‘I spoke to a bunch of reformed fuckboys — this is what I learned’

One is not born, but rather becomes a fuckboy. For Tom*, it happened at university. Having not dated much in high school, he sought to make up for lost time, juggling three to five situationships at once. When one connection went cold, he’d start up another.

Managing his roster became a part-time job: blocking out time for messaging, flirting, and arranging dates. Even those followed a formula, down to the same venue, same icebreakers, same arc to the evening — just with a different woman. It was “a bit impersonal”, admits Tom, now 38, a decade after his fuckboy peak, “but it made certain I’d show someone a great time.”

Women consistently told him that it was the best date they’d ever been on. After all, Tom refined his schtick with each performance. “If I told a joke that crushed, or a line worked really well, I’d use it again. I learned the best drinks to order, the best times to meet, when to move to the next spot. […] It’s just a show for one person.”

The rave reviews, however, didn’t lead to a stellar reputation. By 30, Tom was so infamous on campus, there were posts about him on online forums; he suspects there was even a secret Facebook group, in which his exes trash-talked him.

That’s one of the tells of a fuckboy: the trail of chaos, anger, and hurt they leave behind them. It is not just a label for someone (typically a young, or young-ish, straight man) who has a lot of sex with different partners: a fuckboy tells you what you want to hear to get what they want, then abruptly ghosts or slowly fades out of contact.

First described in 2015, the phenomenon itself is well-established, and individuals are often easy to spot — from their transparent late-night texts to their fine-tuned performance of self-awareness. Instagram accounts like @beam_me_up_softboi have blown the fuckboy playbook wide open (for the uninitiated, a softboi is an iteration of the fuckboy).

Their motivations, however, remain less understood. Is the fuckboy’s endgame simply getting their leg over (and over, and over), or are there deeper factors at play? Do they set out intending to manipulate, or are their actions unclear even to themselves?

One way to find out is to ask. Over the past year, London-based theorist and writer Sarah Stein Lubrano has been speaking with dozens of self-identified former fuckboys in the hopes of shedding light on why fuckboys do what these men do, and what this archetype might express about our times.

“I’m not immune to fuckboys myself,” Lubrano admits. She kept notes “for months” before eventually publishing a theory of the fuckboy on her Substack last year. More recently Lubrano extended the conversation to her 40k-strong Instagram. She found that some of her followers (most, though not all, cisgender men) were happy to not only claim the label, but also to expand upon their conduct (often, in long messages, she adds wryly.

So how do these former fuckboys look back on their past behaviour? How has it followed them into their current relationships? And what regrets do they have — if any?

The fuckboy awakening

The paradox presented by the fuckboy is: how does consensual, even sought-after sex leave such a sour taste? Lubrano argues that the fuckboy causes hurt by engaging with other people “fungibly and transactionally… the way you do in a commercial transaction”.

Indeed, an encounter with a fuckboy is arguably defined by its end, with the withdrawal of contact and eventual ghosting revealing a lack of care and consideration that ends up colouring the entire relationship. The fuckboy also tends to be unrepentant or defensive, often weaponising the language of therapy, Lubrano says: they might tell someone they’ve hurt that they don’t owe them anything, or that they’re ‘too fucked up’ to do better. “But, of course, that’s not how it works,” she adds.

Lubrano wants to stress: desiring casual sex is “not the part of the fuckboy that’s bad”. The realisation “you can get it”, however, does not always engender good behaviour in previously insecure young people, testing their power over others and what they can get away with.

Lubrano says that many of the fuckboy origin stories she heard followed a similar arc: young men with low self-esteem becoming aware of their sexual opportunity. “Maybe they get to university, maybe they start going to the gym, maybe they read Marx for the first time, and find girls are into it — suddenly they’re like, ‘Oh, I can run with this!’”

For Tom, talking women into bed seemed a path to self-worth. “I wanted to feel attractive and desirable. […] The sex was proof of affection, in my mind.” He did not experience much parental affection growing up, and used to believe that love was a myth devised to make the world seem like a less lonely place. Friends used to joke about him having a hole inside him that he was seeking to fill up with sex — and, Tom admits, “There’s something to that”.

Looking back, Tom says, some of his behaviour “was definitely uncool”: he slept with people in relationships, cheated on his partners, could be oblivious to their feelings and caused problems in their lives. His social circle was equally tested by his frequent selfishness and “gluttonous” sexual appetite, he says. “I would like to have been kinder.”

And yet, Tom doesn’t have many regrets about his fuckboy phase. “I think it’s a part of many people’s 20s to overindulge,” he says. “Women, rather than gambling or liquor or heroin, were my vice — so I look back forgivingly on younger me.”

Communication breakdown

In seeking to understand fuckboys, Lubrano says she doesn’t mean to defend them: “Often, they are taking advantage.” But many of her interviewees seemed to describe exploiting a system as much as individuals, vaulting over the low bar for men to be considered fuckable — or even relationship-worthy, despite their demonstrations to the contrary. “Our gender roles are not really helping us,” she says. “We have to ask what’s wrong with our script, that this keeps happening.”

Former fuckboys frequently told her they got “sucked into the logic” of being a fuckboy, sometimes only semi-consciously. “Many of them confessed it like, ‘Once you realise you can do it, you begin to play the game’.” Other times they learned “what someone wants to hear in the first three dates — sometimes literally, from some horrible online forum”.

Lubrano continues, paraphrasing: having talked a woman into bed, they enjoy attention, sex, and sometimes breakfast for a period of weeks to months. “And then, when it gets messy, [they] leave.”

It is easy to see what the men get out of the arrangement: the benefits of intimacy and connection, if only temporarily, without the risks and costs of the real thing — but it often winds up working against them, Lubrano says. “The skills of getting someone to sleep with you are not the same as having a relationship. […] The fuckboy says he’s not ready for a relationship — and he’s right.”

Paul*, 45, came to accept the charge — albeit not without ambivalence. “I didn’t really enjoy it, but I understood the label. [You’ve] gotta be able to laugh at yourself.”

Paul describes his fuckboying through his 30s as a period of sexual exploration, following a series of “somewhat frustrating” long-term monogamous relationships. For about a decade, he averaged 14 hook-ups a year, and just as many dates that didn’t result in sex.

Not all interactions qualified as “fuckboy behaviour”, Paul says, “but some definitely were”. For instance, he sometimes acted recklessly or selfishly, and ghosted people prematurely or “because the sex was not great”, he says.

Now, Paul looks back on that time with mixed feelings, as a “learning experience”. Especially early on, that pace of new partners was fun, exciting, and validating, unlocking another level of confidence. “I learned so much by dating lots of people — [including] a lot about what to avoid,” he says. But he also made mistakes, such as spreading himself too thin across multiple connections.

That’s what constitutes “fuckboy-ish” behaviour, Paul suggests: claiming or giving the impression that you are ‘open to more’ when you are in fact only seeking or capable of casual sex.

Paul is now engaged to his partner of six years, with whom he has an open relationship, and says, thanks to his “fuckboy era”, he has a better understanding of his personal lines, limits, and preferences in relationships. “I needed to make some fuckboy mistakes to be a better partner in the long run.”

The social fallout

As the diminutive label implies, Lubrano suggests that fuckboying might be a stage that people “usually, eventually” grow out of — either because they come to desire a real connection, they tire of the drama and guilt, or both.

In wanting to open up about their past behaviour, many respondents seemed to be even seeking absolution. Lubrano’s impression was that, though they may be experienced as selfish or unfeeling, for some, “there is a lot of guilt” associated with being a fuckboy: “You end up burning a lot of your social bridges… and it changes how you see yourself.”

Quite literally, as 34-year-old Armando* points out of the label: “Nobody’s going to say it about themselves.” And yet he says the fuckboy definition did fit his “archetypal Don Juan period” through his 20s, when he had many partners, sometimes overlapping.

The peak of Armando’s “hectic philandering” was when, while house-sitting for one woman he was sleeping with, he brought home another, who disposed of a used tampon there. “Obviously, that was found out, and it became a big social scandal,” he says.

He describes his past behaviour now as careless at best, and driven — though not excused — by low self-esteem. “There’s a huge amount of guilt that comes with the chaos you make. […] At the end of the day, there’s nothing as bratty as a fuckboy, by definition.”

But Armando did have mitigating circumstances, he adds: at the time he was nursing his father through a protracted, painful decline from Alzheimer’s disease. “Basically, I managed my depression through fucking. It was just a matter of making things more bearable.”

Armando was a “wreck”: grief-stricken, drinking to excess, and evidently not relationship material — but that seemed to only make him more attractive, he says. He rarely had to resort to dating apps, or emotional overtures or confessions, to meet and seduce women: “Most of the time I’d just cook for them and be nice.”

When Armando felt his self-protective façade start to crumble, he’d withdraw, leaving his partners on read and becoming less available. Having to care for his father was also a “great excuse” to unentangle himself, he admits. “I had that ace up my sleeve — but I probably abused it.”

Now Armando, like Paul, is in an open relationship, permitting him a balance between freedom and stability. He does not miss his fuckboy phase, he says: “My schtick, back then, was based on indifference and detachment, and now I’m not detached or indifferent anymore.”

But, he says, it should be possible for both parties to “enjoy the flesh” without hurt feelings. “You should not be alienated by the pleasure you’re taking from others, as long as those others are also taking pleasure from you. […] I think that’s the main take: as long as it’s mutually beneficial, it’s not a problem if it fades away.”

This may be true, but a truly mutual relationship at least aspires towards honest communication and respect — something fuckboys, by definition, tend to be lacking.

Redemption?

Lubrano plans to continue with her “pet project” on fuckboys, and eventually publish her findings in a short book “that you’d pick up for your friend after a break-up”. As much as hurt and harm as fuckboys can cause, it can be helpful to place them in context, she suggests.

Though Lubrano argues “there have always been fuckboys”, she says they are certainly enabled by dating apps, and the shallow connections and social churn otherwise encouraged by technology.

As such, a world without fuckboys might be too much to hope for. But Lubrano says the path to more transparent, equitable, enjoyable sex is by building stronger communities, better social infrastructure, and our individual tolerance for difficult conversations.

“You need to build a network where you really know other people and are accountable to them. Then even if one of you wants a relationship and the other doesn’t, you’re going to bear that, because you’re going to have the skills to talk about it.”

But that is far from easy, Lubrano agrees — not least because it demands an honest reckoning from not just fuckboys, but also those who might entertain them about what they’re actually seeking from love, sex, and dating, and what they are willing to put up with in the pursuit.

For Tom, his fuckboy phase was redeemed by the fact it led him to his now-wife, who he describes as his soulmate. When they met, she mentioned having read about his reputation online; she even called him out on his “one-man show” during their first date — one of only two women ever to do so. Tom knew wanted to see her again “immediately”, he says.

Having previously not believed in love, he remembers questioning the experience of falling for one woman. “Whenever I’d see or talk to an attractive woman, I’d say to myself, ‘Don’t you want her? Isn’t she just as good as the girl you’re with?”, and the answer in my head was always, ‘No. No, no, no.’ I wanted this one person, specifically… and no sex I could ever have would ever mean anything close to that.”

Tom ascribes it to her emotional openness, making his playbook — reliably successful as it had been — seem manipulative, if not morally wrong, he says.

“It’s easy to excuse game playing when the other person is playing games too — if they’re acting uninterested, delaying texts, or dropping hints about the other options they have. […] It actually feels great, like winning. But someone being completely vulnerable makes you confront the way you’re choosing to behave.” His “fuckboying phase” conclusively came to a close, Tom says, after he realised: “I wanted to treat this person well.”

*Names have been changed