How casual sex lost its cool
How do you define casual sex? Is it one-night stands only? Or is it broader, like any sex without feelings or attachment? If so, where do ‘friends with benefits’ fit within this definition? Say the phrase is used literally, if you’re friends with someone, you likely have feelings for them — maybe not romantic ones, but feelings nonetheless — and, as a friend, you have some sort of attachment to them. Is that casual? What about regular sex you might be having where you feel a bit… strung along? When the word ‘casual’ is weaponised as an excuse for bad behaviour?
Well, if you’re undecided, you’re not alone. In fact, in Cosmopolitan UK’s recent sex survey 69% of you said that you don’t have casual sex, and yet many of you do have regular sex with people you know. To me, that is casual sex (though admittedly I don’t know the dynamics of your respective relationships). So, are we having it or not? Or is it more that, amid the increasingly confusing labels we attribute to relationships these days, we’re all defining our sex lives differently?
Turns out it’s probably a bit of both. “There’s so much more awareness of sex positivity and different ways of having sex and doing relationships today, and these definitions are constantly being updated, so some of the ways in which casual sex was engaged in before people are now giving different names to,” says sex and relationships coach Lucy Rowett.
The general consensus among the women and non-binary people I spoke to while researching this topic, was that casual sex is sex without any expectation of emotional involvement nor an eventual relationship. One woman, 22-year-old Maria* from Leeds, went further, saying: “Unless otherwise stated, it’s casual sex.” Most also agreed that friends with benefits is casual sex, but situationships — which, says Maria, often involve “one person being strung along by someone who’s unsure whether they want a relationship or not” — are not casual sex.
Interestingly, though, the queer women I interviewed were more resistant to define friends with benefits as casual. “Some of my most enriching experiences have been with friends I also sleep with,” explains 28-year-old Hannah* from London. “I’ve had situations like this that have been going on for longer than some of my most committed relationships.” (Although crappy situationships certainly exist in the LGBTQ+ community, queer people have long been better at casual sex than their heterosexual counterparts. In fact, queer casual sex is, according to Hannah, better than ever for a lot of their friends.)
So, unsurprisingly, it’s complicated. Just like no two people are going to have the same relationship, nor will they define these relationships in the same way. Besides, relationships aren’t static; a dynamic that you consider to be casual could easily become more serious over time, and vice versa. But there’s more to it than that. The term itself is loaded — not just in its association with emotionally-manipulative dynamics, like those that often exist in situationships — but because heterosexual ‘casual sex’ is, by and large, synonymous with ‘bad sex’. And by ‘bad’, I don’t just mean encounters in which consent is called into question, but sex that’s awkward, one-sided, boring, or generally unsatisfying.
Bad sex, good sex, no sex
Bad casual sex, and bad sex in general, isn’t a new phenomenon. As feminist sex educator Betty Dodson observed, as per The New York Times, even men involved in the sexual revolution of the 60s and 70s still viewed sex as quantitative. “In out, in out,” Dodson said. “It was so boring you could die.” And today, despite there being more awareness of — and focus on — female sexual pleasure, as well as consent post-MeToo, things don’t seem to have gotten much better. On TikTok, young women regularly lament the state of casual dating, posting about going ‘celibate’ because men are bad at sex, regretting breaking a period of abstinence for average or bad sex, or sharing memes about the regularity of unsatisfying sex. “People are talking more about shitty sexual situations [than ever before],” says Rowett, “[which may have led to us being] more mindful about what we want and more cautious about what we’re engaging in”.
If we’re to believe the headlines, young people are indeed having less sex than ever. Of course, we know that ‘young people’ are not one homogenous group, and so these claims should be taken with a pinch of salt — especially since they’re levelled at every generation. But there must be at least some truth to them because sexlessness is, well, trending. In the last year, we’ve seen people (and by that I mean: mostly women who date men) ‘decentering’ men, going ‘boy sober’, and taking vows of ‘celibacy’.
To be fair, when you think about the environment we’re having sex in, it makes sense that abstinence might be an appealing option for heterosexual women. Mega misogynists like Andrew Tate are poisoning the minds of young men, many of whom have been radicalised online to believe that feminism is harmful (terrifyingly, a fifth of men aged 16 to 29 look favourably on Tate). Tradwife influencers are coaxing women, too, to reject feminism and instead embrace archaic gender roles and conservative values. Dating apps have created a culture of disposability, encouraging detachment and disregard for other people’s feelings (and turning us all into pessimists along the way). Risky BDSM practices, like choking, have become disturbing mainstays in casual sexual encounters, often being done non-consensually and without proper knowledge of safety protocols (people blame porn, which does hold some responsibility for normalising these practices, but they should also blame the diabolical state of sex education in the UK). Oh, and the orgasm gap is still very much a thing.
Obviously this environment doesn’t just affect casual sex. But there’s no denying that bad sex tends to be more prevalent in casual encounters — and in heterosexual sex, it’s usually the woman who comes away dissatisfied. As per a 2021 study, women are more likely than men to regret indulging in casual sex, especially if the encounter wasn’t gratifying. If we’re going into casual sex thinking we’ll regret it, then what’s the point in the first place?
The age of consent
Stitching a video about casual hook-ups by feminist writer Jessica Valenti, content creator Jaz Melody observes that “a massive issue between casual sex between men and women is that men think in order to not have a woman get ‘attached’ that they have to be cruel to her — whether that’s completely disregarding her needs or not giving her any emotional attention”.
This tracks with Maria’s experience, who says casual sex “isn’t worth seeking out”. “When I was having it with men I’d just met, it was bad,” she explains. “It would just kind of go until he finished and then he’d be off. I remember feeling genuinely empty afterwards because, for me, sex is about connection and intimacy. But I’ve been told by multiple men that they don’t want to show ‘too much’ affection, like staying the night, because it can get ‘misconstrued’ as them wanting a relationship. That’s so silly — if they’d just communicate that they don’t want a relationship, then I’d be fine with that.”
There’s a more insidious risk to this forced indifference, though: if you’re so resistant to treating the person you’re having sex with as a person with feelings, what’s to stop you from eventually seeing them that way? “There’s some outdated, misogynistic implication that if a woman is engaging in casual sex, she’s ‘up for anything’, and doesn’t deserve communication or care,” says Kitty Ruskin, whose 2024 book, Ten Men: A Year of Casual Sex, explores the pitfalls of today’s hook-up culture. “At the less extreme end of things, this can lead to men treating the woman as though she’s an object rather than a person — simply a means to an end. She’s not deemed worthy of consideration or gentleness or affection. At the most sinister end of things, this can lead to sexual assault or even rape.”
Recent stats show that choking, for example, is practically mainstream in young people’s sex lives. In 2019, it was revealed that a third of British women under the age of 40 had been subjected to unwanted choking, slapping, spitting, or gagging during sex. A 2021 US study found that 58% of female college students had been choked during sex, while a 2024 Australian study found that over half of respondents aged 18 to 35 years old had choked or been choked by a partner, despite reporting that they don’t really understand how to do it properly, nor the risks that come with it.
Katie*, 34, from London, says non-consensual choking happens “more often than not” in her hook-ups. “The first time it happened felt a bit scary,” she recalls. “I think I gasped rather than saying anything — because his grip was too tight around my throat — and he quickly realised that it was too much and stopped.”
It’s also happened to Maria. “I just moved his hand and we continued,” she explains. “I didn’t feel like it was worth bringing up as this was someone I only hooked up with once. But it upsets me that choking, degrading, and actions that hurt are seen as the default for ‘spicing things up’. It indicates something quite dark in [young men’s] attitudes towards women.”
“We need to be angrier about the fact that men can generally engage in casual sex without the fear of sexual assault, and women can’t,” adds Ruskin. “Women deserve to explore their sexuality just as men can.”
If this is what people think of when they hear ‘casual sex’, it’s no wonder fewer people are defining their sex lives in this way or shunning casual sex altogether. But casual hook-ups don’t have to be like this. Sure, friends with benefits, which tends to involve a lot more kindness and communication is a great way to have sex with no emotional strings attached (if you can make it work!), but these traits can — and should — be a regular occurrence in casual sex with strangers, too.
Drown out the discourse
So, how do we get there? “A shift in attitude would lead to women being treated with more gentleness and care in the bedroom in casual scenarios, which would likely make the sex a lot more enjoyable and fulfilling for everyone,” says Ruskin. “When the sex [during my year of casual sex] was consensual and respectful, I found it thrilling and empowering. There was something transgressive, decadent, and fun about having a man for the night and then being able to take off the next morning. And because of the very temporary nature of our intimacy, this casual sex was sometimes incredibly passionate.”
“One of the biggest benefits of casual sex is that you can really experiment and try things you might never try in a committed relationship,” says Rowett, the sex and relationships coach. But, she adds, we shouldn’t be too hard on ourselves if we struggle to ask for what we want, especially in casual encounters. “So many of us are really hopeless at relationships and knowing what our boundaries are, and so it’s easy to fall into situations [that don’t fulfil us emotionally or sexually].”
Rowett believes that the constant discourse about dating doesn’t help with this. “There’s so much information on TikTok and you can’t always tell what’s legit and what’s helpful or not,” she tells Cosmopolitan UK. “This is the time when you’re supposed to be trying things out, feeling confused, and getting into messy situations, because that’s how you grow.” We should all feel like we can make mistakes without condemning ourselves too much for them, Rowett continues, which dating discourse about toxicity and self-care doesn’t always allow us to do. Leaving aside non-consensual violence (which, obviously, no one should ever endure), it feels increasingly like there’s an aversion to bad feelings; a resistance to putting ourselves into situations that could get us hurt emotionally. While this makes sense — who wants to feel bad?! — it can also rob us of spontaneous, wonderful experiences, that, even if they do ultimately end, are really the whole point of being alive.
This can only happen via collective effort, which centres on communication (as well as maybe a mass logging off and men actually respecting women in and out of the bedroom). “Get really clear within yourself about your limits and your boundaries,” advises Rowett. “What is the bare minimum you want from your partners? Be discerning about who you’re hooking up with, then have a conversation before, and continue checking in with yourself. Is this ticking your boxes, or are you just pretending that it is?”
Another interesting detail that came out of Cosmo’s 2024 Good Sex Survey was that despite the more open sexual era that we find ourselves in, where experimentation, polyamory, and non-monogamy are rising to the fore, increasing numbers of us are craving traditional romance and seeking out monogamy (84% of Cosmo readers, to be specific). This might go some way to explaining how we may be hesitant to refer to much of the sex we are having with non-monogamous partners, friends, or sneaky links as casual, or why we might be avoiding it completely. Ultimately, what so many of us are looking for in our sexual encounters is consent, respect, and mutual enjoyment — things that, really, should be a given from the off, no matter how a relationship is defined.
“What makes sex really good is when your partner cares about you, low as that bar may seem! And your partner should care about you even in a casual setting,” concludes Kitty. “When your partner takes the time to ask what you’re into, when they take their time with you and pay attention to your reactions, and when they make you feel like your pleasure is their number one pursuit, that’s when sex is amazing.” Casual, committed, regular or not, that’s what really matters.
*Names have been changed
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