I said "this is just tonight" on the shared landing, coats still on, a bicycle wheel against my calf. He had his keys in his hand. I had mine. The sentence felt clumsy and a bit cold. It was also the reason the night stayed clean. The times I skipped that sentence I had to invent it later, badly, usually after someone had started leaving a charger by the bed.

How to have casual sex, if you want it to stay casual, is manners plus a sentence said early. Not a personality that feels nothing. I have feelings. I have also had sex that was not a relationship. Those two facts can sit in the same week if you do not lie about them.

Casual still needs care. The people who told me otherwise were usually the ones who wanted the benefits of closeness without having to hear a no.

How to have casual sex without a lie in it

Say what it is before the clothes come off. On a landing. On a pavement. On a sofa with the lamps still ordinary. I have tried the version where you wait until afterwards, when you are kind and a bit proud and someone is already building a weekend. Afterwards is when "just tonight" sounds like a retraction. Before is when it sounds like a plan.

The sentence can be plain. "I like you. I am not looking for a relationship. I want tonight if you want it too." If they hesitate, you do not talk them into it. Hesitation is information. I have talked someone into the vibe I wanted and then been irritated when they caught a feeling I had denied them permission to name. That was on me.

If you met on an app, say it on the app before you travel. If you met at a party, say it before you share a taxi. Alcohol will be in some of these nights. If either of you is actually drunk, you do not have casual sex. You have a blurred decision. Wait until you can both hear the sentence.

I am not above wanting the easy version: heat, no conversation, a door that closes. The easy version is how I have woken up next to a person who thought we had started something, while I thought we had finished something. The gap between those two thoughts is where people get hurt.

Talking about sex with a partner is a different job, with clothes on and a history. Casual still needs a shorter version of the same skill. One change. One fact. Said while you can still put your coat back on.

Casual still needs manners

Manners, for me, means: you answer the message the next day, even if the answer is "that was good, I am not free this week." You do not disappear because disappearing is easier than a sentence. You do not describe them to your friends as a story they did not agree to star in. You do not show up at their work drinks.

It also means you leave when you said you would leave. I once stayed four nights because the sex was easy and the mornings were lazy and I liked his coffee. By the fourth breakfast I knew how he took his coffee, and he had a look I recognised: hope, carefully managed. I had to do the landing sentence in daylight, which is a worse hour for it.

You use their name. You ask if they got home. You do not treat their body as a service you purchased with charm. I have been treated as a service. I have also, on a poorer night, treated someone as a mood I was managing. Both versions stay with you.

Manners includes the unsexy admin. Are we going to yours or mine. Do you have flatmates. Do you want me to leave after. Is anyone expecting you. I used to think those questions killed the heat. They moved the heat to a place I could trust.

If they are someone you will see again in your actual life (a friend of a friend, a colleague's cousin, the man from the five-a-side that uses your pub), be more careful, not less. Casual in a small circle is how a night becomes a climate. I have done it. I would ask myself harder now: can I be normal with this person in daylight if the sex is only the sex.

Safer sex is not optional

Casual sex without a condom conversation is not casual. It is optimistic. I have been optimistic. I would not recommend it as a personality.

Say it early enough that it is not a mood-killer whispered at the last second. "I use condoms." "I got tested in March." "What do you use." If they sulk, you have learnt something cheaper than a clinic visit. If you need a clinic visit anyway, you go. I am not a doctor. I am a person who has sat in a waiting room because she wanted the night to stay smooth.

Have the condom. Have lube. Have a plan for the morning-after pill if you need one, and do not make that plan while you are still inside the night. If something breaks, you say so. I have been the person who hoped a break was "probably fine." Probably is not a method.

This is also where you ask for what you want in a smaller voice: "slower," "not that," "I like this, not that." Casual is not a reason to go mute. Mute is how you get sex that is technically consensual and actually grim.

If they want something you do not, you say no. Casual does not mean game. It means the container is smaller. The no is the same size as it is in a relationship. I have let a casual night drift into a thing I would have vetoed with someone I loved, because I thought I had less right to be fussy. That is backwards. Less history is a reason to be clearer, not vaguer.

Feelings arriving anyway

They arrive. Of course they arrive. You have been naked with someone who was kind, or good, or simply there on a week when you were lonely. The body does not always respect the landing sentence.

I have caught a feeling on a Sunday afternoon because he made tea without asking how I took it, which is a stupid reason and also a real one. I did not announce a relationship. I did announce, that evening, that I was getting less casual than I had promised, and that I needed to stop or change the terms. He was kind. We stopped. Stopping while you still like each other is a skill. Dragging it into a sulk is easier and worse.

If they catch a feeling and you do not, you do not mock them for failing the brief. You thank them for saying it. You stop having sex. You do not offer "one more time" as a consolation prize. One more time is how I have turned a clean ending into a mess that lasted until November.

If you both catch something and you both want to look at it, that is allowed. Casual can become not-casual. The honest move is to name the change, not to keep calling it casual while you are choosing films together. I have done the film version. It was a situationship with extra steps, and I have a whole other piece in me about that.

Loneliness will try to negotiate. So will good sex. So will the fact that dating is tiring. None of those are reasons to lie. They are reasons to check the sentence again. "Are we still doing the thing we said." If the answer is a shrug, you are already in a different arrangement.

Getting in the mood still applies. Casual does not mean you owe anyone a body that is not interested. I have said yes because it seemed like the genre of the evening. Genre is a poor yes. Want is a better one.

Ending it cleanly

End it before you resent the charger.

A clean ending is a sentence, not a fade. "I am going to stop this. I had a good time. I do not want to keep doing nights." You can send it. You can say it at the door. I prefer the door if the nights have been regular, because a text after months of being in their bed can feel like a disappearance with extra punctuation.

Do not end it by getting worse at sex, or slower at replies, or suddenly very busy every Friday. I have done the busy Fridays. He knew. I knew he knew. We still had to have the conversation I had been postponing, only now it had a layer of insult on it.

If they take it badly, you stay polite and you do not reopen the arrangement to soothe their pride. If you take it badly, you do not send the midnight paragraph. You send "all right" and you call a friend.

You may still see them. A city is small. A nod is enough. A long debrief in a pub is how you start it again with extra feelings. I have had the debrief. I would take the nod.

What I got wrong, for years, was thinking casual meant I had to pretend I was a cooler animal than I am. I am not a cool animal. I am a person who likes being wanted and sometimes wants too much. The arrangements that stayed kind were the ones where I said that out loud, in a coat, before anyone was impressive.

FAQ

How do you keep sex casual?

You name it early, you keep the calendar honest, and you stop when the feeling outgrows the sentence. There is no trick that deletes attachment. There is only whether you are willing to look at the attachment when it arrives. I keep it casual by not collecting their habits. No charger. No spare key. No "we" about Saturday.

Is casual sex healthy?

It can be. It can also be a way of skipping the conversations you are afraid of, or a way of using someone as a mood. Healthy, for me, looks like: consent you could explain to a friend, safer sex, no disappearing, and a yes that could have been a no. If you leave every night feeling smaller, the arrangement is not doing what you told yourself it was doing. That is worth a rethink, not a pep talk.

What rules should we set?

The ones you can actually keep. Mine have been: condoms, no overnights unless we say so, no showing up unannounced, tell me if you start seeing someone I know, and say if you want this to stop. Fantasies can wait. You do not need a secret menu on night one. You need the container. Write the rules down if you are the sort of person who edits memory. I am.

What if one person catches feelings?

You say it, or they say it, and then you change the deal or you end it. You do not keep having sex as a kindness. I have been the one with the feeling and the one without. The kind version, both times, was a clean stop and a week of being a bit sad. The unkind version was three more nights "for old times" and a row about a message I should have sent sooner.

I still prefer the arrangement I can say before anyone is undressed.