Sex With An Ex: Not As Big A Trap As We Think?

Everybody knows when you’re ending a relationship and trying to move on, it’s a bad idea to have sex with your ex, because that makes it harder for both of you to let go — or so we’ve long been led to believe, at least.

New research suggests that having sex with your ex may NOT make it harder to move on from the relationship, contrary to what you’ve read in just about every self-help book and advice column which has ever addressed the subject.

This makes intuitive sense to Calico, who has had sex with several exes in her time, but really found herself having trouble moving on from one of them. This makes her believe the difficulty in letting go stems not so much from continued sexual attraction and sexual interaction, but from other connections to the person and interests exes share outside the bedroom.

Of course, the fact there’s now evidence that having sex with a recent ex isn’t necessarily detrimental to successfully moving on from them is different from being given a free pass to have sex with your exes — something Calico may have to explain to her husband, who seemed a little TOO interested in the conclusions of these researchers.

Get Calico’s take on all this ex-sex-hubbub in her latest post, “Sex With An Ex: Not As Big A Trap As We Think?

by Calico Rudasill, Sssh.com Sex Entertainment and Info For Women and Couples

In my younger days, I cycled through more than a few boyfriends. Some of the relationships were relatively long, others were shorter than my current average Netflix binge.

Along the way, by my best recollection, I had sex with an ex four times – by which I mean sex with four separate exes, not four ex-sex-encounters in total.

In none of these cases did the sex lead to a renewal of our fuller relationship. There was no moving back in with anybody, or ongoing affairs which interfered with a new relationship, or proposals of marriage which ended with some poor schmuck drunk and crying on my front porch.

When It’s Truly Hard to Let Go, There’s Probably More Than Sex Binding You

There was one ex with whom I had ex-sex more than a few times – and in that case, letting go was sort of hard. While the sex was good (very good), what made it hard to move on was that I liked being with him when we had our clothes on, too.

Don’t get me wrong – there was no shortage of friction between us, mostly stemming from differences in everything from political opinion to our preferred sleeping schedules. But, even though it was me who broke things off, I still struggled to stick to my guns about truly, finally splitting up with him.

Despite our differences, we had a lot of fun together, both between the sheets and out on the town. We both loved going to hear live music, our tastes in books and movies were perfectly aligned and we spent hours playing everything from gin rummy to Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat.

I think the same factors which made one my exes harder to let go of than others with whom I’d had post-relationship sex comprise the explanation behind the results of a recent pair of studies – studies which suggest having sex with your ex isn’t as big an impediment to moving on from that person as people commonly believe.

Conventional Wisdom vs. Empirical Research

In a paper entitled “Pursuing Sex with an Ex: Does It Hinder Breakup Recovery?”, researchers discuss the results of two studies they conducted “to test whether pursuing sex with an ex-partner hinders breakup recovery.”

“If lay theories are correct that pursuing sex with an ex directly impacts breakup recovery, this is important to know,” the authors state in the introduction of the paper.

“Lay theories,” eh? (Yes, I am immature enough that in context, this phrase made me giggle more than a little.)

“Conventional wisdom suggests that people should avoid pursuing sexual activity with ex-partners following a breakup,” the authors continue. “Popular media outlets, blogs, and advice columns dole out such advice with regularity. A common theme in these recommendations is that pursuing sex with an ex will make it more difficult to recover from a breakup.”

But, as the researchers observe, there’s a dearth of research on this question – something they hoped to address by conducting their studies.

Now that they have their results, the researchers have reason to be that the conventional wisdom referenced above may be off base.

“The present research suggests that societal handwringing regarding trying to have sex with an ex may not be warranted,” the researchers concluded. “Rather, sex with an ex is most eagerly pursued by those having difficulty moving on, suggesting that we should perhaps instead more critically evaluate people’s motivations behind pursuing sex with an ex. The present research highlights the importance of examining the directionality of breakup dynamics using longitudinal methods, as cross-sectional associations alone can be misleading.”

Drawing the Line on Ex-Sex Is Easy, If You Have Heavy Cookware

As I often do, in the process of writing this post, I talked about the subject at hand with my husband, who immediately raised a question I probably should have seen coming.

“Sounds like an interesting study,” he said, raising an eyebrow. “Does this mean I can call up Jacqui today and see if she wants to meet me at the Radisson for a quickie?”

Jacqui, I should explain, is one of his exes – one who looks roughly seven minutes older than she did in the mid-90s, much to the dismay, jealousy, envy and occasional murderous rage of all her old friends and acquaintances.

I didn’t need to answer this question verbally, because simply crossing my arms and narrowing my eyes in his direction is well-understood as an indication he’s stepped over a dangerous line.

“Geez Cal, I’m only kidding,” he said. After a short pause, he grinned widely and added: “Besides, Jacqui always screens my calls anyway.”

Note to self: Going forward, I need stop talking about the posts I write with my husband. After all, someday I’m bound to get tired of cleaning the surface of his scalp off the bottom of my cast iron frying pan…