Why sex with the ex can explode in your face

Rhea Varma was out one night drinking with friends when she spotted a familiar face across the bar. She had broken up with Avinash a year and half ago, during their final year in college. This was the first time she had seen him since. Soon they were drinking at the same table, reminiscing about the good times they had during their almost two-year-long relationship. “It wasn’t awkward at all. We were like two old friends, bonding after a long time,” she says.

What Rhea didn’t expect, though, was that the two of them would end up having a night of passionate sex. “It was, in fact, the best sex I’d ever had, even better than when we were going out. We kept hooking up for a few months.” Rhea isn’t sure if it was because they were meeting after so long or because Avinash had just got better at making love in the time they were apart. “It was adventurous — the no-strings-attached kind. We didn’t tell our friends — they wouldn’t approve. The fact that all this was happening with an ex is what made it exciting,” she says.

A couple of months later, things started going downhill. All of a sudden, Avinash wanted to know what Rhea was up to. He would call her often, and started “acting weird” when Rhea spoke to him about her male colleagues. Although Avinash had himself made it clear that they were nothing more than ‘f*%# buddies’ — something Rhea was fine with — his behaviour reflected otherwise. Things took a turn for the worse when Rhea met someone she wanted to start dating. “All hell broke loose when I told him I wanted to move on. He was angry at first. Then he broke down. He said he couldn’t believe we would have to go through another ‘break up’.”

Having sex with your ex comes with its share of ups — you have been there and done it, so you know what you’re in for. Also, the comfort shared by the former couple helps. But it doesn’t always necessarily end well.

Ryan Fernandes learnt this the hard way. A month after he had gone through a difficult breakup with his girlfriend (“I found it difficult to convince her we should break up”), the two of them met to figure if they could co-exist in each other’s lives as friends. The mistake they made, says Ryan, was that they met at her apartment, and not at a public place. Soon, they were out of their clothes, enjoying a wild lovemaking session, the kinds they used to till only a few weeks ago. After having sex, her first words were, “It’s good to have you back.” Ryan freaked out.

“I left her place as soon as I could. In about half an hour’s time she sent me an SMS, and later called to talk about random things. She was acting like we never broke up.” Slightly confused initially, Ryan thought it necessary to clear the air. “I told her that us hooking up was a mistake, but she didn’t take it well. Somehow, she was expecting the sex to go somewhere, like us getting back together.”

Ryan says they only had sex that one time after breaking up, but he had to spend a number of weeks trying to explain to her that they couldn’t get back together. “She got abusive, insinuating that I had ‘used’ her. It was an attempt to take me on a guilt trip. I resisted it somehow.” Two years and they still haven’t spoken.

Almost every story seems to follow a similar path — comfort in having known the person, wild encounters, then one of the two moves on, and the other feels betrayed. Sometimes, like Aparna Deo puts it, it’s just “convenient” at first, but takes you on an emotional rollercoaster.

Aparna hooked up with her ex “because he lived four blocks away. It worked perfectly for the both of us.” But her ex didn’t take it well when she said she wanted to end it. “He said I had broken up with him in the first place, then I initiated our hooking up, and then I put an end to that too. He felt he didn’t have any say in decisions concerning us.” Aparna says that in time she realised she could have dealt with the “affair” better, but eventually things sorted themselves out. Today, the two are still friends.

But that’s rare. Usually, the second breakup is more bitter than the first. While sex with an ex might seem like a convenient, attractive option, if the two ex-partners aren’t on the same page, things could get ugly. Perhaps uglier than the break-up itself.