What made your FWB/casual arrangement turn serious, and how did it end up?
July 8, 2025
What made your FWB/casual arrangement turn serious, and how did it end up?
26 comments
It stopped feeling casual when he brought me soup while I was sick. We just… never stopped hanging out after that. Lasted a couple months, ended on good terms…
I think because he wasn’t pushy, really respected my wants and needs and was emotionally available to me, it made it easy/natural to progress into a “real” relationship.
It also progressed as we were long distance, met September 2022, met up for a dinner in December 2022 and I relocated July 2023 to his country for work (already in the pipeline before we met).
My housing fell through about 2 weeks before my move, so I moved in with him and its worked out. Neither one of us advocate for this. I had the financial resources, local support network and secure employment so it really could have been temporary. If I had none of those things, its very de-stablizing if the relationship goes south (i.e. my last relationship).
We’re getting married later this year and we’re planning to move back to my home country in a few years.
We had been casually seeing each other on and off for years. A few years in, he told me he liked me and I gave it a chance. I developed feelings for him, but it didn’t turn into anything long-term. We also lived far away from each other and ultimately, we lacked the “glue” to stay in contact.
I think if you are able to sleep together for years before developing feelings, there isn’t much there.
We met in a facebook group January of 24, got to know each other over 5 months of video chats. Decided to be FWB and he flew to AZ to meet me. I caught feelings, but hid it because I didnt want to get hurt. When we physically met again in July, he told me he loves me. We’ve been together ever since.
I’ve had it happen twice.
First time was in college. It was just inertia. We already spent a ton of time together, why not date? It didn’t last very long, less than a year. We didn’t actually have much in common.
Second time, there were very clearly feelings heading into it, so it didn’t stay casual very long. We’ve been married for several years and have two kids. Very happy!
this is gonna sound absolutely batshit but ed sheeran released divide looool
My FWB were always casual, but I am a very friendly person. I like to bake and dote on people im hooking up with yet I learned it is a severe miscommunication. Makes total sense. So, a lot of my FWB caught feelings and it’s entirely my fault. I broke them off. I hope they are doing well.
I spent months secretly hoping things got more serious and then my lease on my apartment ended and he asked me to move in. A year later, still together, still crazy happy, gonna marry tf outta this guy in the future, has become my absolute best friend in the world and I’m glad he had the guts to give me a signal that it was growing more serious, because I would’ve sat there rotting in anxiety and just hoping for years.
Met him on tinder, had a talk early on about how we didn’t want any pressure & didn’t want anything serious and were just going out and hooking up. Had so much fun doing it too. I knew i was in trouble when i was hanging out with other guys and was wondering what he was doing and wanting to be with him instead. I brought it up to him and he said he was feeling the same. We became official shortly afterwards in 2020. Got engaged Dec 2024, getting married this October!
He caught feelings and told me he wanted to be serious. I gave it a shot. We lasted about a year and a half. He was a lot of fun to be around, but he was also mean. I think he probably cheated based on some things I heard after I dumped him.
….we’re getting married in Nov. 😅🥰
My husband and I had a ONS (we met at some random college party), then two weeks later I agreed to go on a date with him because we had insane chemistry. Our first date was a success, so I picked him up two days later and took him on a second date. He did the same thing a day after that. We became “serious” after out third date.
>how did it end up
With me running out of our house one random morning shorty after our 5th anniversary to buy a ring so I could ask him to marry me. He said yes without hesitation. We’ve been together for almost ten years now.
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We were actually friends first. We briefly considered each other as real partners but that went away pretty quickly. We’re still close to this day.
it evolved into love…12 years now..
We met at work (completely separate departments at the time, only interacted in passing), went out on a couple of dates, and then quickly started hanging out and hooking up a few times a week. After a while of this, I started to feel like something was missing and convinced myself I wanted more. We had a couple of conversations about it and decided to be exclusive, but ultimately didn’t become official until we decided to move in together (he brought up moving in together, I said I wouldn’t live with a guy I’m sleeping with unless we’re in a relationship, so he asked me to be his girlfriend).
It was a disaster. Yes, there were good moments, even long stretches when we were pretty happy, but overall it was a super dysfunctional relationship. He was way older than me, I hadn’t really had a serious relationship before him, and he had a combination of family trauma, untreated mental health issues, and low emotional intelligence that made his behavior toward me border on abusive (not physically), especially when we had arguments. Even *his* friends questioned why I was dating him because they didn’t think he “deserved” me. I felt like I had to stick it out because I was the one who wanted the relationship in the first place, but eventually (half a decade later) I’d had enough of the mistreatment I was receiving and realized that it wasn’t him I really wanted, I just had terrible self-esteem going into the relationship and wanted to prove to myself that someone could love me, and that wasn’t fair to him, either; I certainly wasn’t blameless. So I left.
I don’t think the problem was the fact that we started as FWB; I have multiple friends whose relationships started that way, and they’re very happy. It was just a combination of problems and a series of overlooked red flags that led to things going downhill so drastically.
A few weeks after we met, I fell like really sick. Unexplainable, flu lasted for two months. I never had energy. Couldn’t eat. Was very sad because my life went on hold, He really stepped up. Would be at my place every other day. He would cheer me up. We’d eat, watch TV, talk, play games and have crazy amounts of sex. Then he told me, “I love you take care” and I didn’t react and then he started telling me love you often and bam. That was it. I never wanted to be without him. We’re married now.
I started messing around with a guy in one of my classes because I had a crush in him. I knew it was risky, but didn’t care. He wanted to stay casual because he broke up with his gf of 1.5 years only a month or so prior. Lockdown happened and we lived at my apartment until the end of the semester.
Anyways, our wedding is set for 3/21/2026.
Too many sleepovers turned into lazy mornings making breakfast. Hard not to catch feels😁
He really wanted to date but I couldn’t wrap my head around that and also couldn’t commit. But I also couldn’t leave him alone. One day I just decided clearly I can’t stay away from him so I may as well give it a try. We are at 1.5 years rn! 🙂
I found out we had the same favorite album and I told myself from a very young age that anyone whose fave album was “Dying is your latest fashion” by escape the fate would be my soul mate 🥲
We met 10 years ago and have been dating for 6 😅 I was just trying to live my best promiscuous life but it was game over pretty quick 🤣
(He also treats me better than anyone ive ever met, he makes me a better person – these are important but the album was the selling point when I was 17 😅)
We’re not in a relationship but we’ve been fwb for years. We now have a very strong friendship/bond (it did not start that way). We met on Tinder, initially it was very casual and we would see each other maybe a couple of times a year. Lasted 2 years, I ended it, got into a long term relationship and he did too. End of 2024, both of our long term relationships ended and we reunited. 8 years later, our bond is way stronger, both helping each other recover from the end of our long term relationships. We are now in our 30s, very different from our early 20s more mature and able to speak our mind. I sleep over now compared to when we first started and we both know each other more compared to our early twenties when it was more superficial.
Feelings are there on both sides, just not ready to get into a relationship but we see each other every week sometimes multiple times a week. I love him & if ever we both need anything we are there for each other. A true definition of friends with benefits, I will forever appreciate him. We both like to support each other emotionally and also great physical chemistry.
We started hanging out more outside of sex. Movies, late-night talks, small stuff. Feelings just snuck in. One day we kissed and it felt different. It lasted a while but ended because we wanted different things long-term. No regrets though.
Ended up being 5.5 years and counting. Crossed paths, so to speak, through a Facebook group, added each other on other socials, interacted through the odd Snap or FB posts mostly.
I asked him to hang out and it was a marathon of driving around, coffee, and tonnes of talking from Saturday night to Sunday at noon. We’d keep meeting up every other weekend, sometimes Wednesday nights depending on the schedule since we live in two different municipalities so it’s a bit of a drive. I just really loved his company and we seemed to click well for being strangers. Pretty sure it was him asking to “go steady” (we’re old enough to still use that term lol). It was an easy decision to make. Long term long distance but it doesn’t feel like either, honestly. At almost six years in, it flew by.
26 comments
It stopped feeling casual when he brought me soup while I was sick. We just… never stopped hanging out after that. Lasted a couple months, ended on good terms…
I think because he wasn’t pushy, really respected my wants and needs and was emotionally available to me, it made it easy/natural to progress into a “real” relationship.
It also progressed as we were long distance, met September 2022, met up for a dinner in December 2022 and I relocated July 2023 to his country for work (already in the pipeline before we met).
My housing fell through about 2 weeks before my move, so I moved in with him and its worked out. Neither one of us advocate for this. I had the financial resources, local support network and secure employment so it really could have been temporary. If I had none of those things, its very de-stablizing if the relationship goes south (i.e. my last relationship).
We’re getting married later this year and we’re planning to move back to my home country in a few years.
We had been casually seeing each other on and off for years. A few years in, he told me he liked me and I gave it a chance. I developed feelings for him, but it didn’t turn into anything long-term. We also lived far away from each other and ultimately, we lacked the “glue” to stay in contact.
I think if you are able to sleep together for years before developing feelings, there isn’t much there.
We met in a facebook group January of 24, got to know each other over 5 months of video chats. Decided to be FWB and he flew to AZ to meet me. I caught feelings, but hid it because I didnt want to get hurt. When we physically met again in July, he told me he loves me. We’ve been together ever since.
I’ve had it happen twice.
First time was in college. It was just inertia. We already spent a ton of time together, why not date? It didn’t last very long, less than a year. We didn’t actually have much in common.
Second time, there were very clearly feelings heading into it, so it didn’t stay casual very long. We’ve been married for several years and have two kids. Very happy!
this is gonna sound absolutely batshit but ed sheeran released divide looool
My FWB were always casual, but I am a very friendly person. I like to bake and dote on people im hooking up with yet I learned it is a severe miscommunication. Makes total sense. So, a lot of my FWB caught feelings and it’s entirely my fault. I broke them off. I hope they are doing well.
I spent months secretly hoping things got more serious and then my lease on my apartment ended and he asked me to move in. A year later, still together, still crazy happy, gonna marry tf outta this guy in the future, has become my absolute best friend in the world and I’m glad he had the guts to give me a signal that it was growing more serious, because I would’ve sat there rotting in anxiety and just hoping for years.
Met him on tinder, had a talk early on about how we didn’t want any pressure & didn’t want anything serious and were just going out and hooking up. Had so much fun doing it too. I knew i was in trouble when i was hanging out with other guys and was wondering what he was doing and wanting to be with him instead. I brought it up to him and he said he was feeling the same. We became official shortly afterwards in 2020. Got engaged Dec 2024, getting married this October!
He caught feelings and told me he wanted to be serious. I gave it a shot. We lasted about a year and a half. He was a lot of fun to be around, but he was also mean. I think he probably cheated based on some things I heard after I dumped him.
….we’re getting married in Nov. 😅🥰
My husband and I had a ONS (we met at some random college party), then two weeks later I agreed to go on a date with him because we had insane chemistry. Our first date was a success, so I picked him up two days later and took him on a second date. He did the same thing a day after that. We became “serious” after out third date.
>how did it end up
With me running out of our house one random morning shorty after our 5th anniversary to buy a ring so I could ask him to marry me. He said yes without hesitation. We’ve been together for almost ten years now.
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We were actually friends first. We briefly considered each other as real partners but that went away pretty quickly. We’re still close to this day.
it evolved into love…12 years now..
We met at work (completely separate departments at the time, only interacted in passing), went out on a couple of dates, and then quickly started hanging out and hooking up a few times a week. After a while of this, I started to feel like something was missing and convinced myself I wanted more. We had a couple of conversations about it and decided to be exclusive, but ultimately didn’t become official until we decided to move in together (he brought up moving in together, I said I wouldn’t live with a guy I’m sleeping with unless we’re in a relationship, so he asked me to be his girlfriend).
It was a disaster. Yes, there were good moments, even long stretches when we were pretty happy, but overall it was a super dysfunctional relationship. He was way older than me, I hadn’t really had a serious relationship before him, and he had a combination of family trauma, untreated mental health issues, and low emotional intelligence that made his behavior toward me border on abusive (not physically), especially when we had arguments. Even *his* friends questioned why I was dating him because they didn’t think he “deserved” me. I felt like I had to stick it out because I was the one who wanted the relationship in the first place, but eventually (half a decade later) I’d had enough of the mistreatment I was receiving and realized that it wasn’t him I really wanted, I just had terrible self-esteem going into the relationship and wanted to prove to myself that someone could love me, and that wasn’t fair to him, either; I certainly wasn’t blameless. So I left.
I don’t think the problem was the fact that we started as FWB; I have multiple friends whose relationships started that way, and they’re very happy. It was just a combination of problems and a series of overlooked red flags that led to things going downhill so drastically.
A few weeks after we met, I fell like really sick. Unexplainable, flu lasted for two months. I never had energy. Couldn’t eat. Was very sad because my life went on hold, He really stepped up. Would be at my place every other day. He would cheer me up. We’d eat, watch TV, talk, play games and have crazy amounts of sex. Then he told me, “I love you take care” and I didn’t react and then he started telling me love you often and bam. That was it. I never wanted to be without him. We’re married now.
I started messing around with a guy in one of my classes because I had a crush in him. I knew it was risky, but didn’t care. He wanted to stay casual because he broke up with his gf of 1.5 years only a month or so prior. Lockdown happened and we lived at my apartment until the end of the semester.
Anyways, our wedding is set for 3/21/2026.
Too many sleepovers turned into lazy mornings making breakfast. Hard not to catch feels😁
He really wanted to date but I couldn’t wrap my head around that and also couldn’t commit. But I also couldn’t leave him alone. One day I just decided clearly I can’t stay away from him so I may as well give it a try. We are at 1.5 years rn! 🙂
I found out we had the same favorite album and I told myself from a very young age that anyone whose fave album was “Dying is your latest fashion” by escape the fate would be my soul mate 🥲
We met 10 years ago and have been dating for 6 😅 I was just trying to live my best promiscuous life but it was game over pretty quick 🤣
(He also treats me better than anyone ive ever met, he makes me a better person – these are important but the album was the selling point when I was 17 😅)
We’re not in a relationship but we’ve been fwb for years. We now have a very strong friendship/bond (it did not start that way). We met on Tinder, initially it was very casual and we would see each other maybe a couple of times a year. Lasted 2 years, I ended it, got into a long term relationship and he did too. End of 2024, both of our long term relationships ended and we reunited. 8 years later, our bond is way stronger, both helping each other recover from the end of our long term relationships. We are now in our 30s, very different from our early 20s more mature and able to speak our mind. I sleep over now compared to when we first started and we both know each other more compared to our early twenties when it was more superficial.
Feelings are there on both sides, just not ready to get into a relationship but we see each other every week sometimes multiple times a week. I love him & if ever we both need anything we are there for each other. A true definition of friends with benefits, I will forever appreciate him. We both like to support each other emotionally and also great physical chemistry.
We started hanging out more outside of sex. Movies, late-night talks, small stuff. Feelings just snuck in. One day we kissed and it felt different. It lasted a while but ended because we wanted different things long-term. No regrets though.
Ended up being 5.5 years and counting. Crossed paths, so to speak, through a Facebook group, added each other on other socials, interacted through the odd Snap or FB posts mostly.
I asked him to hang out and it was a marathon of driving around, coffee, and tonnes of talking from Saturday night to Sunday at noon. We’d keep meeting up every other weekend, sometimes Wednesday nights depending on the schedule since we live in two different municipalities so it’s a bit of a drive. I just really loved his company and we seemed to click well for being strangers. Pretty sure it was him asking to “go steady” (we’re old enough to still use that term lol). It was an easy decision to make. Long term long distance but it doesn’t feel like either, honestly. At almost six years in, it flew by.
Fell in love 😍
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