Is Break-Up Sex All It’s Made Out to Be? (No)

If you’ve bought into the myth that break-up sex is gonna be the best romp of your life it might be time to reassess. 

Although post-relationship boning is often portrayed in film and TV as the hot and heavy, rip-your-clothes-off type sex that’ll leave your room looking like a hurricane has torn through it, the reality is often exceptionally less dramatic, and dramatically more depressing. Even as some sort of masochistic fantasy, the end result is just a self-destructive mess. 

My first brush with break-up sex put me off it for a long time. The sex happened immediately after the big conversation. Once we’d both stopped crying we just sort of… started the usual rubbing. It was earnest to the point of awkwardness and the waning love didn’t do much to provide a spark of passion. He came, I didn’t. The next time we hung out he asked if we could “fool around”. 

The second break-up sex adventure I went on was a much more long-lived and sordid affair. It started as free and fiery as you’d hope it might be if you’d grown up watching too much Gossip Girl. But the sex didn’t have to be meaningful anymore, and in a twisted nihilistic sense that lack of meaning made it so much more intense. After weeks of continued hook-ups, it became painfully routine until eventually it was just painful. The last time we slept together ended disappointingly on both ends and was followed by a monstrous argument.

I spent weeks, months even, feeling disgusted that I’d let someone who didn’t care about me anymore have that much of me. How sickened I felt about my own willingness to be available to him was something I couldn’t shake for a long, long time. 

My break-up sex journey has been long and hard (well, not always) and brought me to the conclusion that, for most of us, that one moment of pleasure just isn’t worth how it makes you feel afterwards. 

When I asked the VICE office about post break-up sex, only 8% were for it, with 92% agreeing break-up sex isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Here’s what they had to say about why: 

And that’s not to say that the physical side of break-up sex can’t be good when it happens.

But even when the sex itself is passionate and exciting, the aftermath doesn’t always live up.  

A 2020 study , which aimed to dispel the media-born belief that break-up sex is all fun and games, examined the effect that break-up sex had on its participants and why we’re all doing it in the first place. According to the study, most break-up sex appears to be motivated by three main factors: relationship maintenance, hedonism, and ambivalence. 

As in: keeping things going, feeling real good and feeling uncertain. 

The study suggested, maybe unsurprisingly, that women tend to feel worse about themselves afterwards, while men just feel stoked to be having sex. It’s fairly clear that the genders in question tend to have different motivations and psychological consequences when it comes to break-up sex, with men more likely to be in the “hedonistic and ambivalent” category. Which isn’t the best news for anyone who’s dated a man and decided to get back into bed with them during a break-up. Knowing the person isn’t sure if they really want to be there, but are doing it anyway to get off, might be enough reason not to do it in the first place.  

One of the harder to admit reasons we sometimes get down and dirty with an ex-in-the-making is to prove our own desirability. In fact, a break-up can feel like the best time to pull out your most hog-wild moves and start fulfilling some fantasies, because it helps you both buy into the excitement of being together again. You might hope that if you show your ex that you’re the best sex they’re gonna get that maybe they’ll stick around – but this can leave you feeling humiliated and used if you’ve played all your sexual cards only to get folded in the end.

And that’s the crux of it. Even if the sex is good, and you feel wanted or fulfilled in the moment, there’s a whole horde of shitty feelings ready to chase you down afterwards. 

Regret, embarrassment, rejection and loneliness are just a few of the exciting possibilities, so maybe take it from us – cut your losses, zip your jeans up and walk away. 

We promise there’s a reverse cowgirl waiting for you somewhere out there, but once an ex is an ex, they aren't gonna make you yee-haw like they used to. 

Own the Feels is brought to you by #LoveBetter, a campaign funded by the Ministry for Social Development.

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Rachel Barker is a writer / producer at VICE NZ in Aotearoa.