Have you had a ongoing sexual relationship with someone where it was more or less explicitly agreed that the relationship was not romantic and there was no expectation it will become romantic?
If so, what was it like? Did it end well? Were you the one to suggest the arrangement or the other person?
Also, it would be cool if you could provide your sex and sexual orientation for context.
Straight male here.
I’ve had a couple. One was the girl I lost my virginity to. She basically saw no point in a relationship, liked sex, and liked it a lot. (Interestingly, my best friend at the time was the first person she slept with. I was the second). She had a lot of fuckbuddies, but if any of them ever started dating, she’d leave them alone - she never wanted to be the other woman. It was kinda nice having a sure thing during a dry spell between relationships, but honestly the sex wasn’t that good. Which is a little surprising because she was having a LOT more of it than I was. I have heard through the grapevine that she’s not as interested in the casual sex scene as she used to be though.
The other was a girl I met at a party. She and I were a lot alike, she was very adventurous and fun-loving and sweet and curious. She was also up for trying most things and had a habit of not wearing underwear and grabbing my crotch while I was driving. Unfortunately for the non-relationship, I met the woman that would become my wife around the same time, and as things got serious with us I figured it was a bad idea to try and date two women at a time, so we ‘broke up’ in so much as fuckbuddies can break up. The next guy she landed she married, so it worked out for both of us.
Straight male. I just recently ended things with such a girl. It started as a mutually agreed on thing. And for the first few months, it was awesome. For the current spot I’m in in my life, it was the perfect thing. Or so I thought.
It began basically as nothing but sex. And it worked very well. A little too well, it turned out. We just liked each other. Enjoyed each other’s company, had amazing chemistry and were able to engage in stimulating conversation. The introduction of feelings, in retrospect, was inevitable.
And that spelled the end of our relationship. The feelings we had were mutual. But neither of us were in a place where getting into a relationship would work. Despite this realization, from the outset, we ended up caring for each other. But it had to end. She had issues with alcohol which were pretty serious and I had just recently got out of a long-ish term relationship that had ended very ugly and complicated and exposed a lot of uncomfortable emotions for me.
So, long story short, yes, I had a “fuck buddy” and it worked. For a while. Til it didn’t. Because emotions.
My story is so similar to the ones already posted that I literally have nothing to add. Straight male.
I’ve had a F’buddy for nearly 15 years.
The way it works:
We both drink at the same neighborhood bar. I never know when she’s going to be there and she never knows when I’m going to be there. But if we both happen to show up there on the same night, AND we both are of the mood, we’ll hook up.
We have our fun first at the bar, because we do enjoy drinking together, and then we’ll head back to my place.
We do have each others phone number, but we never use it. Other than maybe a text asking: “You going up there tonight?”
To me, there is a difference between F’buddy and FWB. That which I describe above is an F’buddy.
So long ago I barely remember. I do know though that as soon as I found a THE person I wanted to be with, that was the first relationship I had to sever. But that could have just been me.
Straight woman. I did it twice.
First one was the first guy I slept with. That ended badly for many reasons that mostly had to do with him being a damaged and unpleasant person, and me being too young and desperate for attention to realize it.
Second one was in between the breakup of a LTR and meeting the man I married. That guy was sweet. We liked each other. He would come to my place every Tuesday after work, spend the evening, that was that. When I started to date my husband, I gave that guy a call to tell him it was off. He told me good luck, and give him a call if it didn’t work out.
Straight woman.
I have one. We’re been friends since The X-Files started. We would get together every Friday night, then Sunday nights to watch the show. We would get up at 4 in the morning and go to this spot we had, to watch the various meteor showers. For years we were nothing more than friends. Then one night we hooked up and it was fun.
I’m not a person who wants to be in a relationship, I like being alone way too much for that. I’ve been on a few dates with other people, and even though I didn’t have sex with any of them, they all seem to want some kind of commitment, so he is the only person I’ve slept with for the past 8 years. If one of us is in the mood, we have someone we trust and can count on to be there. And it’s not awkward the next morning, and we are still the best of friends.
I think in order for something like this to work, you have to not be the jealous type.
ETA: We also get together a lot of times without hooking up. Like this past Christmas.
Gay male. I’ve had two or three fuck buddies in the past. Usually the connection just petered out (no pun intended) as one or the other found other interests, or lost interest, or whatever. No harm, no foul. The last one I had to end when I got into my current relationship, 23 years ago.
That was potentially an interesting situation. SO and I had just moved in together when I got a phone call (forwarded to our new line from my old phone). My SO answered the phone, and then handed it to me. This is what he heard me say.
“Oh, hi. No, sorry, I can’t do that any more, I’m in a relationship now. OK. Bye.” Then I hung up.
“Who was that?”
“Oh, just someone I used to mess around with.”
Thankfully, end of story.
My experience amounts to a guy who asked me, I responded “I don’t do casual” more than once, he responded “I don’t either!” and pursued me anyway… until he finally realized I was actually serious and wouldn’t put out for no-commitment funsies. My “If you don’t have the time to spend with me, then just what are you doing here?” was the come-to-Jesus moment for him, I think. Then he had this angsty crisis that lasted… a month or something? while he “thought about how he felt” and randomly sent me “I miss you” texts before finally inviting himself over for a date, where he “dumped” me.
Conclusion: one or both parties will see exactly and only what they want to see, in order to get what they (think they) want, without any regard for its basis in reality. People really like to pretend that emotions aren’t a factor.
Which would be why I don’t do casual.
FB is mostly all I had for many years. I much prefer it that way. In a relationship now and feel like the life is being sucked out of me.
Gay male. I’ve had a couple of fuck buddies in my life. One of them was for around 5 years, we’d be horny, message the other and hook up. It was a great set up.
Female straight.
I can’t remember exactly who suggested it. I would call it “friends with benefits” in the sense that we hung out socially as opposed to just being booty calls.
After 4-5 years of no-pressure knocking boots, we realized we like each other more than anyone else and got married.
Male, straight.
I’ve had a few over the years. One thing that I’ve found to be universally true in my own situations, and near-universally true in cases of people I’ve known, is that it means more to one of the participants than the other.
In other words, to one party it was literally friends with benefits, and to the other it was something they hoped would blossom into an actual relationship, or at least was more emotionally involved.
Straight male here.
I had a friends-with-benefits relationship, off and on, for about 16 months in college. The girl and I dated for a couple of months, it didn’t work out, but we enjoyed having sex with each other so we kept at it.
I always felt bad after having sex with her (I had a lot of moral baggage about sex), but I kept at it, because I was 20 and that’s what you do.
That is one of the down sides. I had about a 10 year relationship somewhat off and on with a girl who would usually call about once a week and I would take her out for a drink, sometimes dinner and then back to my place. No calls inbetween. I felt guilty with every visit because I always knew she wanted more but was settling. I started buying her little Christmas and birthday gifts to try and at least somewhat validate here feelings but it eventually got to a point where I had to cut it off. I would have been happy to cut out the sex just to maintain the relationship but it seldom works out that way.
Yeah. 
Years ago, probably a year before I met my wife, a friend with benefits took me to task pretty hard one night when I was drunk and she was drunker. Our friendship-with-benefits had always been built on two lies: her pretending she was just into it for casual sex, and me pretending there was a chance of it becoming more than just casual sex.
She wasn’t mad at me that night, not really; just sad, because she was able to admit what neither of us had been able to before: that it was all fun and games for me, while she was emotionally invested (though she had always pretended not to be). And of course, once it was out in the open, I had to admit (inwardly) that I’d known it too, and had always felt a little guilty, though of course never guilty enough to stop or change. I felt like dogshit, sitting there at her kitchen table with the smell of her sweat still on me, while she talked morosely into an empty whiskey glass.
One of the things she said that night was along the lines of “it’s easy to get guys to hang out, but nobody wants to stay.” I dressed that thought up with a little poetic license and it became the centerpiece of a very sad song. (Spoilered to save space.)
[spoiler]Sound, for those interested.
Hookers Give Lousy Backrubs
She stares at her shoes
and whispers into her drink
She says, “At the end of the day,
all the boys want to come
but they don’t want to stay”
Distracted, dissipated
We become what we once hated
Last time was the last time
Last time was the last time
She slumps in her chair
and mumbles into her glass
She says, "This is nothing, nothing new
and what good is the rule
if the exception is always you?
Distracted, dissipated
We become what we once hated
Last time was the last time
Last time was the last time[/spoiler]
The onion did a “News in Brief” about you. 
I was in college and went to a bar one night with some friends. She was in line to get in, we started talking, and I went home with her that night. Turns out she had about 10 years on me and taught at my college. For the next 18 months or so one of us would occasionally call the other, we’d get together for dinner, sometimes dancing, and always sex, then go our separate ways. She was sexually adventurous. I found she was a willing participant for a bunch of my bucket list-type experiences. No pressure, no strings, no commitment. Eventually I ended up in a more permanent relationship, she called once and I declined, and that was that.
I wonder how often this is the case. But I’m sort of surprised and glad about the number of the responses in which it seemed like both parties were on the same page more or less.
I reason I started this thread was to see how many of these arrangements were lopsided, with one or both parties getting hurt or feeling bad about the whole thing. But then again, I realize that people with less positive experiences are probably less inclined to reply.
So you’ve had a casual relationship that ended poorly, I encourage you to reply with your experiences!