My Friends Staged an Intervention Over My Promiscuous Behavior. It Only Made It Worse.

Relationships A 38-Year-Old Is a Fuckboy With a Broken Heart That woman really did a number on him. Now he’s taking it out on everyone else. Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Getty Images Plus. Pillow Talk is a series that deciphers our mixed signals about sex—who’s actually having it, who isn’t, and why—one interview at a time. Get in touch to suggest a subject. This week, we meet Will, a 38-year-old in Southern California who is often accused of being a fuckboy. Though he used to get away with it when he was younger, his friends now think his marauding behavior is kind of sad. He does not agree. If anything, he’s only getting fuck-ier—if only to soothe his broken heart. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. Slate: You self-identify as a “fuckboy.” What does that word mean to you? Will: That’s what people call me! It means that I don’t always want to date the people I have sex with. It doesn’t seem so bad when you put it that way. Well, this interview has barely started. Change my mind, then. What fuckboy things have you done? To start, I’ve been threatening to date this one girl for like three months. I keep telling her I just need a little more time before we get more serious, and in the meantime, she’s turned away several other much more serious dudes. She’s hot, and I like keeping her wrapped around my finger. Earlier this year, I went on six dates in one week, and told none of those women I was seeing other people. That’s pretty common for me. I’ve cheated on most of my girlfriends. I’ve even led a few guys on, just because it’s fun to make them want me. I’m an expert at what the kids call “love-bombing.” I know just what to say to people to make them feel special, and at least for a while, I genuinely think they are. Then I surprise them—and myself, sometimes—by losing interest. I never ghost—I always break up with them, or at least try to communicate my feelings—but I have been known to reappear and slide back into their lives again. That seems to piss people off. What do your friends think about this? A few weeks ago, they sat me down and tried to talk to me about it. They said I really needed to stop leading people on, and that they wish I’d find a “real relationship.” They thought it was sad that I’m so “afraid of commitment.” I genuinely appreciated the concern, and it came from a place of love. But for me, happiness isn’t necessarily being in a relationship. Have you ever been in one? Several. They generally only last a few months, though. The longest one was three years, off and on. I think I stayed with her for so long because the relationship was rocky and uncertain. We were always breaking up, or on the verge of breaking up. It kept things interesting. You don’t like stability, then. I don’t dislike it, I just seem to find myself in more dramatic situations. Like recently, a married woman left her husband for me. Then I started dating her friend. Why? The spark just fizzled. I wanted her when I couldn’t have her, and then when I could, the stakes felt too big. I felt responsible for ending her marriage, and then I felt trapped, like she had to be with me because she left him in this way. It felt like I was saddled with the burden of her, rather than that we had simply chosen to be together. Her friend was more casual, which I liked. She didn’t really need me, nor did she particularly care about keeping me, and that kept me around. I liked that. Did you feel any guilt or remorse about that? Or about any of this? Of course. It’s not my intention to hurt people, and I do feel bad when it happens. With the married woman, I obviously took it too far. But at the same time, it’s her life. If she didn’t want to leave her husband, she wouldn’t have. The sex was that good, huh? It was amazing. It felt really dangerous. We’d have sex all over her house, right where her husband would sleep, or work, or bathe. There’d be little remnants of me—hair, condom wrappers—left over, and she’d just tell him she’d let a friend have sex in their house. It was also hot how badly she needed me. She told me I felt like medicine. I think that was just because I gave her what she wanted in bed, which in this case, was to be very submissive. She really liked to be tied up and manhandled, and she wanted me to use her. We did this thing called “free use” where I was allowed to have sex with her anytime I wanted, in any way, provided her husband wasn’t around. That sounds hot. Why not keep her around? I loved her and what we had, but I was also seeing three or four other women at the time. She found out by looking through my phone. She saw some messages from the aforementioned friend. By that time, I was already sort of emotionally disinvested from her. It wasn’t ever going to work. What happened with the friend? She really broke my heart. How did she manage that? Again, she didn’t seem overly invested in me, and she had a lot of other stuff going on. She had kids and a job and other partners. So right away, I felt like I was off the hook. There was no pressure. In fact, I felt like I had to try harder to get her attention. And the more I tried, the stupider and more embarrassed I felt, but the more I wanted to succeed. So I ended up sort of throwing myself at her, and losing any sense of cool I’d ordinarily have with more available women. It broke me, because I felt like I barely made an impact on her. She couldn’t have cared less what I did. She knew I liked to fuck around, so she never really took me seriously. I felt really insignificant and undesirable. That’s probably how you make most people feel! Totally. I’ve been on both sides, so I know how much it sucks. Yet you do it anyway! I’m damaged, dude! That’s why I’m a fuckboy in the first place, I think. It’s like, one girl absolutely destroys you, and you try to process it by going through as many other girls as you can just to numb the pain. There must have been someone else who broke your heart a while back if you’ve been doing this for a while. There was. I was seeing a girl in college who I was absolutely obsessed with. She was my everything. We weren’t even together for that long, but I was so whipped. We used to go to shows together and we’d stay up all night talking about music. She was super funny, and the first person who really seemed to appreciate the weird, nerdy side of me. But then she cheated on me with an older guy, and she left me for him. I was devastated, she was not. I promised myself I would never fall that hard for anyone again. Growing up, I didn’t get a lot of validation or positive attention. It was mostly negative. As the oldest, I was kind of blamed for everything, and everything I did was held under a microscope because I was the firstborn. I felt like everything I did was wrong, which made me want to act even more out of line. If you ask my therapist, she’d tell you that the way I am with women is probably a reflection of that. So there’s that. Also, I just don’t think I’m monogamous. Obviously I’m not monogamous. Do you think fuckboys get a bad rap because they’re usually not? It seems unfair to throw so much hate at them just because they don’t want to settle down with one person, or because they don’t want to date the person they’re fucking. I think so, yeah. Like, I’m not saying what I do is good, and I certainly have pissed a lot of people off, but it does feel like the benchmark is monogamy. That’s the “mature” thing to do. I’m just not sure “maturity” means settling down with one person and never looking at another woman ever again. I think it means coming to terms with who you are. In this case, I’m a person who likes to have a lot of varied experiences. That’s fair! But do you communicate that to the people you’re with so they know what to expect from you? Honestly, I should be better about that. Again, I don’t set out trying to lead people on. I don’t wake up in the morning and say, “You know what? I think I’ll break someone’s heart today.” When I start seeing someone, or I start fucking them, I genuinely like them and am curious to see where it leads. It’s just that for me, it often fizzles pretty quickly, or I meet someone I like better. I do try to tell people that I’m looking for something casual, but they almost always say that’s fine in the beginning, then catch feelings and get mad when they’re not reciprocated. Even when I try to date nonmonogamous people, I seem to hurt them. What do these people do that turns you off? One woman got really mad at me because I didn’t like her dog. Another was too clingy and cold-called me several times a day. I didn’t like the way one girl smelled. A ton of them are bad at conversation. One never spoke up for herself when I disrespected her, so I felt like she had no backbone. But mostly, I just don’t want to be tied down. If you did, I’m sure you’d try a little harder with the dog. Maybe. Until the next person came along. Get the best of news and politics Sign up for Slate's evening newsletter. Dating and Relationships Sex Men Pillow Talk