Playboy Advisor

Columnist Bridget Phetasy on how not to be a f#ckboy. Plus: advice for lovers sparring over politics; the upside of a celibate girlfriend

- Bridget Phetasy

Q: I was recently dumped by a woman I met at a bar near our campus. We dated for about two months, went out together a lot and had some pretty damn amazing sex, so the dumping came as a surprise. She broke it off via text, saying, “Sorry, but I can’t keep dating a f#ckboy". I’ve heard women use that word in a bunch of different ways. (Even my female friends disagree about what my ex meant by it.) So what the hell is a f#ckboy?More important, how do I make sure I’m not one?

A: You’re right to be confused. There seem to be as many definitions of f#ckboy as there are English-speaking millennials. Overall, it has become a catchall phrase women use to label single men who exhibit all kinds of failings. Urban Dictionary has more than 600 user-generated definitions that attempt to explain the term. The most popular is “a person who is a weakass pussy that ain’t about shit.” In short, f#ckboy is a pejorative, with a definition that changes with every person who uses it.

Originally I thought the term was a synonym for booty call. I used it loosely to refer to whichever man I was using for his dick at the time. But then my last booty call, offended that I’d called him a f#ckboy, schooled me: “You ain’t even using it right,” he said. When I asked him to explain, he said he wasn’t a f#ckboy because he wasn’t a pushover. Turns out, the idea that a f#ckboy isn’t his own man is an important differentiator from a booty call.