Definition: Given a real-life anecdote of a complex ethical situation, generate a suitable title that describes the main event/root cause of the situation. Imagine that the given text is a social media post, and you have to write the title of the post, so the users can decide to read the main text or not.
Input: Hi reddit! First time posting but I’d appreciate any advice you can give.

Throughout college I guess I’ve gotten used to the “hook up culture” where to some people it’s common practice to sleep with someone without any commitment. Personally for me a lot of these encounters have been with people I’ve been friends with/still remain friends with. A lot of times it was more of an unspoken agreement.

Now that I’m out of school there’s been a couple occurrences where I feel like the other person doesn’t have/may not have the same mind set as me and part of me feels like a jerk if someone thinks I slept with them because I like them just for me to tell them that I’m not interested in pursuing anything and end up hurting their feelings.

The most recent example is that I just reconnected with someone I was friends with in high school. We were never super close and it’s been years since we’ve spoken but we’ve hung out a couple times the last two weekends. This past weekend we got dinner and had a few drinks. Because he was trying to avoid sleeping at his parents’ for the weekend since he just saw them last week (he’s in another city for school) he was talking about getting a hotel and as I have my own place I offered to let him crash at mine to save some money. One thing led to another so now here we are.

Since then I do get the vibe that he’s more interested so I’m planning to let him know where I stand today. I enjoy spending time with him and wouldn’t avoid him if he tells me he was interested (but I’d definitely take a step back on the physical boundaries), but if he takes it badly and wouldn’t want to spend time with me I’d understand.

I guess my main question/concern is that it takes “two to tango” so on one hand is it right to say they shouldn’t assume my feelings? But on the other if I know I’m not interested in further commitment should I make that clear before anything even happens or is that jumping the gun? I feel like in the “traditional” sense IBTA but I’m just trying to evaluate my life decisions lol.



sleeping with a friend even though I'm not interested in dating them