How to invite a significant other to spend the night without implying sex?

Question

Some context: I started dating my boyfriend a few weeks ago. All has gone well so far but we're both new to this so we're taking it slow.

The other day, we were with some of our friends playing a game at a friend's house and it ended late (around 1 in the morning). My boyfriend walked me home since it was dark and I lived close by. He usually takes the bus home since he lives a bit outside town, but it was late and the buses had stopped running. He instead had to take an expensive taxi.

I wanted to ask him if he wanted to stay over so he wouldn't have to pay all that money. We even have a couch he could sleep on if sharing a bed with me was a bit much.

However, I couldn't figure out a way to frame the question without it sounding like I wanted to "sleep with him", so I stayed silent about it and he took the taxi home.

I feel like this will probably come up again later on in our relationship as well. As the title says, any suggestions on how to invite a significant other to spend the night without implying sex?

Answer 1

I was in the same situation as you just a few weeks after I met my fiancee. It was very late and we were near my apartment which was about 50 minutes from hers on public transportation. I invited her to stay for the night so that she wouldn't have to take the train and walk to her apartment alone so late at night.

Rather than asking her to stay the night, I told her that she was welcome to stay on my couch. She ended up staying and there was no awkwardness or any talk of sex. By setting the expectation that you will sleep in separate places, you can present him the option of staying while avoiding the discussion of sex for the time being.

Answer 2

This is a really, really tough issue, because people tend to be pretty vague and indirect when they want to have their date spend the night for sex. If you bring it up at the end of an evening when you are both kind of tired it's going to be very difficult to get the phrasing just right. This is one of those discussions where you need to be a bit prepared and composed.

So have a discussion about having him just sleep over at another time, when you are both relaxed and awake and you are prepared with what you want to say. Refer back to that evening and say that you wanted to spare him the taxi ride but felt awkward about offering the couch. Talk it through so he understands what you want. There's a pretty good chance he might have wanted to do exactly the same thing but didn't want to impose on you or give you the wrong idea. This way when the situation happens again, you can comfortably offer him the couch and he knows exactly what's going on.