Sex After a Breakup

We rarely talk about sex after a breakup. We either glamorize the hot post-breakup rebound or pathologize it as self-destructive. But we don’t allow for the middle—the slow, confusing, nonlinear reality of what it means to grieve through your body, through your sexuality.

If you had a strong sexual connection with your ex, that kind of electricity doesn’t just disappear—it shifts. It morphs into something else. And often, you don’t know what that something is until you’re in the middle of it.

There are versions.

There’s survival sex.
It’s not necessarily about pleasure—it’s about proving you’re still desirable. Still wanted. Still capable of turning someone on. It’s often fast, sometimes chaotic, maybe even deeply hot—but afterward, you’re left feeling emptier. Not because the person did anything wrong, but because you weren’t really there. You were trying to override the ache. To outpace the grief.

It’s not about desire. It’s about numbing the void.
And sometimes it works… for about 15 minutes.

You might cry after. You might feel powerful. You might dissociate. You might immediately want more.
It’s your nervous system trying to reorganize around absence.
It’s your body trying to remember what it feels like to be alive.

Then there’s numb sex.