Why People Have Sex with Their Ex?
“The dark and the light, they exist side by side. Sometimes overlapping, one explaining the other. The darkened path is as illuminated as the lightened…” – Raven Davies
Letting go of a relationship is hard. Letting go of mutually satisfying, perhaps even mind-blowing sex, is another matter altogether. The familiar and heady serotonin release, the intimate knowledge of someone’s body, and the catalog of ways that they amassed to pleasure you can defy description.
It’s just another interesting and complex part of being human that you find yourself doing things that, in the name of immediate gratification, may service a need, but no longer serve you well.
This brings me to some of the other less obvious reasons people may choose to literally re-couple with an ex, even though they know it serves only one brief mutually selfish and self-soothing purpose.
Make-up Sex or Pre-emptive Break-up Sex?
In the arc of a relationship – which is often multiple arcs, parabolic curves and a mystical alchemy so dark and arcane that any hope of slightly understanding it requires the fluid mind of a mathematician, mage and occultist all blended into one- the end is often the most confusing.
Are you a master wizard or a mage? No? Me either.
A break may mean just that, a healthy and necessary pause. A breakup may only represent a dip in the peaks and valley chart of your relationship. Or a breakup may actually be the end. There are just so many variables, depending on how honest you’ve both been with each other. One or both of you may be gauging the relationship one last time.
Sex then is like hazy, opium laced smoke wending through the room with dark, cloying tendrils.
You enter bravely, even if tentatively, but before long you don’t remember how you got there or just precisely what “there” actually means anymore – And the exit…well, the exit is not where you entered.
Forbidden Fruit
It may be a quirk of nature that some of us are drawn most to the things we know are verboten, fenced off or found down dark alleys. You may never even know why you are drawn to them. Just accept that it’s in your DNA somewhere to be unafraid of the dark, to be intrigued by it, and curious about what you’ll find there, regardless of any danger or mayhem you may find lurking in the shadows.
Monster hunters and forbidden fruit seekers must be prepared to eventually meet their quarry.
Territoriality or Re-marking
Sometimes it’s simply good old-fashioned claws on a tree. You are marking your ex or being marked by them.
It is a way of staking what you feel is yours and setting boundary lines for your territory.
This is not uncommon after an affair or as part of the break/breakup magical mystery arc. It is very animalistic, very primal, so don’t be surprised if you feel the urge to do it or recognize it when it’s being done to you.
Alcohol
This is always the essential oil in the machine. This is the greenlight at the toll booth.
This is the control tower saying “all systems go. Let’s light this candle”
This is David Bowie in your ears singing to the both of you.
“Ground control to major Tom.
Take your protein pills and put your helmet on
Commencing countdown, engines on (five, four, three)
Check ignition and may God’s love be with you”
Without alcohol your defenses and dignity would most likely not foam the runway and make way for a hot landing. Not that there’s anything wrong with a hot landing, but just know it and embrace it for what it is and what it isn’t.
Final Thoughts
I leave you to your own final thoughts on this subject today.
All life is a personal choice. All actions have reactions and are swollen with consequences.
But as I write this, I do know and believe one thing –
“The dark and the light, they exist side by side. Sometimes overlapping, one explaining the other. The darkened path is as illuminated as the lightened…” – Raven Davies
Lisa Ryan LPC
Learn something you don’t know yet.
