**** buddy or boyf?

LegacyUser

Have recently broken up wid someone and am seeing an ex of mine. This guy is someone who I thought I was goin to marry but we were younger and more naive..breaking up wid me was the best thing he done because it gave me a chance to be free and explore..so long story short we have come to an arrangement of now being "**** buddies"..however we dont jus ring each other for sex,we have lunch,go cinema,bowling,the gym and shopping,and we get on so much better than we did a few years ago,were constantly laughing and have great sex..what does this mean?! Is this a relationship?! I know it prob seems clear if your not in the situation but I jus dont know. I know I feel very strongly for him but what worries me is he may not feel the same,I could be hanging around in vain-waiting for something thats jus not gonna happen and he could get a proper girlfriend and Il be left heartbroken all over again..should I bail out now!? An the guy I jus broke up wid was the love of my life and I think Ive gotten him out of my head but he always creeps back in in my moments of doubt and insanity( both guys broke up wid me by the way) ..Apparently I'm a great looker with a vivacious personality but jus cant seem to hold down a long term relationship! I'm so confused!

King of Kings

unless you nail it down with a agreement your are still **** buddies.
I so prefer the words shag pals (it so less coarse)


anyway the further issue you have is that you are behaving like a couple and that nice-ness will be ruin if one of you cops off with somebody else.

I think you should have a clear the air / agree the agreement talk with him soon enough

frobisher

Cough. Splutter.......ahem. Rebound?

Black Swan

How long were you with your ex? Was it a long relationship (like 4 years) or a shorter one?

dvega

LOL,just look 2 posts down theres a fella in the same situation as yours,just dont tell me ye split up 4 yrs ago!

Anyway it sounds like you still have feelings for him and if ye are only using each other as sex buddies it will only end up in disaster.Depense also how he feels,dont keep this up or you'll only end up feeling worse than you did when ye split up.My best advise is to sit him down and tell him how you feel,if its the wrong answer just walk away you'll only ending up feeling worse.

LundiMardi

you want a relationship, he wants a **** buddie.... He likes doing these things with you but because you are not officially together he can go out and bang any other chick and not feel bad about it, and he'd be right.

I suggest you confirm with him the situation and reassess your thinking on things cos it sounds like this may turn out bad for YOU.

Talliesin

If I were to (and indeed when I have done) have someone in my life where we were lovers but not partners I'd certainly want them to be someone I would meet for lunch and do other things with beyond sex.

It doesn't mean that you'll necessarily become partners, though it does mean that it certainly is a possibility.

Indeed, it does seem that he's going a bit further than just being occassional lovers with you. It could be a matter of him beginning to fall in love with you.

It could also be a matter of wanting to be a fair-weather boyfriend - he'll do all the nice boyfriend stuff, but you won't be able to depend on him being there when the chips are down. And well, that could be a good place for you to be too, especially given that you're just out of a relationship it might not be a bad thing to just do the fun bits and leave out the serious bits for a while.

One of the things about occassional lovers is that while it's hardly something anything gets shocked about, it's a type of relationship that isn't well integrated into how our society works. If you're celibate, in a long term monogamous relationship or having one-night stands when the opportunity presents itself then you're doing something that we've plenty of models for to compare ourselves to. Occassional lovers haven't been part of how we do things for long (though they once used to be, among some strata of society). Even the silly term slang term "**** buddy" being used as the most common label indicates this (not that I'm squeamish about the word ****, but it is still a silly term; besides I wouldn't want a **** buddy if I could have a felatio-cunnilingus-bondage-spanking-dominance- and-submission-biting-licking-energy-sharing-and- then-maybe-a-****-aswell buddy ).

The more "normal" models do have rules to follow and have a better idea of where one is at.

In some ways this is a good thing. Quite a few of us find that society's ways of modelling relationships don't work for us or don't work for us all the time. This is why one can end up having a ****-buddy relationship in the first place.

Certainly, I find myself looking at some of the attempts to set a stronger concensus about rules around "**** buddies" that's happening around the whole ethical slut concept (there's also a comparable movement in some parts of the polyamoury community) and I find myself thinking "you rejected the old rules for being bull****, why are you making up new rules".

Still though, having rules for what is "normal" to do with a boyfriend does help you have a sense of where you are, even if you decide to reject one or two of those rules.

Step outside of the norm a bit and you are free to make up the rules whatever way you want, but at the cost of having to make up the rules whatever way you want. End result being that things get a lot more fluid in way that can be wonderful but can also be confusing.

Ultimately it seems that you want to move to a more traditional boyfriend/girlfriend position. I say just go for it, tell him you've developed strong feelings for him again and you want to move things to the sort of relationship appropriate for expressing those feelings.

Your chances of having those feelings recipricated sound pretty high. If they aren't, you're probably better off having the different places the two of you are at become obvious now rather than a bit down the line. It's always a risk when you are lovers but not partners with someone that one will fall in love and the other won't (though I'm personally very glad that sometimes it will happen to both of you) and it's always unsustainable if that has happened.

Tell him how you feel. Fingers crossed he feels the same way.

~nop~

Ask him.