You see it on TV all the time – a divorced couple hopping into the
sack for some afternoon delight. There’s even a song devoted to divorce sex from the television show “Cougar Town,” with the line: “It’s the best….but you’ll regret….sex with your ex…..”

Nobody talks about it but everybody’s doing it

Despite
how common it is, it’s not easy finding much research done on divorcing
and divorced couples getting that final hook up. There’s a lot out
there about dating after a divorce, but there isn’t much exploration of
that dirty little window of time between separation and divorce or just
after your divorce when for lots of all-too-human reasons a lot of
people fall back into old, familiar patterns, back into old, comforting
sexual routines with their exes. I suspect the lack of public
conversation is because most folks don’t want to talk about it. They just want to do it. The secrecy, the absurdity, the naughtiness is what makes it so hot.

Luckily,
people tell me stuff. So gathering all of my expert investigative
reporting skills I have discovered certain patterns that emerge in
ex-sex that I think are worth noting. See if any of these sound
familiar:

Hot Hate Sex: You’ve got two people who have a tremendous amount of energy and chemistry between them that looks and feels like hate.
They
trash talk each other endlessly to anyone who will listen (alas, most
often the kids) and seem stuck in the white-hot heat and intensity of
divorce in its earliest and meanest phase. OF COURSE THE SEX IS HOT.
Basically, you’ve got two adolescents rampaging on the hormonally
adolescent-like fumes of grief, rage, relief, terror and revenge.
It can happen once and flame out. Or it can sizzle for a while, until
it crashes. Both ways end badly. You can’t sustain it. All the old
wounds and rawness and resentments come tumbling out from under the
sheets with you. Usually one person (the woman) has harbored some tiny
fantasy that you might, despite it all, be able to get back together now
that the sex is hot and when that inevitably doesn’t happen, and things
inevitably get ugly again, it hurts all the more. Again.

Published on February 23, 2012 by Pamela Cytrynbaum in Because I’m the Mom