[sparrow]

I'm now in my 60s and I have been with my wife since the late 90s. Although I wasn't aware of either term, I was in a FWB situation a couple of times, first in my mid 20s and then in my early 30s. In both cases we had been dating for a few months, split up and then bumped into each other again a while after that. The first time I had been invited to a works do and had no one to take, so I invited her and we wound up having better sex than when we were officially together. For the next 18 months we were each other's 'plus one' and occasionally hooked up just for fun, probably every 2-3 weeks. Eventually I moved away for work, and that was that. A similar thing happened with another woman a few years later; I ended things, but we crossed paths a few weeks later and she had been invited to a friend's wedding, and that led to another year or so of enjoyable no strings fun until she moved to the other side of the world.

In between those two I had a fuck buddy for a while. Again, we met through work and one Saturday morning I woke up at her place with a hangover and vague memories of a very enjoyable fuck. We had a more sober session before she booted me out at lunchtime, looking like I had been on the lash with Shane McGowan but feeling pretty good. We carried on like that for several months, with no pretence of it being anything other than no strings screwing.

In all 3 cases there was an unspoken 'don't ask, don't tell' policy about what we got up to the rest of the time, but I don't think we would have called it an open relationship. Funnily enough, it's the fuck buddy who I remember most fondly.