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"  I&amp;#039;m a little late to the party as far as one-night stands are concerned. I recently ended a four-year relationship with a guy I met my first year of university, so now I&amp;#039;m trying to figure out the &amp;quot;rules&amp;quot; of one-night stands and casual dating. For example, I hook up with a younger guy I meet at a bar, and he not only stays the night but gives me his number and tells me he wants to see me again, neither of which I was expecting. What do I do? Neither of us is looking for a relationship, but I&amp;#039;ve never done the friends-with-benefits thing before. I need some guidelines, before I scare him away and mess up the whole thing. Tell me about it. Sometimes I wish there were a universal Casual Sex agreement that we could all sign, so everyone could abide by the same guidelines. Unfortunately, people want different things. And the first rule of Casual Sex Club is that there are no rules. Aside from the obvious \u2014 don&amp;#039;t be a creep, a liar, a cheat, or unsafe \u2014 there&amp;#039;s no standard protocol. You can&amp;#039;t trust the golden rule, because you can&amp;#039;t assume that anyone else shares your assumptions of what&amp;#039;s right and what&amp;#039;s not or even what&amp;#039;s normal. Consider your first night together: Before you hopped into bed, were you required to explain your romantic history? No. Did you know whether he was casually dating or sleeping with anyone else? Probably not. The morning after, were you expected to share hopes and dreams? No. Will this sometimes occur? Yes. What happens next? That&amp;#039;s up to you. First off, remember that if you don&amp;#039;t want to see this guy again, it&amp;#039;s no big deal, even if it feels odd. Think of it as a free trial month at the gym: You might feel obligated to show up, or to make a commitment \u2014 but it&amp;#039;s definitely not required. Just because you used their shower once doesn&amp;#039;t mean you have to use it again. I think part of the problem is that we don&amp;#039;t even have a word to describe what happens when you don&amp;#039;t want to see a one-night stand again. It&amp;#039;s not a breakup after just one night. You&amp;#039;re not breaking anything. You&amp;#039;re just choosing not to see someone again. You&amp;#039;re just unhooking yourself from your hookup. Maybe we should call it an unhookup. But it sounds like you want to start an ongoing casual relationship with this guy, because you say that you&amp;#039;re worried you&amp;#039;ll scare him away and mess this up. So here&amp;#039;s what you do: You tell him that. Say something as simple as, &amp;quot;I just got out of a four-year relationship and I&amp;#039;m not looking for anything serious, but I&amp;#039;d like to see you again.&amp;quot; You don&amp;#039;t have to tell him your whole life story. In fact, please don&amp;#039;t. You just want to be honest about where you are now, just as you&amp;#039;d like him to be honest with you. Pro tip: If you figure out exactly what you want first (and I know that&amp;#039;s easier said than done), it&amp;#039;s way easier to be honest and to act honorably. The rest is all about self-defense, I suppose \u2014 knowing your limits and protecting yourself when feelings change or someone&amp;#039;s not honest with you. After a four-year relationship, it will take some time to adjust to casual dating. You may tend to presume that you both share common expectations (which you don&amp;#039;t) and you may accidentally begin treating your new guy with the attention and care of a serious girlfriend (which you aren&amp;#039;t) and suddenly \u2014 actions speak loudly \u2014 he&amp;#039;ll feel like a regular boyfriend anyway. Calling a relationship &amp;quot;casual&amp;quot; isn&amp;#039;t the same as having a casual relationship; the way you act matters much more than the label you use. One of the advantages of a casual relationship, as opposed to something long-term, is that you set limits. You can focus on what you have in common and draw boundaries where they make most sense: You have great sex, but his friends drive you crazy? No problem: Spend more time in bed and less at watching the game. His family is nuts? He can tell his shrink: They&amp;#039;re not your in-laws, and they&amp;#039;re not your problem. You can choose how close you want to be. Not everything has to click. In fact, the reason you&amp;#039;re keeping it casual is because not enough does click. But before you start an casual relationship, there is obviously one question you have to ask yourself: Would it bother you if he was sleeping with someone else? If it&amp;#039;s a completely open situation, be safe and have fun. But if sleeping around is a dealbreaker for your friends-with-benefits situation \u2014 and you&amp;#039;re aiming for casual monogamy, which rarely works \u2014 you have to tell him, because that&amp;#039;s definitely not what he&amp;#039;s going to assume. When to have that talk? It&amp;#039;s utterly up to you: The first time you have sex? The fifth? If it matters to you, don&amp;#039;t wait until he brings it up \u2014 because he could avoid that conversation forever. Have the talk when you need to have it. You should also think about your exit strategy: In other words, if you know it&amp;#039;s not serious, how long will you let it go on? Ongoing casual relationships that never get more complicated rarely exist. Have fun dating \u2014 and have fun developing your own personal, casual code of conduct. Just don&amp;#039;t be surprised to find that each guy has his own code too. My boyfriend and I have been dating for two years. I love him and want to be with him, but he is starting to get serious about the idea that we will spend the rest of our lives together. It&amp;#039;s not that I don&amp;#039;t want that, but I can barely commit to what sandwich I want for lunch, let alone what guy I want to be with for the rest of my life. I sometimes get bored and right now can&amp;#039;t imagine my life with the same person forever. I know he is feeling pressure too &amp;#039;cause all our friends are getting engaged. What should I do? Maybe this guy is your &amp;quot;one.&amp;quot; Maybe you just need to talk it out and work out the kinks. Maybe he&amp;#039;d be a great lifelong partner and you&amp;#039;re just scared of committing \u2014 like most sensible people. And maybe you&amp;#039;re bored sometimes because everyone gets bored sometimes. No boyfriend \u2014 no matter how great \u2014 is going to thrill you every day. Think of him as your favorite TV show: I love Mad Men. I am obsessed with Mad Men. But a lot of last season was a total drag. I&amp;#039;m still tuning in next season, because I am committed. The other possibility is that the reason you can&amp;#039;t imagine your life with the same person forever is that you can&amp;#039;t imagine a life with this particular person. After two years, maybe you don&amp;#039;t want to renew your season pass. I don&amp;#039;t know how old you are, but I&amp;#039;ve known plenty of people who, despite feeling that they weren&amp;#039;t ready to settle down, got married young because it seemed like the right next thing to do. For most of them, it turned out to be the wrong move. I don&amp;#039;t know enough about your situation, but I do know that &amp;quot;Hey, why not?&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;Everyone else is getting engaged&amp;quot; are never good enough reasons to get married \u2014 and yet we hear them all the time. It&amp;#039;s one thing to get peer-pressured into having another tequila shot. It&amp;#039;s another to get peer-pressured into a lifelong relationship. A great way to get divorced is to get married for the wrong reasons. Remember, too, that getting married isn&amp;#039;t the only way to fully commit to someone. In the best-case scenario, an engagement shouldn&amp;#039;t be a tentative test. But it is true that you&amp;#039;ll never know what it&amp;#039;s like to fully commit to someone unless you try it. So, here&amp;#039;s my advice: Try tabling the marriage question and ignoring what your friends are doing. Instead, throw yourself into this relationship. See what it feels like to fully commit without a proposal. Try putting aside your doubts for a while and see what it feels like to let yourself love him unconditionally. If there&amp;#039;s some part of yourself that you&amp;#039;ve been hiding away because you&amp;#039;ve been hedging your bets or felt insecure about what might happen, reveal it. If there&amp;#039;s something you haven&amp;#039;t been saying, say it. See how much of you he can handle, and vice versa. Then maybe some of that indecision will fade away. Maybe then it will feel right and you&amp;#039;ll know he&amp;#039;s the right guy to share your life. Or maybe you&amp;#039;ll try to fully commit and find that you can&amp;#039;t quite do it \u2014 that something&amp;#039;s just not clicking. Either way, you&amp;#039;ll have tried without the extra pressure of a ring and the heavy expectations of all your family and friends. I hope that you can renew your love, season after season. But also remember that it&amp;#039;s perfectly OK to go out on a high note and call it quits after a long, successful run. Hey, it worked for Breaking Bad. Do you have a question about sex, dating or relationships for Logan? Submit it here. Follow Logan Hill on Twitter.  Photo Credit: Castle Rock Entertainment "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/advice/a20370/logan-hill-friends-with-benefits/>