The case of the ex
There’s not enough wine in the world,” my girlfriend says, raising her glass of Cabernet. “Why do you ask?”
We are sitting in her living room enjoying an evening of girl time, devouring cheese, sipping wine and catching up.
I don’t respond.
“Rebecca?” she prods. “Oh, god. Why do you want to know if I slept with my ex-husband after we split?”
I fess up. After months of separation, my ex and I had gone from barely speaking to baring our bodies for a rollicking roll in the hay.
“It just happened,” I explain lamely.
“But why?” she asks. “I thought you had moved on."
Why, indeed?
Most women would rather grow a moustache than sleep with their ex, so what was I thinking? Was it out of loneliness, desperation or habit? Am I still in love with this man or was I simply feeling amorous when he happened to be nearby?
According to Susan Stephenson, a Toronto-based psychotherapist, it could be one or all of the above reasons. The thing is, people often underestimate their need for attachment. “When we decide to separate, at first we think, Oh, it’s going to be fabulous, I’ll have all this freedom, I’ll see different people,” she explains. “But then it doesn’t work out that way. Suddenly, you’re spending every evening sitting on the couch, eating Doritos and watching TV. But we all want to be coupled. It’s a basic human instinct.”
Filling in the void
By coupled, Stephenson doesn’t mean married necessarily, but involved in a relationship in which we feel connected. For women like myself who may have spent decades with a partner, the sudden absence of a bedfellow can be crushing.
“Even if you’re the person who left the relationship, you can still feel very lonely,” says Stephenson. “You could be thinking, Hey, he’s available and it’s not like he’s disease ridden...and I’ve had a bottle of wine.”
