FWB – Mr Queenie … maybe..?

I think you’re off to a good start…

Thanks Raven. I agree.
After some introspection, I am very satisfied and thoroughly enjoying the pace we’re going. Having developed a strong friendship where we respect, trust, confide in each other, celebrate each other’s accomplishments and strengths, and support each other during setbacks, has been such a positive and enjoyable experience. Slowly progressing is not what I’m used to, and I find it astronomically better than the lightening fast style of previous relationships. My ex husband told me he loved me after 1 month of dating, Red flag anyone?! Lol I was young and dumb, and that was a huge learning chapter of my life. Next serious relationship, the guy was coming over almost every night, I allowed it (my fault), but got so sick of not having ANY personal space, and that crashed and burned (not surprisingly) too.
Someone asked on my previous post ‘how am I going to feel if he says he doesn’t love me the way I love him”. And respectfully, I never said I loved him. I absolutely care for him, have feelings for him, but love is a very strong word that I don’t take lightly.
Long story, short, lol, I’m happy with how things went, and cautiously optimistic about how things will [slowly] progress.

Not to rain on your parade but:

A. Why will you see each other in 2 weeks. Two weeks is not growing a relationship timing
B. If he does not contact you today, he is not into a relationship… maybe by noon tmrw being generous

All the men who were ever my boyfriend words and actions matched: and contacted me with in 24 hours of official and great sex. Several sent flowers.

As I wrote in your first post, if he likes how things are- he will want things to stay the same. That’s what it sounds like to me. I’m not sure how this weekend was different than any other weekend you both would get together for dinner, hanging out, and sex.

You know things are progressing when he wants to take you out, you meet his family, he wants to meet your kids. Otherwise, just enjoy what you’re doing. There’s no pressure to “move the relationship “ in any direction if you’re happy. It’s all prevention in case he thinks it’s casual and just walks away one day. Even if you are only seeing each other, it can be considered casual.
If you feel like you would be very hurt if he walked away or stopped contacting you- you might want to have a conversation. However, I would guess he wouldn’t really say anything to make you feel secure in the relationship because he would have already said these things. In your most recent post you were asking all the questions and you offered up you’re not seeing anyone, he never asked. If I were you, I would see what he does and says- I would not bring up a discussion about what you want to call your relationship. Let him.

Thank you Anon for your input. I guess I can see how this weekend was not significantly different from previous, but personally it has been. When we first started, we’d fool around in his living room and didn’t bring it into the bedroom. There’s been (albeit slow) progression to what I described above. He has met my friends, and he’s recently introduced me to his. I am no where near ready for him to meet my children. His family lives on the other side of the country, as does mine, so I in no way expect to meet them anytime soon, we both lost our Mothers at an early adult age, and quite frankly the step of him meeting my one and only family member (my brother) is at the bottom of my checklist, as I’m sure it would be for him. We’re in a similar (but different obligations wise) family situation so I don’t hold that as a deciding factor for him, and would hope (I think) he’s not.
I certainly would be hurt if he up and stopped talking to me, as I imagine he would too if I ghosted.
But as well as I know him, if he felt uncomfortable, he would tell me, as he did a year ago, and we remained friends. I was short term disappointed, but continued life, dated others, and we maintained our bond.
Surely I’d be disappointed if he said same now, but his actions are different now.. so I’m just going with the flow for the time being. Maybe it’s something? Maybe it’s not?… time will tell, and I’m enjoying the ride thus far….

Ah crap, I would love to see it, as I was hoping for your response Newbie lol
What do I want?… in the immediate time period I want mutual respect and appreciation. Long term I for sure want more in the sense of more intertwined lives. But personally I’m not even ready for that step, yet, because I want to build a strong foundation first.

Why do I think you will be on here week after week reading into sex that moves into the bedroom as a man who is your boyfriend?

It is a hard and fast rule that men who are escalating show up more. If he contacts you the same amount nothing has changed and it is not a need for constant communication trust I was talking about (I don’t need to hear from my men everyday), but sure as sh$t, any man who does not call you the next day after supposedly becoming exclusive would be showing you in actions… you are still just a companion who he calls when he feels like it. This man is not showing you in actions or words that he wants this to grow beyond being convenient and fun. You can be exclusive, and still lack the depth for an integrated life. That is why an integrated life is something you talk about early and often… you have yet to have enough confidence to make sure he is not seeing others.

The man who is your boyfriend claims you, shows you off, makes it clear he is not seeing, pursuing or sleeping with anyone else and says…. this is my girlfriend. You take crumbs and turn them into a loaf by saying he goes slow and you still have not clarified your status. He might simply be too lazy to be dating others… you are giving him rent free the girlfriend treatment.

You said “in the immediate time period I want mutual respect and appreciation.” But you had that, didn’t you? He’s always respected you and you always had a strong friendship. What you want is exclusivity– monogamy– right? You want this to go somewhere? Isn’t that what this is about?

You’ve mentioned you made poor choices and moved too quickly in previous relationships. Could it be that you’re overcompensating now by getting involved with someone who’s *not* pushing for anything serious….taking things microscopically slow. You rightfully find it excessive that your ex said “I love you” after one month… but I’m sorry to say it’s also excessive on your part to consider it a sign of progress to move sex from the living room to the bedroom.
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You’ve been fairly intensely involved with this guy for a year (from what you’re saying) but you’re not ready to intertwine your lives because “want to build a strong foundation first.” But integrating your lives at an appropriate pace IS building a strong foundation. From your multiple posts on this guy, it sounds like you have a strong friendship. I don’t think there’s anything more to do at this point to build a strong foundation, except take the plunge and talk about where things are going, if indeed you want it to go anywhere.

This is just my opinion but it feels to me like you’re so scared of making the same mistakes again that you’ve latched on to a guy who is unavailable and not going to push for anything more than fun sex dates a couple times a month. The point others have made that you were the one asking all the questions about exclusivity, and he didn’t seem to bothered by it….that’s significant. A guy who wants to claim you as his woman will claim you. When I met my bf he was a few years out of a very bad divorce, and was very gun shy about getting into a serious relationship again. But he was still very eager to establish that we were monogamous, that I was seeing no one else, and that things between us were going somewhere. And he did that within about 8 weeks of dating.

If you are okay with a casual bimonthly thing and don’t mind if this doesn’t go anywhere, then by all means keep on. But if you have any hope at all of having this guy as a partner (which I think you do, or else you wouldn’t keep posting about), I really think you need to address these issues head on. It’s scary, yes, but I don’t really see your nice date this weekend as much progress, from what you describe. It was more of the same- sex, talking, and see ya in 2 weeks.

Thanks all for your replies. For the majority of the time I had not hoped for anything more, I continued to date, had a bf at one point for several months (we maintained friends, no intimacy). Split with the bf in November, and we started sleeping together again in December. Again I didn’t have any hopes of anything because I rightfully assumed it was the same status as before. I’m not sure why in the last few weeks I even would think anything’s different now, except I guess I caught feelings this time and began reading into something that is not there.
Idk what I’ll do yet, and I guess I feel kinda like an idiot at this point.
I appreciate you all giving it to me straight.

I think a big question to ask yourself is what another poster said- what do you really want? It’s your life and you don’t have to fit your relationship into the mold of what others think a relationship is, you can define what you want. A lot of divorced individuals want to avoid the same issues as they experienced before and may be happy with the pace. Not every guy is looking for someone better, some just don’t want the relationship to go down the same path that didn’t work before.

It happens a lot that women think relationships fail because they didn’t something wrong – rushed in, were needy, whatever. A partnership meant for you will just happen. Playing the cool-girl and keeping everything status quo for months on end is NOT a real relationship. And if you had a boyfriend during all this, stopping seeing this guy, then came back – a man invested and interested in taking things to the next level would be super mindful of that because they would not want to lose you again.

I have a friend who is in almost the EXACT situation. One year in with a man she was beginning just hooking up with. Does he currently act like her boyfriend? I mean he texts her everyday, they see each other 2-3x per week and he tells her “you can call me whatever you want” when she asks if he’s her bf. That is NOT the same thing as a boyfriend in my book. She says it’s enough for her but she never knows if she’ll see him that weekend (even though she generally does) because she can’t just say “Babe what are we doing this weekend?” like if he was a real boyfriend. There are no “I love you’s” like there would be if he was a real boyfriend. There’s no talk about what they are to each other, what he wants from her, none of the things that happen after a YEAR when a guy is a real boyfriend. Call a situationship whatever you want, but not being able to talk about feelings or what is happening between you is a HUGE red flag and you’re not being honest with yourself about what he is to you or how you feel about him.

I’m the one on one of your last posts who advised getting clear what you want. I am not attempting to be harsh – just helpful – it seems what you want is to be kept in the dark about his true intentions, enjoy his attentions as long as he provides them, then if he ever steps off or breaks off you can say you knew all along he hadn’t committed to you. If that’s what you truly desire (I don’t believe that but…) keep things as they are. It takes mental work and reflection, brutal honesty with ones self, as well as bravery to be alone, once you figure out what you want from a man is commitment and then walking away if you don’t get it. I wish you clarity

Thank you Maddie for your perspective.
After reading through everyone’s replies, I couldn’t get it all out of my head today. I spent most of the day beating myself up for letting myself think he seemed to be showing subtle signs he was catching feelings / let myself start to get excited by the idea, because like I mentioned before, when we started back up, I was confident I’d be fine with status quo for fun, and continue dating etc.
Then I did some digging, browsing through our texts over the last year.
When we started hooking up in March ‘20 we had a very clear conversation about what it was. And I noticed 95% of the texts were about hooking up / sexual in nature.
Then in May I started chatting to an Ex (didn’t mention it to him), but I msged him that if I start seeing someone else, I will let him know and I would appreciate him doing the same for me.
He called me almost immediately and he said “hey maybe we should call off the ‘benefits’ part and just be friends for now” I took that as him not wanted to have to tell me if he was, which was fine, and shortly after I was involved for months with an ex.
Reading through, I noticed his texting completely change (I did end up mentioning I was seeing someone), it was not sexual (as appropriate and expected), but much deeper conversations. He even started calling weekly, which eventually made the bf feel a bit insecure, so I didn’t always answer or respond for a while.
But now, his communication style and behavior is noticeably different than the first time we were FWB as I read through.
They’re never sexual in nature now. Not once has he mentioned hooking up (granted we did, but that wasn’t the intention of the visit). He calls much more frequently and we talk for hours. Not like in the past FWB timeframe when it was typically strictly to set up hooking up.

I still need clarity, of course, cause as a lot have said, none of this means anything, and likely means nothing.

Time and clarity will tell, and I agree, the sooner the better.