social (and sexual) networking on the internet allows us to do assembly-line friendships.

Stick with me here. Prior to the industrial revolution, production of goods was by artisans or craftsmen. Basically, if you wanted some shoes, you went to a cobbler, and they made the shoes themselves, for you, from the basic components. With the rise of Taylorist management science, and the advent of mass-manufacturing processes (as pioneered by Henry Ford) manufacturing tasks were broken down into smaller and smaller components, and labour became very specialist. So, with our cobbler example, there would now be one person who's only job (and only skill) was to cut the leather upper for the shoe, someone else to punch the eyelets, and yet another to stitch the sole.

Are we doing the same with our friends? Are we breaking-down the craftsmanlike nature of what it takes to be a 'fully-qualified' friend or lover, to develop a set of specialist 'friends' whose role is to provide different elements of our relationship needs?

It became clear to me that 'BB' was using the internet to flirt. Pure & simple. He was using those hot, hairy torsos to give him a regular drip feed of validation. And that was a drug. Why stick with the real compliments and caresses of one lover, when you can access the strokes from a thousand virtual ones....even if that's all that they give you. It's intoxicating.

But where do the rest of us go from here?

How does it affect the quality of our relationships, if - like assembling a Ford Model T - we are going to one set of friends for flirting, another set of friends for sex, another set of friends for emotional intimacy, and another set of friends for domesticity?

I don't have an answer. But my heart tells me that having so many different identities isn't healthy for the soul. I think I aspire to being a Master Craftsman of Friendship.