So What's Next? You Slept With An Ex?

So does sleeping with an ex mean you're getting back together?

You don’t exactly know what you’re doing there, in that room, in that bed. You recognize everything, of course — the same hat still lingers on the wall next to his door, the same tear in the curtain that sometimes lets in light once the sun comes up, the same pin his grandfather gave him on the nightstand.

You lie there, staring back at the memories flooding your mind, creating a sense of familiarity while they’re on top of you — but everything has changed somehow. There used to be a warm, calming feeling of “I belong here” that washed over you when you laid your head against this very pillow, but now you feel the shift in scenery. Where you were once greeted as royalty, now you are a stranger, aggressively asked to show your papers.

That couch, that toothbrush, that hand towel — they all want to know what you’re doing here. The familiarity becomes a kind of drug, something you can’t take big enough hits of when you’re looking for something, anything, to make sense. You want to go somewhere you’ve been before because you know you can escape it with little to no bruising.

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The ease of getting what you want seduces you, becoming exactly what you’re looking for. You want someone who has seen you naked, who likes it, and who knows exactly how to touch you so that you fall asleep within a few short minutes of orgasm. And despite the harsh truth of it all, having someone else do the majority of the heavy lifting seems pretty appealing after months of having to do it yourself.

But this is not your home anymore. The things your ex is saying — even if they’re all the right things — are part of a story that has written you out. You were supposed to die at the end, and yet here you are, back from the dead, running into other characters’ plot lines. The tarnished, heavy air of other people’s presence is all you can sense.

Where you once felt so certain about your domain, you now feel that you are just one in a list of many who will pass through, no more special than the others. How many people have they touched since you left? How much did they care about them? How long ago was their last? You want to know everything, but the thought of what they would say is something you can’t bear. If they told you, it would ruin all of this. So, you bite your tongue and show yourself out the next morning.

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There will always be an inherent bond with an ex because of the shared history and familiarity. And we can all agree there’s something comforting about certainty. There’s something comforting about knowing what will happen, and when we’ve invested time and emotion into a relationship — when they really know you, and you really know them — it’s hard to walk away from that.

It’s hard to give up on the chemistry and shared history, especially when we’ve gotten into the habit of telling ourselves over and over again, "This is the person I want" or "This is the person I love." However, if you’re still keen on going back to the one who broke you, here are some of the things most men and women think about when sex is back on the table.

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YOU’RE FAMILIAR WITH THEM.
No need to impress, no need to figure out what you like, no need to wonder if you’ll freak out when they tell you their weird fantasy. It’s true that being with a familiar, warm body is appealing, but it won’t help you get over them, and it won’t help you make a new dating life for yourself.

“I slept with him because he’s the only one who knows exactly what I like. When everything was said and done, I realized that now I want him back and I can’t have him.” — Meghan

by Kayla McCullough