Even after a breakup, your ex may not be completely out of your life. Sometimes, they leave more than just their memories behind. You may still see them in your regular friend circle, run into them at the store or at places you like to go, or even get late-night text messages from them after they’ve had a couple of drinks. And it’s pretty much inevitable that at some point, you’ll have the opportunity to sleep with an ex. If it happens once, forgive yourself and move on. But if it starts to become a regular or even semi-regular thing, you need to stop it right now. Here’s why.
Divide and Conquer
If this person is your ex instead of your current, there’s a reason. Maybe it’s one big reason, or maybe there are a dozen little reasons for why you just can’t carry on with this person. Either way, your goal in life is to separate from this person and do your best to get over them and the failed relationship. If you continue to sleep with them, you aren’t letting your wounds heal. The intimate connection you’re maintaining is a very slippery slope that’s keeping your feelings alive instead of allowing you to conquer them and find a more suitable life partner. Continuing to sleep with an ex keeps you from moving forward in life, and that means you’re stuck.
Fear
If you’re still sleeping with an ex, the reasons you have for doing it are probably a whole lot deeper than satisfying your physical needs. Because if you only wanted to scratch that itch, there’s plenty of other routes you could take. If you continue to sleep with a person you’ve already learned isn’t suitable for you, it may be due to fear. It’s frightening to move on and seek out a new love after your heart has been mashed up by an old one.
How does the phrase go about the devil you know? It’s less fearful to hook up with an agreeable ex than to put yourself out there and seek a new romance. But the worst thing you can do is live your life, or conduct your relationships, out of fear.
Repeating Patterns
If you start sleeping with your ex, you could fall back into all your relationship patterns with them without even noticing. Before you know it, you’re exchanging text messages and going out on Saturday night and having all those same old fights that broke you up to begin with. Remember, you broke up to put an end to the toxic cycle so that you could both move on. But you aren’t moving on if you’re still sleeping with them, you’re just repeating all those patterns. It’s time to break the cycle, even if that means suffering through all those long and lonely nights.
Avoiding the Pain
Breakups are messy and ugly and painful and terrible. No one wants to go through a breakup. And if you’re sleeping with your ex, you aren’t actually going through the breakup. You’re still hanging onto the relationship, or at least some aspects of it, and you’re avoiding the healing process you need to go through. Before you can heal, you need to feel the pain of separation and of the loneliness that follows a breakup. No one wants to wade through ugly feelings, but there are times in life when you just don’t have any other choice. Breaking up is one of those times. Let go so that you can go through the pain. The worse it is, the better you’re likely going to feel when you do come out on the other side.
And eventually, you will make it to that other side…as long as you stop sleeping with your ex.