Barbecue sauce is to thank for my first friends-with-benefits situation. One night, I was extolling the virtues of Sweet Baby Ray’s—I come from St. Louis, where citizens consume almost twice as much barbecue sauce per capita as the average person—and I claimed that I would eat barbecue sauce off someone’s dick. (I’m cringing, too, don’t worry.) “In fact,” I lamented, “why don’t people incorporate barbecue sauce in the bedroom more? Why is it only chocolate sauce?”
After a bit, we moved on from barbecue sauce, but later that night I got a text from one of my friends saying, “Were you serious about the barbecue sauce thing?” I scrambled to figure out which part of my pro-sauce soliloquy he was referring to. (If you are ever going to ask a woman to be your FWB in this exact same way, please be more specific than this guy was.) Eventually he not-so-smoothly brought up barbecue sauce and dicks, which led to us joking around and him saying, “haha we should do that sometime.” Reader: We did not do that. But the text did open the door for us to fuck, which was the actual goal of the whole conversation. Bless you, Sweet Baby Ray’s.
It’s a hard conversation to have. There’s a risk—more perceived than real—that you’ll irrevocably ruin a friendship and be branded as a massive weirdo if you admit you’d be down to hook up with a friend of yours. I’ve had a few friends-with-benefits situations, and I can tell you that no one way of bringing this up is going to make you feel like you’re not doing something potentially disastrous. But let me also assure you that it’s normal to want casual sex; a lot of people are going to be similarly thrilled with the idea. And the ones who aren’t? They probably aren’t going to be scandalized by it. Unless you’re hanging out with a lot of practicing Mennonites, you’re probably not going to ruin a friendship by respectfully suggesting a low-key bone sesh. I’m just going to tell you how to do it the right way.
WHENA friends-with-benefits talk should happen only after sex has already happened once—asking before there’s been any mutual acknowledgement of sexual interest is a bit too bold, and is more likely to land you in an uncomfortable situation. You can suggest casual sex with a friend you’ve been flirting with (just make your expectations clear), but the ongoing agreement of a sex relationship can’t happen until you’ve already boned once. Otherwise, it’s like saying, “We should do this again” before the first date.
Conversely, you also can’t sleep with someone six times and then just assume they’re on the same page simply because you guys keep having sex. Up-front communication is key in a friends-with-benefits relationship, if only to prevent thornier conversations later. After the first time you fuck a friend, the next chance you get to talk to them while clothed, bring it up. You can say something straightforward like “Hey, I had a lot of fun the other night and would love to do that again, but I should be clear that I’m thinking more of a friends-with-benefits situation rather than dating. No big deal if you’re not into that, though, just wanted to be up front!” Don’t make it some weird diatribe about how you’re not ready for a relationship or can’t give them enough emotionally. No one wants to take on that information from a FWB.