We all—or most of us—have that person who makes us feel extremely sexy for… an hour a month. Who? The infamous fuck buddy. You get a text at 1:00 a.m. that reads something like, “I’m lonely. Come over?” And you’re automatically sucked back in to the all too familiar no-strings-attached sex with that guy or girl who’s “too hot to ignore but not at all my type.” Sound about right?

Anyway, you’ve just had the greatest sex of your life since the last time you saw this person a month ago, but it stops there. You’ve gotten your rocks off, and that’s it. You watch them leave or you take the well-known walk of shame, and it’s done. You wash the sheets and move on… until the next time, of course.

Don’t get me wrong—a fuck buddy is good for a lot of things. It’s most times monogamous sex with one person. It’s someone you can share an innate sexual experience with, and there’s no pressure from either party about taking it any further. It’s a person who understands that the both of you are physically attracted to one another, and sex is just a way of relieving that mutual physical attraction. There’s no real emotion, and there’s no heartache. For some, it’s the perfect set up.

But what happens if you start to want a relationship with this person? Is it even possible? Think about it—a fuck buddy is basically a relationship without or with little communication, so it’s destined to emotionally fail. It’s purely physical. You’d have to start at square one, and that kind of relational build-up can be difficult with someone you’ve known so physically well for months, or even years. There’s no element of sexual surprise. I like to think of it as fuck buddy limbo—a half-house between no-strings-attached sex and a functional relationship.

A friend of mine once said he was fed up with having a fuck buddy because it made him feel like he was incapable of truly loving the other person for who they are as a human being. He looked at his fuck buddy like a piece of meat, but once he tried to take it further and actually create a friendship, his fuck buddy vanished.

We can also run into the situation when our fuck buddy starts adding other people to their repertoire, or they meet someone else who they’re starting to fall in love with. And BOOM, you’ve been tossed to the side. It can get dramatic and spiral out of control, and isn’t that the opposite of why we have a fuck buddy in the first place?

We’re trying to have sex for no other reason than to tap into our animalistic sexual nature. For some it works, but for others it’s a broken system that creates failed friendships. How do we find a middle ground? Should the fuck buddy system remain separate from our “real-life” relationships? Tell me what you think.