What do you do when a DTR conversation doesn’t go your way? I’m a modern babe who’s Slutever Forever. I’m into my generation’s DTF hook-up culture, but I also want to respect my boundaries, my body, and my feelings. What do you do when you tell the guy you’ve been casually hooking up with that you actually want to date him and he’s like, “Cool, but I just want to park my dick in you for a while”? How can I respect and take care of myself and still be DTF?
Let’s first define some terms for those of us over 25:
DTR: Defining the Relationship. A talk casual hook-up partners eventually have in which they discuss how to define their relationship — for example, as “fuck buddies,” “dating,” etc.
Slutever Forever: A sex-positive term viewing “slutiness” as the free enjoyment of sex and sexual pleasure, a variation on “Whatever Forever” connoting a certain casual attitude.
DTF: Down to Fuck. Describing a temporary or longer-term state of seeking out, typically, casual sex with limited strings attached (see Slutever Forever).
I, too, appreciate this modern world where sex is readily available with a swipe on a dating app, where friends can celebrate casual, mutual orgasm with a sticky high-five, and all of our relational processes can be defined with texting-friendly abbreviations. But sometimes I fear that out with the stuffy, sexually stifling bathwater we’ve thrown the real, vulnerable, human-connection baby. Must intimacy, feelings, and attachments be pushed aside to make space to celebrate casual sex?
My short answer is that you can totally be both DTF and FFR (“Feelings for Real”, a term I just made up). But as self-defined “vulnerability researcher” Brené Brown so tenderly notes, “Daring to set boundaries is about having the courage to love ourselves, even when we risk disappointing others.” So, it might not be easy. Before we define our relationships with others we need to first define ourselves — with boundaries.
Boundaries are about setting parameters around our bodies, our emotions, and what we exclusively own (“Don’t touch me there”) and not about controlling others (“Never leave me”). Setting your own physical and emotional boundaries is your right as an autonomous, sexual individual.
Being DTF, Asking, doesn’t mean that you have no boundaries. Actually, defining yourself as DTF is, in fact, stating a boundary (“I wanna get laid tonight!”). I encourage you to take that same boundary-setting gusto hidden in DTF to the emotional front — and proudly state “Feels for Reals!” in the same way you might proclaim “Slutever Forever!”
FFR and DTF aren’t mutually exclusive. The church of Tindertopia has paved the way to a sex-positive paradise and put up a dick parking lot. You’re free to claim one of those Slutever Forever spaces as your own, welcoming your dude’s car to park there. But, you can also say things like, “I’m developing feelings for you” or “I would like an emotional exchange when you park your dick here.” But, as boundaries and consent go, he is also free to say, “No, thank you” or decline emotional involvement. He is also entitled to his boundaries.
So, what you do you do when a DTR conversation doesn’t go your way, Asking? You evaluate which of your boundaries are flexible, which need to remain rigid, and assess if you’d like to continue offering this dude’s car a place to casually hang out. In this DTF age of glorifying four-letter words, Asking, “date” is coincidentally one of them, and you can choose it if you want to.•
Yana Tallon-Hicks is a pleasure-positive sex educator and writer in the Pioneer Valley. She has a website bursting with advices, workshops, and sexual health resources.
