I Didn’t Expect My Sex Drive to Go Crazy After My Breakup

I expected bad sleep.

I expected to miss him at inconvenient moments.

What I did not expect was to become ridiculously horny.

That part confused me more than almost anything else.

I could spend half the day feeling emotionally drained and then suddenly want sex at night.

I could be angry with him and still fantasise about him.

I could know perfectly well that the relationship needed to end and still miss the way his body felt against mine.

For a while I thought this meant something was wrong with me.

Or worse, that maybe my body knew something my brain did not.

Maybe I secretly wanted him back.

Eventually I realised the simpler truth.

My relationship had ended.

My sex drive had not.

At First I Thought Being Horny Meant I Still Wanted Him

This was the mistake I kept making.

Desire felt important.

And because it felt important, I assumed it had to mean something about the relationship.

If I wanted him physically, maybe I wanted him emotionally.

If I fantasised about him, maybe I was not really moving on.

If I missed the sex, maybe breaking up had been a mistake.

But eventually I realised I was combining completely different things.

I could want his body without wanting his behaviour.

I could miss the sex without missing the arguments.

I could remember chemistry without forgetting incompatibility.

Wanting someone physically is not the same thing as wanting your whole life with them back.

Maybe My Libido Hadn’t Increased as Much as I Thought

This was something I had not considered.

When I was in the relationship, sexual desire had somewhere to go.

There was touching.

Kissing.

Sex.

Cuddling.

Even just lying next to someone.

Then suddenly all of that disappeared.

My sex drive did not disappear with it.

So every sexual feeling became much louder.

Before, I might have felt aroused and done something about it without thinking.

Afterwards, I felt aroused and had nowhere obvious to put that energy.

That made it feel enormous.

Stress Made Me Want Release

I also noticed that I got hornier when I was emotionally wound up.

After a bad day.

After thinking about the breakup too much.

After checking something I knew I should not have checked.

When I could not settle.

Sexual release gave my brain a break.

For a while, I stopped thinking.

I stopped analysing.

I stopped asking whether he missed me.

I was simply inside my body.

That was probably one of the reasons masturbation became more important after the breakup.

I wrote about that side of things in I Didn’t Expect Masturbation to Feel So Emotional After My Breakup, because self-pleasure sometimes felt like simple release and other times felt like another way of visiting him in my head.

Sometimes I Was Not Horny — I Was Lonely

This one took me longer to recognise.

I would think:

I need sex.

But when I really paid attention, sometimes what I wanted was much softer.

I wanted to be held.

I wanted someone beside me in bed.

I wanted an arm around my waist.

I wanted someone to kiss me and stay.

Sex had contained all of those things when we were together.

Afterwards, I had trouble separating them.

Physical affection, sexual desire, reassurance and loneliness all arrived as one feeling.

I want him.

But sometimes I did not really want him.

I wanted contact.

I Was Also Grieving the Sexual Relationship

I missed the familiarity of it.

I missed not having to explain anything.

I missed knowing exactly what he liked.

I missed him knowing what I liked.

I missed the private shorthand of sex with someone you have known for a long time.

That physical loss had its own grief attached to it.

I eventually realised that part of the horniness was not only desire.

It was grief for intimacy.

I wrote more about that in I Didn’t Know You Could Grieve Someone With Your Body, because losing sex, touch and physical familiarity felt like its own breakup inside the breakup.

I Wanted to Know I Was Still Desirable

This was probably the least flattering part, but it was true.

I wanted proof.

I wanted someone to flirt with me.

I wanted someone to look at me and make it obvious they were interested.

I wanted to know that I had not somehow become undesirable because one relationship had ended.

That desire for validation could easily disguise itself as libido.

I would think I wanted sex when part of me really wanted reassurance.

Please prove I am still attractive.

Please prove he was not the last person who will ever want me.

That was when I realised sexual desire and sexual confidence had become tangled together.

I wrote about that more directly in How I Rebuilt My Sexual Confidence After Heartbreak.

Dating Apps Were Dangerous for Me at First

Not dangerous in some dramatic sense.

Just emotionally dangerous.

I could open an app and immediately get the thing I was craving.

Attention.

Matches.

Flirting.

Possibility.

It made me feel powerful for a minute.

Then if somebody did not reply, I felt rejected all over again.

That was when I knew I was not really using dating apps because I wanted to date.

I was using them like a confidence machine.

I Was More Attracted to People Than I Had Been for Years

This surprised me too.

I started noticing people everywhere.

Someone in a café.

Someone walking past me.

Someone I would barely have registered while I was in the relationship.

At first I felt guilty.

Then I realised something.

Maybe part of my sexuality had been asleep.

The relationship had become heavy towards the end.

There was tension.

Distance.

Routine.

And without really noticing, I had stopped looking outward.

After the breakup, curiosity returned.

That felt like horniness.

Maybe some of it was simply freedom.

My Ex Became More Sexually Attractive Once He Was Unavailable

This irritated me enormously.

When we were actually together, there were periods when the sexual side of things felt ordinary.

Then suddenly he was unavailable and my brain started producing a greatest-hits compilation.

Every good sexual memory.

Every intense moment.

Every time I had felt completely wanted.

The bad nights apparently did not make the edit.

Neither did the arguments.

Neither did the reasons we broke up.

Scarcity made him seem more sexually compelling.

But unavailable does not mean valuable.

And sexually desirable does not mean emotionally suitable.

I Nearly Texted Him Because I Was Horny

This happened more than once.

I would be lying in bed thinking about him.

The thought would get more sexual.

Then suddenly contacting him seemed completely reasonable.

Just one message.

Just seeing how he was.

Just maybe meeting up.

And I had to remind myself:

I was aroused.

I was not having a revelation.

Those are different states.

I learned not to make relationship decisions while my body was temporarily screaming for something familiar.

Masturbation Helped Me Separate the Urge From the Decision

Sometimes the simplest solution was also the most useful.

I was horny.

I masturbated.

Then I waited.

Very often, the desperate urge to contact him disappeared.

That taught me something important.

The feeling had been real.

But the conclusion I was drawing from it had not been reliable.

I did not necessarily need him.

I needed release.

That distinction saved me from several messages I would probably have regretted.

I Stopped Feeling Guilty About Wanting Sex

I had this strange idea that grief was supposed to make me sexually unavailable.

If I was still genuinely hurting, maybe I should not want sex yet.

If I found someone else attractive, perhaps I had not loved him enough.

If I masturbated, maybe I was avoiding my emotions.

None of that really held up.

I could grieve and still be sexual.

I could miss him and notice someone else.

I could want pleasure without having emotionally finished processing everything.

There is no rule saying heartbreak has to switch your libido off.

I Became More Careful About What I Was Asking Sex to Fix

This was probably the most useful change.

Before doing something impulsive, I started asking:

What do I actually want right now?

Sex?

Touch?

Attention?

Comfort?

Proof that I am still attractive?

Distraction?

My ex specifically?

Those answers were not always the same.

And once I could tell the difference, the desire stopped feeling so mysterious.

Sleeping With Someone New Was Not a Cure

I had imagined that being with somebody new might reset something.

Maybe one new sexual experience would prove that the old relationship was really over.

It did not work like that.

New sex could be exciting.

It could also be awkward.

It could make me feel confident.

Or unexpectedly vulnerable.

I realised sex was much easier when I stopped asking it to prove anything.

I did not need it to prove I was over him.

I did not need it to prove I was desirable.

I could just decide whether I actually wanted the experience.

Eventually Desire Stopped Pointing Backwards

This happened gradually.

At first, being horny meant thinking about him.

Then sometimes it meant thinking about other people.

Then sometimes it meant nobody specific at all.

My sexuality slowly stopped orbiting the relationship.

That was probably when I realised I was moving on physically as well as emotionally.

Desire belonged to me again.

It did not need his face attached to it.

The Bottom Line

I thought being incredibly horny after my breakup meant I was confused about ending the relationship.

Mostly, I was confused about desire.

Part of it was ordinary libido.

Part of it was stress.

Part of it was missing touch.

Part of it was sexual grief.

Part of it was wanting reassurance that I was still attractive.

And part of it was simply rediscovering a sexuality that had become tied too closely to one person.

I stopped asking whether being horny meant I should go back.

I started asking what I was actually wanting in that moment.

That was a much more useful question.

If you are having the same confusing reaction after a breakup, Left Unsaid has a deeper breakdown in Why Am I So Horny After a Breakup?.