SO/FWB/FB

Ok, here's my more precise breakdown:

Significant other: compatible on the levels of personality, intimacy, sex and romance. Explicit exclusivity.
Friend with benefits: compatible on the levels of personality, intimacy and sex. There may be implied exclusivity depending on context, but usually not.
Fuck buddy: compatible on levels of personality and sex. No implied exclusivity.
Booty call: compatible on the level of sex. No exclusivity whatsoever. To be treated as a sex gremlin.

 

I had a "rotation" in college and it quickly became a nightmare. It was four or five girls each week, none of which I was particularly happy with. At the end, instead of fucking a few people each week, I would focus on one until it became clear that it wasn't going to evolve into a relationship, or if it was strictly for sex, until it started to become complicated or I found someone else. I would and eventually did, trade one girl that I could spend a lot of time with for four girls that I could only deal with in short bursts.

I think it boils down to: "I don't really like you, but I want to fuck you." to get above maybe three in a week. You have one friend that left the friend zone, one random that you just have good sexual chemistry with and one potential relationship or a potential replacement. Anything beyond that and it's not about sexual need, companionship, or dating, it's about racking up a score. If I meet a truly hot girl (think the elusive 5 star from the RMMB days), then I should expend some effort to find myself betwixt those thighs, but with my normal social group, three was a good limit, four always wound up being somewhat dishonest or misleading.

However, when I willfully enter the friend zone, that shit is serious. I've got maybe six female friends that will never enter that FWB territory, because I know the likelihood of fucking that up is high and I want my friends to stick around.

Remember kids: for men, sex is like dieting: it needs to be varied and colorful to be fulfilling. For women, it's like religion: if you find the right one, the motherfucking search is over, for life and it will sustain you through all aspects of life. Where I come from, that search shit is taken awfully seriously and monogamy is the rule, not the exception. This translates to "fuck the bible belt" and that exclusivity is often an assumed part of casual dating.

 

Because if you get your fuck buddies wet, they multiply? HEY-OH.

But seriously, y'all shouldn't be so hung up on labels. FB and FWB sound like things you call a girl right before you fist bump a dude.

Main focus: 3. Anything more than 3 is gross.

 

Honey, when I'm sarging a TRE and HBs are giving me AIs, I just kino my way to an F-close and lock down multiple ONS. Rinse, repeat, GFTOW.

 

Am I the only one who thinks that a fuckbuddy and a friend with benefits are synonyms?

 

Sorry to continue with the sports metaphors, but it depends on starting position. FWB started out as a friend, FB started out as a random or casual hookup that becomes habitual.

 

Focus:I personally don't sleep with more than three guys at a time (two fuck buddies and a friend with benefits is all I can juggle), but I think five casual partners is acceptable if you are being safe and you're not hiding any of them from the rest. I'm not sure though. One of my roommates in college lost her virginity her first year of college and by the time she was in her fifth year (she wasn't dumb. She just had a double major) she had slept with 62 different guys. We inevitably shared a guy, and he told me she was very safe about the whole thing. I also know she got tested every six months, and never got so much as a crab. This was also a roommate I got along with the best and she was never a slut about it. So it might be different for each person.
Alt-Focus:I've always considered it:
Significant other: Someone who you have sex with exclusively. You have introduced this person to your friends and family and the two of you will either marry each other, change your relationship to FWB, or stop having sex.
Friends with Benefits: Someone who you have been friends with for some period of time (a few months to a few years) who you have sex with non-exclusively. Also refers to an ex-SO who you do not marry but still have sex with.
Fuck Buddy: Someone who you have never been friends with whom you have sex non-exclusively. Fuck Buddies answer booty calls.

 

I like these definitions, they are dead on for me.

I have one FWB and a guy that I am "seeing." There hasn't been a conversation to indicate being exclusive yet, and I'm not going to rush it.

When do you stop seeing and FWB's or FB's as you begin dating someone? How do you break it off? Any interesting stories or tips?

 

Fuck buddy - someone you have sex with and have little to no emotional attachment to. They are simply there to fulfill sexual cravings.
Friends with benefits - A person who you view just as you would a significant other, but the relationship is not exclusive or going into it, doesn't have the chance to develop into more.
Significant other - You're exclusive with each other, you actively seek to become closer as a couple, and there is an understanding that the relationship has the potential for becoming long term.

At the moment, I have 3 FWB.
2 of them are never going to be more than that. 1 has the potential to develop into something more.
I like taking the progression of relationships slowly, but you can't evaluate a potential partner without treating them as such. Too many times in my past I rushed into slapping the significant other label on things and by the time I realized the person wasn't what I was looking for, I was already heavily invested in the relationship which made the break up messy for all parties. This way, you can get a more accurate preview of how you'll be as a couple, without having to make the full blown commitment too early. It's worked out well, for me at least, and the past few relationships have been quite good because of it.

I stop seeing FWB's when I want to be, or someone asks me to be, exclusive. Up until that point, I take the "friends" part of that relationship seriously. I like the person and enjoy spending time with them. It's almost never about the sex. As the name states, it's just an added benefit being able to be intimate with someone you care for.
In an ideal world, a FWB would turn into just a friend, but obviously not everyone is mature enough to be able to make that transition. A simple conversation that goes something like, "I've enjoyed the relationship we've had for the past x amount of time, but I've decided to start seeing this person exclusively. If you'd like to keep doing all of the things we've been doing, minus the sex, that would be great as I really enjoy your company. If that's not something you are comfortable with, I'd be disappointed, but I understand."

 

I think you should be able to have sex with as many people as you want, whenever you want, provided everyone is healthy and safe.

As far as the differences go, it depends on how they react to the sentence, "We're not going to be doing this anymore."

FB: "But I still want to fuck! Ahh, oh well, fun while it lasted."
FWB: "Really? Like...really really? You're sure? It's going to be weird not fucking you after we catch a movie, but I guess I'll deal."
Relationship: "YOU SAID YOU LOVED ME, YOU FUCKING BITCH."

 

Focus: Whatever number with which someone is comfortable. 1, 10, whatever. As long as people are being safe and nobody's being led on to believe it's anything more than what it is. The rules are whatever the two of you agree to.

FWB/FB: Can be used interchangeably. Someone you booty call or a friend that goes home with you when your group of friends is calling it a night.

Significant other: A spouse.

Somewhere in-between FWB/FB and Sig. Other: Dating partner or boy/girlfriend.

 

Focus

If you're single, fuck everything that isn't attached to an oxygen cannister. Seriously, if you are not in a committed relationship, you can have two booty calls or an entire stable of ready-and-willings to slut yourself off on. Sin is something that does not actually exist in real life, so you should be able to have as much fun as you want if you're not in a bonifide relationship.

Alt-Focus

A fuck buddy/booty call is a simply a thing. Not an actual person to you, but an ornament for you to wet your gentials with. You will not care about them, go with them to that new Channing Tatum movie, or even look at them in daylight hours while sober. They are your last ditch go-to when your charisma crashes and burns and your cell phone still works.

A Friends With Benefits is someone you know, possibly hang around, who you can bang when horny without emotional strings. Enjoy this rare, stress-free gem while it lasts because IT DOESN'T. Eventually one will start caring about the other and this is what we call (in The Industry) "getting weird".

A signifigant other is someone you are committed to. Fucking others is now cheating, so make sure you pay your secretary well.

 

Unfortunately my sexually active years spanned the AIDs era, then I got married. Hence:

Fuck Buddy: "Fuck, buddy, hand me another beer, I'm empty."
Friends with Benefits : A buddy with a pickup truck or boat.
Significant other: Implies exclusivity, introduction to friends and relatives, and an impending custody fight over the dog and the Led Zeppelin box set.

 

The notion of fuck buddies and booty calls has always been interesting to me. Largely cause they either quickly turned into FWBs or fizzled into nothing. The conversion rate of late night reach outs coupled with a lack of effort for overall hang outs just have never really made it feasible. Once or twice, I had girls that I knew that if our groups of friends collided at any point during a night, I'd likely go home with her. But in those cases, it quickly became clear that it wasn't supposed to be an infrequent thing and treating it like that sort of situation, while accepted at the time, wasn't cool, so they turned to nothing.

FWBs, while I never thought about it the way some of you have brought up, has been more frequent. In college, I always thought it was significant others and FWBs, very black and white. Post college I've begun to see the grey. Ive had a couple girls over the past few years who I really liked hanging out with and hooking up with but didn't have any interest in dating exclusively for a variety of reasons. I always labeled it "dating" but not in a "relationship" but FWBs is probably a better way to look at it. That being said, rarely do I find FWB relationships to end smoothly. Usually one party wants more and is jaded when the other doesn't have the same viewpoint. My most recent experience, despite her saying constantly "i just got out of a relationship, I don't want another right now, this is good and chill" lead to jealousy and paranoia on her part, and upon the ending of the relationship by me to preempt anything bad happened, continuing awkwardness from her towards me that is worse than any break up I've had. Cause in those cases you expect that shit. With a FWB, you would think you could conceivably return to friendship.

 

The only fuck buddies and FWBs I've ever had are ex-girlfriends that were just trying to keep me in their lives using sex. They knew where I stood but they kept on being booty calls because they thought there was a chance I would take them back as my girlfriend. I was always very clear to them that was never going to happen but they kept on coming back so that was their problem.

If I was "dating" or "seeing" another girl and I found out she had multiple sexual partners that would be the end of if. You're all dirty whores.

It is one thing to be single and going out looking for a one night stand to get your rocks off, but to be actively dating a guy that you're interested in being with and still be fucking other dudes is just garbage. Buy a vibrator. There is never any reason to have multiple sex partners unless you are a hooker or some openly sexual deviant.

 

You just listed one and a half good reasons, though. I don't understand why you would have sex with somebody who wasn't either of those things.

 

Oh dear. Any time I see the word deviant used unselfconsciously, I start thinking sad thoughts about the critical thinking capabilities of the general public. The problem with your argument is that it presupposes not just a norm (which is fine and I have no problems with), but a morally righteous norm from which any divergence is a negative. I tend to think everyone should read Foucault's theories on deviance; even if you end up not agreeing with them, they offer an interesting deviant perspective.

Or, to put it another way

 

There are tons of reasons to have multiple partners. What if you have more than one penis?

Not to throw you under a bus, but that's a very limited worldview. Not everyone expects monogamy and the number of people who are happy in a strict, traditional relationship is smaller every day.

This was the prevailing attitude of a lot of people where I lived, and I fucking despised it. I could have had at least one good orgy and saved myself a lot of heartache by now if more people thought like me, and not like you. Seriously, you sound like a self-conscious teenage girl: "One dick ought to be enough for everyone, any more and you're a slut!"

Read "The Ethical Slut" and save Scootah the grief.
<a class="postlink" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ethical_Slut" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ethical_Slut</a>

 

Well, I agree with one piece of your post: Everyone should buy a vibrator. They're awesome and stuff. Support your local sex shop, people!

The rest of your post is bullshit, though.

One person cannot possibly satisfy all of my sexual needs. Period. In the confines of a monogamous relationship, everyone becomes accustomed to certain needs being unmet to some extent in exchange for deeper intimacy/snuggles/someone to fart with during House Hunters International. This trade-off is worth it to some, and not worth it to others (poly people, for example). But if you're single or polyamorous? There's no trade-off to make!

I can have one partner for anal sex because he has the perfect dick for it. I can keep another around because he's bi and hot and I am hoping he'll indulge my MMF threesome fantasy. I can bang one dude solely because he is pretty good at it and he makes excellent snacks afterwards and lets me eat them in his really nice bed. I can have casual sex with yet another man because he spanks me in just the perfect way, but he wouldn't really be good at anything that didn't involve ass smacking. Hell, I can even keep one dude named BigChops around just because I get a thrill out of telling him that he's the only one I'm fucking...even though I just fucked all four of the dudes above right before I met up with him. I might be amused by the fact that he unreasonably expects me to be monogamous in a casual dating/casual sex relationship and feel the overwhelming urge to have him stick his (wrapped) dick into a cesspool of deviant semen under the guise of a vanilla booty call.

Each of those dudes meets a very specific sexual need, but few of them could "crossover" to meet another need--let alone all of them. One of the most important sexual needs to a LOT of people is variety. Unless you're a shapeshifter, you can't meet that need.

But hey, what do I know? I'm just a deviant.

Focus: As many as you want.
Alt. Focus: For me, a fuckbuddy is someone you have excellent sexual chemistry with but cannot find any way to evolve that chemistry into a friendship. Y'all fuck, maybe have some pillow talk, but then you part ways. No implied exclusivity. When you see their number pop up on your phone, you know it's for one thing and one thing only: sex.

A friends-with-benefits (or FWB) is someone that may have begun as a fuckbuddy but has since morphed into someone you would grab dinner or a movie with before/after getting naked with each other. Or maybe you tried to date them and it just didn't work...but y'all remained friends and kept having occasional sex. Or maybe you two were friends and just decided to have sex one day to see what would happen...and you both liked it. However it began, dating is off the table for both of you. You can hang out without having sex, of course, but it is always an option. No implied exclusivity, but it is generally expected that you be upfront about the other people you're both banging for sexual safety reasons/politeness. When you see their number pop up on your phone, you know it is equally likely that this person will ask you to go paint balling as it is that this person will ask you to come over for Netflix and oral sex.

A significant other (SO) is someone you are dating. You don't necessarily have to have sex if it's too soon or you're not into premarital sex, but a lot of people do. The assumption is that (unless otherwise negotiated) y'all are monogamous and it is a serious relationship that may or may not lead to lifelong partnership. When you see their number pop up on your phone, you're supposed to get warm tingles or some shit.