I was browsing through the internet this morning and ran across an article written by Sarah Harrison on the Your Tango website titled “6 Reasons Men Love Ex Sex”.
Her list (each of which she then goes on to discuss in more detail) includes the usual suspects (as written from a female perspective):
1. You’re familiar.
2. You’re available.
3. He wants closure.
4. He wants to win you back.
5. He wants a friend with benefits.
6. He misses you.
Some are plausible, such as wanting “a friend with benefits” … what guy wouldn’t? After all, most relationships end up (for the guy) being a mixture of plusses and minuses. And the longer the relationship endures, the less exciting the former seem … and the more annoying the latter become.
The access to regular sex would be a plus, for example. But the frequent drama (that’s what women mean when they say that you – meaning, you the guy – have to work at a relationship) and expense (relationships take a lot of “care and feeding”) dissipate much of the initial thrill from having regular sexual access.
“… Just the sex please …”
As a result, most guys would be delighted to be able to order à la carte off of the romantic menu: “Just the sex please … hold the drama and the expensive courtship.”
But that merely explains the appeal of having an FWB arrangement with any halfway pleasant (and halfway pleasant-looking) woman … even if this does end up being your ex, as it sometimes might turn out.
As far as I can see, though, there’s no special benefit to having an FWB arrangement with your ex rather than with another woman who was similarly accommodating.
Except, of course, that it would be much harder for your ex to “pull the prude card” on you. You know, that’s where a woman feigns a blush and tells you “I’m not that kind of girl” or “I’ve never done that before”. If she’s your ex, you’ll know from experience that she is “that kind of girl” and that she has done “that” before … with you.
Gaining Closure
How about the idea of bedding your ex “for closure”? Is that one of the reasons why some men may want to sleep with their ex again should the opportunity present itself?
Perhaps, I suppose, but only in a very oblique sort of way. For one thing, whenever I’ve heard anyone talk about the topic of “closure” (using that word for it), it was always a woman mentioning it. For guys, we mostly just want to figure out:
• Do I want her back?
• If so, what are the chances that she would take me back?
• If she would take me back, would it be worth it for me (given whatever number of hoops it is that she expects me to jump through)?
• But most importantly, guys want to figure out “Is the sex really over for good?”
If we conclude that the sex really is over for good, most guys move on. After all, what would be the point of staying otherwise? That would be like swatting a dead fly.
And the quickest “thumb on the pulse” test to gauge whether the sex is really over for good is to put a move on her to see if she says “yes” or “no”. That avoids wasting a lot of time if things really are past the point of no return.
So, yeah … in a sense, I guess that could be thought of as a male version of “closure” (literally, if referring to her legs).
Spontaneous Regeneration
There is one variation on “sex with the ex” that I’ve often seen guys revert to only after some time has elapsed since the end of a relationship. Months or even years later, he’ll run into his ex and think “Hmm, she’s looking better than I remember her … wonder if I’d be able to tap that one more time?”
In effect, that’s the opposite of “familiarity”. As time passes, some of the original novelty (which had worn off as the relationship progressed) may grow back again. It won’t be as strong as the original novelty. And it won’t be as durable … such guys (ten seconds after re-climaxing with the ex) are likely to already be wondering “What was I thinking?” and “Is there a graceful way for me to escape quickly without her causing considerable drama?”
From the Frying Pan to the Fire
The weirdest variation I’ve seen involves guys (typically married young to their college sweethearts) who become extremely successful financially (business executive, doctor, lawyer) after a decade or two and tire of their wives (in part because the now splendidly compensated alpha males have gotten a lot more “eligible” in the intervening years).
Many guys like that will have a mistress on the side, and the mistress will often just be biding her time jockeying to become the next “Mrs. Him”. And if he’s a bit too slow to ask his wife for a divorce (so that he can marry his mistress), I’ve seen mistresses help things along a bit by approaching the wife and telling her about their affair so that the wife will dump the hubby (the mistress hopes).
Green Grass … and Kudzu
I’ve known several guys like that who actually went back and forth. While still married to their first wife, they hated going home to that wife and spent every moment they could get away with in being with their mistress. Then they divorced Wife #1 and married the mistress, who soon became all the things they disliked about Wife #1: a shrew, the old “ball and chain”, money-grubbing, “she who must be obeyed”, the “warden” and so on.
And so they started seeing ex-Wife #1 on the side (she became his mistress while he was married to Wife #2). The grass is said to be greener on the other side of the fence and that seems to be the situation with the relative desirability of a wife and a mistress.
Whoever was on the outside (first the mistress and then ex-Wife #1) looked like fine landscaping to him. And whoever was on the inside (first it was Wife #1 and then it was Wife #2) quickly became as welcome as kudzu.
“… the hat trick …”
I’ve only seen one guy go for “the hat trick” and that was truly bizarre. He divorced his wife and married his mistress, but then started seeing his original wife on the side. In time, he divorced his second wife (the original mistress) and remarried his first wife. And a couple of years later, he divorced his first wife a second time … and then remarried his original mistress a second time!
Last I heard, he was contemplating switching again … and at that point both of the women were pregnant (with his having presumably done the honors). He’s a highly skilled surgeon but he’s not exactly “street smart” when it comes to women.
Yikes!
Stay tuned,
Mack Doppler
