Should I stop having sex with my ex? I recently broke up with someone who is fantastic in bed, and good at the fun stuff, but utterly incompatible with me as a partner. There was a lot of pain involved in finding this out.
I’m considering dating again, but haven’t managed to stop having sex with this person – it’s the best sex I’ve ever had, and we have agreed to be friends with benefits. Should I stop? Will it impede my progress in moving on to potential new partners? I don’t have any desire to rekindle a deeper relationship, but don’t want to give up the fun bits that bring me so much pleasure and joy. I’ve never done anything like this before – uncharted territory for me.
Eleanor says:Lots of people will say this is a doomed endeavour, When Harry Met Sally-style, that it “never works”. I don’t think that’s right; I don’t think there’s a universal answer to the “should” question. But as you work out the answer, there are some factual dimensions worth paying attention to.
First, you say this is the best sex of your life.Thus far.I don’t know how old you are, or (sorry), how “experienced”, so I don’t know whether this suggests it’s the best sex canbe. How much do you think the electricity of this connection is down to facts about your ex, which can’t be replicated, or facts about your relationship, which can? Like – was this your first really “grown” sexual connection, or the first time you could say what you liked, or the first relationship without jealousy or body hang-ups? If so, the fact that it surpasses everything might not tell you it’s the absolute peak.
Second, you mentioned this might make it harder to find a new partner. Worth noting: it might make finding new sexual chemistry tricky, too. When your lust and exploration and imagination and intimacy get funnelled back towards your ex, there’s less of that stuff to push you forward into new connections. When you show up in those new connections, it might be as a version of you that doesn’t have as much impetus to make sure that sex is fun, communicative, attention consuming. A good way to turn sex bad is to approach it as an evaluative endeavour (let’s see what they’ve got) instead of a participatory one (let’s see what we can make).
In the period with a new partner when you don’t know each other’s bodies, you might be apt to compare sex with them to sex with your ex. When that comparison happens contemporaneously instead of just in memory, that may make it harder to find – or make – chemistry with someone new.
Last, you may re-experience whatever dynamics led you to think this person isn’t for you. A dynamic is a mutual creation – aspects of your personalities bring things out of each other that you don’t like. Being in a romantic relationship can exacerbate those things, but there’s not usually a big red switch such that once you turn off the relationship, the parts of your personalities that abrade each other go away and you can instantly be great colleagues, or take a long road trip. The ways you each process disagreements, misrepresent one another, the things they value and the things you don’t – all the hurt of those dynamics can still come up between you when the interaction is just sexual. Only now, you don’t have the recourse of being in a relationship if you want to work on fixing those things. That risk might be worth it – but you might want to make sure you have some emotional armour.
If the life goal is ever to be fully disentangled from this person, that will eventually mean in bed, too. Nothing about that means you have to stop the sex now. Breakups can be slow. Some of the intimacies you built survive long after the relationship ends. But it’s worth being alive to exactly what the cost is, before you decide to pay it.