Friends with benefits (FWB)

Friends with benefits, or FWB, is an arrangement where two friends have sex without being a couple. The friendship is the point, the sex is extra, and both people have said so out loud. That agreement separates it from a situationship, where nobody has said anything, and from a hookup, where there was no friendship to begin with.

Updated October 6, 2026

Means

Friends who also have sex, by agreement

First seen

1995 (Alanis Morissette lyric, romantic sense); 1996–97 (Usenet, the casual sense, per the OED); abbreviation on Urban Dictionary 2002

Related terms

Situationship, Talking stage, Cuffing season, Ghosting, Red flags

In Swedish

FWB

The name sounds like a line from a job listing, and the idea is not far off. The friendship is the job, and the sex is a perk.

FWB vs situationship, hookup and casual dating

All four sit somewhere between single and taken. Two questions sort them: were you friends first, and has anyone said the terms out loud?

A situationship is the closest neighbor: it can look much the same, but nobody has defined it, while FWB runs on terms both people stated. The full comparison is on situationship vs friends with benefits.

A hookup is sex without the friendship. It can be one night between people who met that evening, so there are no terms to discuss.

Casual dating is dating, with dinners and getting to know each other, but without agreeing to be exclusive. It usually starts between strangers, often after a talking stage. FWB skips that part. You already know each other.

A quick test: if the sex stopped tomorrow, would you still see each other? In FWB, the answer should be yes.

Signs you are in one (and signs it is becoming something else)

You are probably in an FWB if three things hold. You were friends before anything happened. You have both said, in actual words, that this is not a relationship. And you do not go on dates. You still hang out, but nobody books a table.

Signs it is drifting into something else:

• Their dates bother you. You agreed it was not exclusive. Now you either want every detail or none at all.
• The texts are not about plans. Good-morning messages, a photo of a dog, a question about your day.
• Staying over keeps getting longer. Breakfast, then lunch, then a whole Sunday nobody planned.
• Someone says “we.” As in “we should go to that,” about a concert in March.

A single one of these can be a mood. Several at once usually means the terms have changed and nobody has updated them. If it all starts around November, cuffing season may have a hand in it.

Rules that make it work

These rules are ours, built on the problems the research below keeps finding.

1. Say what it is out loud. It can be one sentence: “This is a friends thing, not a dating thing, right?” Most people in one study avoided spelling it out at all (Bisson & Levine, 2009).
2. Decide whether it is exclusive. Either answer works. Two different assumptions do not.
3. Agree what happens if one of you meets someone. Do you mention it after the first date, or once it is serious? Does the arrangement end that day?
4. Sexual health. Get tested and use protection, and tell each other if that changes. What to ask, and why “DDF” in a profile does not answer it, is on our DDF page.
5. Talk when something shifts. A new crush, a new job in another city, a new habit of staying until noon.
6. Keep the friend things. Whatever you did together before, keep doing it. If only the benefits are left, that is a different arrangement.

What to do about it

If feelings show up, say so once, early, and accept the answer. “I’ve started wanting more than this. Where are you with it?” A no stings. Months of hinting sting longer.

If you want it to become a relationship, ask rather than wait. In the one study that followed people in an FWB for a year, most of those who hoped for romance did not get it (Machia et al., 2020). Asking does not improve those odds. It just gets you the answer in an evening instead of a year.

If you want out, say that plainly too: “I want to stop the sex part. I’d like to stay friends, but I need a few weeks first.” Then take the weeks. Going straight back to movie nights on the same couch makes the line hard to see.

Whichever way it goes, do not fade out. Ghosting a match is rude. Ghosting a friend costs you the friend, and possibly some of the mutual ones.

What the research says

Bisson and Levine surveyed 125 students, and 60% had had an FWB. The main worry was that one person would come to want more. In a second study of 90 people, most had avoided negotiating the terms explicitly (Bisson & Levine, 2009).

Mongeau and colleagues found that FWB is not one arrangement but seven: true friends, network opportunism, just sex, three kinds of transition in (successful, failed and unintentional), and transition out (Mongeau et al., 2013). The transition types cover pairs trying to become a couple, drifting into being one, or exes who kept sleeping together. Two people who both say “we’re FWB” may be describing different things.

Lehmiller, VanderDrift and Kelly surveyed 411 adults aged 18 to 65 who were in an FWB at the time. Men more often said they started for sex, women for emotional connection, and men were more likely to want things to stay as they were (Lehmiller et al., 2011). Those are differences between groups, not a description of any one person.

The one study we looked at that followed FWB over time tracked 192 people for about a year (Machia et al., 2020; the year-end breakdown is from co-author Lehmiller’s summary, 2023). By the end, 26% were still FWB, 28% were friends only, 31% had lost contact and 15% had become a couple. What people wanted mattered. Of those who wanted to go back to being just friends, 59% did. Of those who hoped for romance, 15% got it.

Couples who started as FWB reported lower relationship satisfaction than other couples, but they were no more likely to break up over four months (Owen & Fincham, 2012).

Most of these samples are students or online volunteers, mostly in the US, and we read abstracts and summaries rather than every full paper. The figures describe those groups, not yours.

The phrase is older than the movies. Dictionary.com credits Alanis Morissette’s 1995 lyric “best friend with benefits,” where it meant a partner who is also your best friend (Dictionary.com). The casual sense appears in Usenet posts from 1996 and 1997, cited by the OED and relayed in a Language Hat comment (Language Hat, 2025), and Merriam-Webster gives 1997 as its first known use (Merriam-Webster). “FWB” was on Urban Dictionary by February 2002 (Urban Dictionary, 2002). Two 2011 films, No Strings Attached and Friends with Benefits, came later (Dictionary.com).