You know when you go over to a guy’s place, do the hanky panky, and then leave before the sun comes up? Apparently there’s a new term for that, and it’s not called a “hookup” or a “quickie” or a “one night stand.” It’s called a “half-night stand,” and 20-somethings across the nation are embracing them like never before.
Related: The Queerty Guide To Hooking Up Online
Blogger Brittany Wong at Huff Post defines half-night stands as “an abbreviated version of the one-night stand,” where one sexual partner promptly makes their exit shortly after getting off instead of staying the entire night, thus avoiding the awkward morning after.
“I think there are two reasons millennials like myself are choosing to cut and run after hooking up,” Max DuBowy, a 26-year-old gay man living in Portland, tells Huff Post. “First, we live in a ‘swipe’ culture where it’s easy to hook up quick and move onto the next encounter.”
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He continues, “Sex is sort of like ice cream, in that it comes in all kinds of flavors; Some evenings vanilla ice cream tastes good, but other nights, you’re really craving rocky road.”
That’s quite a metaphor!
Related: Man Ponders How He’ll Ever Find Real Love When He’s Obsessed With Hooking Up
“We enjoy our time together but when it’s over, it’s over,” 32-year-old Nicole from Dallas says. “We both have demanding careers and insanely early mornings. Starting the day in my own bed–where I can race to my computer at 6 a.m., if necessary–is just easier for everyone involved.”
According to Bay Area sex therapist Celeste Hirschman, half-night stands are great because they people the freedom to hookup on their own terms.
“If you don’t want anything more than sex, what’s the point of staying overnight with a stranger?” she says. “It’s just easier to go home so you can sleep in your own comfortable bed, wake up, and start your day fresh.”
Related: What Exactly Is The Protocol After Hooking Up With A Straight Guy?
“Sex is simply an activity,” DuBowy adds. “Love is intimate and deeper. It’s easier to move on after getting it on since love usually isn’t part of the experience until you’re in a committed relationship.”
Spoken like a true gay man.
“When I only wanted to get my jollies off, I felt satisfied and content after a half-night stand,” he continues. “But if I wanted to use sex to get my mind off feeling lonely, I felt lonelier after the hookup.”
What are you thoughts on half-night stands? Share in the comments section below…
Heywood Jablowme
Again, nothing new here. (It’s cute how millennials always want to think they’ve come up with something totally new!)
If you have roommates – as most people in their 20s do – it’s not so fun to stay overnight. Especially if you don’t YET have a emotional involvement.
The main difference I can think of is, back in the ’80s and early ’90s the crime rate was so high we were all scared to be out alone late at night. So we tended to stay overnight sometimes because of that factor.
crowebobby
Oh, to have these options just once more before I meet my Intelligent (Fabulous) Designer in the sky.
Herman75
Isn’t that special <– Church Lady does not approve.
Truth-is-Truthy
As a gay male and a Millennial I take offense at the view that random sex is just an activity; “like a true gay man.” Am I the only gay Millennial that believes sex should be an act of intimacy with a person that you care about? Am I the only one left?
Josh447
I don’t spend the night 99% of the time off an app hookup, that’s not the intention. Going out and spending the evening with somebody that I met online or at in a bar is a different story but even then that’s rare. But it’s a deliciously cute new coined term, half night stand. Maybe flash or quick night stand will catch on next.
gfmsoccer
This is the definition of a Hookup. Do meet someone for sex and then leave. There is no such thing as half night stand. If you spend the whole night with someone that’s a one night stand, if you never get together again. Whoever thinks they created this term, never understood what a Hookup was. Sad!
Heywood Jablowme
@Truth-is-Truthy: Yes, you’re the only one left. You’re never gonna find a husband. Never. So you should spend the rest of your life writing plaintive comments on gay websites proclaiming how you’re better than everyone else and how all gay men are pigs except for you! Because that’s so sexy. lol.
PRINCE OF SNARKNESS aka DIVKID
Get them off and get them out before they can nick shit
Josh447
@Truth-is-Truthy: Yes you are. Do a porn movie and get a little.
Daniel
I was doing this years ago. In what universe is this a new thing? Honestly, it was rare for anyone to stay until morning. Neither of us wanted that.
Scottsdale
Truth is Truthy, you are not the only one left, keep your values and take care of you. Ignore the catty comments for the people below.
When I was single, nothing was hotter than a man who knew wanted he wanted, had standards and lived by them.
News sites and groups tend to focus on the short term pleasures like alcohol, lust, drugs and sex because of the instant gratification. If you don’t branch out you will think that is all there is.
Most people do not want to actually have to examine themselves, learn or grow as a human.
It sounds like good things will come to you and the right person is out there for you.
Caprice Goldberg
@Truth-is-Truthy: Yes, you are.
Brian
Oh, please, it’s hilarious how some silly blogger over at the silly Huffington Post is treated as some guru of all things sexual. Puh-lease.
People have been doing quickies since the dinosaurs. You did not invent it. Some silly blogger did not invent it. In fact, the modern generation invented nothing sexual
Get over it – you did not invent anything.
aidanbh
I have half a night-stand. Does that count?
joe
Millennials seem to be the Christopher Columbus of the present era. When they come upon something for the first time,they think they created it or are the first ones to learn about it. Like Chris landing in the “new” world and, ignoring that there were people already here, claims to have discovered it.
I live in a city with a large Portuguese population. sitting in a coffee shop one day, i overheard a group of millenials crowing about their great newly discovered vegetable, Kale. The older people in the shop looked at them like they were nuts. The Millenials couldn’t understand why no one had been eating it before now, this in a city where Kale soup is has been a staple for generations
I can’t wait until they discover Collard Greens.
droptopbm8
Hilarious…
DISQUS
Millenials are the most self centered brainwashed microbe on the planet. They are in need of psychiatric care, and psychologicial unconditioning from all the brainwashing they have received to their 1/2 brain cell.
DISQUS
@joe: typical. They are all brainwashed. I’ll bet they know where the nearest Target is. I have neices and nephews that for the last few years I have always asked them how they are, what they are up to…..I’ve realized they really don’t care, and have no interest in making an intelligent conversation, or even a basic one at that. So, I’ve decided that I am not going to engage myself in their brainwash games. Or perhaps I should learn some anti brainwash tactics?
droptopbm8
Lmfaooooooo
droptopbm8
Are there chat rooms anymore? I miss chat rooms 🙁
DISQUS
@Brian: I moved away from San Franicisco for three years. When I moved back and renewed my gym membership in the Castro. It was obvious the Stepford Guys had arrived. When they walk, their eyes look blank, they stamp around as if smashing bugs, they absolutely will not even look at anyone older unless they are muscular, and forget about saying hi. I say what to do with millenials. Click IGNORE. They should be called the LOST generation.
DISQUS
@droptopbm8: Agrees about the chat rooms. Last time I was in one……no one chatted.
DISQUS
@Josh447: What happened to get laid, getting laid, got laid?
Brian
@DISQUS: Millenials are self-absorbed because they think they are special. They even thonk they invented sex.
Can I just say this to millenials: your great great great great great great great great grandparents were having more sex than you. And they didn’t even need apps to do it.
Mark Behar
Since sex usually is an hour or two (if we’re lucky), than it is probably more like “an eighth night” or “sixth night” or maybe even a “quarter night” stand! Certainly not as much as a “half night”!! Do the math!! It’s called “hookup” now, and back in the old days, a “trick”!
James
Good grief. If you’re done before dawn and leave, that’s got a special term now? If everything clicks, you stay, if it doesn’t, you go, if you really want to see them again, leave something behind by “mistake.” Does that have a term now too?
psk
@Brian: A-Men! Preach.
psk
God Lord this is so sad. Besides the obvious idiocy of thinking that a “half night” stand is anything new, is the fact that a generation of people will have no facility to create intimate relationships. The one night stand, where you woke up with the person and maybe had breakfast, were opportunities to connect with another human being. A way to learn those skills. Sometime it was good, sometimes it was very, very bad, but you LEARNED how to create intimacy with another person.
On top of that, how many of us created our gay families from those one night stands? We met people that we loved, maybe not as partners, but as the best of friends. We created a community from that. It makes me so sad to think the loss of that in the gay community.
Brian
Personally, I was never really into spending the whole night with someone. It made me feel uncomfortable. When I went to someone’s house, I was always clear that I usually do not stay whole nights.
On one occasion, the guy I was with got very angry when I told him that I wanted to leave after about an hour. He took my arm and frog-marched me to the door. It was traumatizing as I felt he could have handled it differently.
I’m sorry but, if I’m in quickie mode, I don’t want to know about the minutiae of your life. I don’t want to hang around long enough to see your dirty nails or your scrofulous cat. Nor do I want the odor of your morning bowel movements tweaking my nose hairs.
droptopbm8
@DISQUS: I remember AOL , Manhunt, Gay.com guess I’m old SKOOL … I still like to chat with human beings lol 🙂
Evji108
What a marvelous new improvement on sex the millennials think they have invented – quickie sex. Why hasn’t anyone else thought of this before? Those old people that were so stupid that they spent the entire night together.
Maybe straight people actually spend and entire night with each other, I really wouldn’t know, I mean they seem to do it in movies, but most gay sexual encounters last maybe two hours max before you’re being pushed out the door.
DannX68
Apparently I am, and always have been, a millennial. I am born in 1968.
Sorry, millennials, I really don’t think you can come up with any new activities any time soon. Maybe some new terms.
DannX68
@psk: Well said.
ChrisK
@droptopbm8: Manhunt and Gay.com are still there and much of the original members from way back too.
ChrisK
@Scottsdale: “News sites and groups tend to focus on the short term pleasures like alcohol, lust, drugs and sex because of the instant gratification. If you don’t branch out you will think that is all there is.”
WTF are you talking about. Lol What a bazaar thing to say.
jamessavik
Really? You thought you invented the f**k & run?
We were doing that in the 70s.
DMRX
@Brian: That’s a pretty ironic comment coming from you who thinks that you are the “guru of all things serial. Puh-lease.”
Also…Since people (as we know them) did not exist at the same time as dinosaurs, that piece of your comment was just ignorant.
brandon
“those millennials,” huh? who do you think reads this stuff? besides, i don’t think hook ups are new.
god_wayne81
@Truth-is-Truthy: glad I’m not alone in this thinking
maxdadmark
@Heywood Jablowme: thank you for saving me the effort. Really!
maxdadmark
@Truth-is-Truthy: don’t believe half the crap that you read here. There are all types, and this site is meant to provoke people with ridiculous, broad statemementsvabout how an entire age group acts or thinks. The real purpose of Queerty is to collect information for marketers to collect information so their clients can sell shit.
tom_lorio
I think there are typos. And every generation figures out the merits of sex vs. love. Good luck, it’s ever evolving.
BriBri
It’s all good, just have twice as much fun.
Maude
Just one step above quickie sex with a stranger in an alley, a doorway,or a mens-room in a public place etc.
Been that, done there.
Kangol
How is a half-night stand different from a f*ck-and-duck? Or a quickie?
ShowMeGuy
I work in a store surrounded by Millennials; gay, straight, and in-between……and none of them are talking about “half-night stands”. People have been enjoying the “blow-n-go” since forever.
Get over it Huffy Post. Quit pretending to invent news.
1898
This is NOT a new thing. Get a grip.
Tobi
@Brian: “I was never really into spending the whole night with someone.”
I think that’s probably a blessing, for them.
Heywood Jablowme
@Tobi: I’m surprised he even goes home with anyone. Brian always seemed more like a highway “rest area” kind of dude.
CivicMinded
If you’re only comfortable in your own bed, there’s something wrong with you. If you’re pushing a guest out the door, there’s something wrong with you. If you think sex is about getting your rocks off and that’s it, there’s something wrong with you. If you need to get onto social media before sleep and the moment you wake up, there’s something wrong with you.
JerseyMike
@joe: Joe, I am guessing you have not seen were neiman Marcus is selling collard greens..
millenials have created nothing other than an app. As the OLD saying goes “everything old is new again”
John
Isn’t that cute? Millenials who are awarded participation trophys want to soften the stigma of a “booty-call” or “”hook-up” by calling it a “half-night stan”… geesh give me a break, your delicate self-esteem, its a HOOK-UP! (for it be a half-night stand are you actually spending, this time of the year, actually 6 hrs? didn’t think so)
Steven
Seriously???? I’ve been doing the “Blow n Go” scene for over 25 yrs. Same thing as the generations before.. Just a new name