Why You Keep Sleeping with Someone You Know You Should Leave (And How to Stop)
· Vice
Some of the best sex you’ll ever have can happen with someone you absolutely should not be dating. When the relationship is falling apart, but the sex is the one thing making you wonder if leaving is a terrible idea…that sucks.
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Psychotherapist Esther Perel has spent years writing about why love and desire don’t always behave the way we want them to. In Mating in Captivity, she writes, “Love is about having; desire is about wanting.” Her point is that closeness can make a relationship feel safe, while desire sometimes benefits from a little distance.
Troubled relationships usually have lots of that, and attachment research offers another explanation. People with higher attachment anxiety, meaning they feel less secure in their relationships, are more likely to use sex for reassurance and connection.
Sex can also leave behind what researchers call a “sexual afterglow,” with that blissful feeling staying elevated for about 48 hours afterward. If you’re already worried that someone is pulling away, those two days of feeling close again can be a mind-f**k.
Is the Relationship Actually Good, or Is the Sex Doing All the Work?
Researchers have also looked at different types of sexual passion. Harmonious passion fits comfortably into the rest of your life. Obsessive passion is the kind where the person keeps taking over your thoughts, when you really wish they wouldn’t.
Another study found that higher obsessive sexual passion was associated with greater sexual satisfaction in some couples. Anyone who’s spent an entire day thinking about someone they also know is terrible for them probably understands how those two things can coexist.
Great sex can also make the rest of the relationship harder to judge. A study in the Journal of Sex Research found that sexual satisfaction predicted later relationship satisfaction, while relationship satisfaction didn’t predict later sexual satisfaction. Feeling good about the sex could spill over into how people felt about the relationship afterward.
There’s also research suggesting that really good sex can make people second-guess if a bad relationship is actually worth leaving. That’s how you can end up lying next to someone after incredible sex and wondering why you were so sure you needed to break up with them earlier that day.
Sometimes the sex really is that good. It still doesn’t answer whether you should be together.
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