I’ve had the best sex ever after my divorce

My husband and I recently got divorced, following six years in which we didn’t have sex. I then met a boyfriend from my youth and we had the best sex ever. 

How can I tell if there is really something amazing between us, or do I feel this way simply because I have been sex-starved for so long?

After six years of celibacy, sex with a robot would probably be amazing, so I wouldn’t overanalyse this new relationship or burden it with unrealistic expectations.

Don’t underestimate the effect of your divorce on your psychological state either. It takes roughly two years to get over the trauma of marital breakdown and although a rebound relationship can be a welcome distraction, it can complicate recovery.

The end of being “married” signifies more than the end of being “a couple”. Marriage integrates you into a social and familial network. After a divorce, it takes time to relinquish the “couple” identity and find your own.

Who is the doctor’s wife when she is no longer married to the doctor? Any newly single woman who fills the void in her life with a new relationship curtails the search for her single self. What if a new relationship also fails? She ends up back at square one.

Rebound relationships are hazardous but for some people they are a risk worth taking because they ease the pain and make it easier to move on.

A 2014 study by the University of New York and the University of Illinois found that people who went straight into a new relationship after a break-up were more confident about their desirability, less anxious and also better able to forget their ex-partner. Personality seems to play a part in how successful a person is at rebounding.

Don’t take this personally, but studies by East Carolina and Indiana universities profiled people who engaged in rebound relationships and concluded that they were “impatient for a new love, deceptive, unfaithful, hedonistic and unlikely to practise safe sex”.

One thing that bodes well for your new relationship is the fact you and your new partner knew each other when you were very young. California State University (CSU) has conducted a 10-year study of 1,000 couples who met in their late teens and early 20s.

The couples then lost touch, only to find each other again. Most couples in the study had, like you, come out of marriages before meeting their old flame, and the rekindled relationships were surprisingly successful.

Three quarters of the initial sample remained together after a decade and of those couples who married, the divorce rate after four years was less than 1.5%. CSU psychologist Nancy Kalish suggests that because the original connection was “forged in the hormonal fire of the teenage brain”, the rekindled romance tapped straight into the original chemical bond. Needless to say, success is usually dependent on how, or why, that flame was originally snuffed out.

Most couples in Kalish’s study attributed the end of the earlier relationship to circumstances such as parental disapproval or moving home.

In a separate study looking at people who chose not to restart an old romance, the end of the earlier relationship was due to relational conflict, infidelity, physical, sexual or substance abuse.

Which brings us back to the beginning. Most of our relationships follow a pattern that feels familiar, even if it isn’t necessarily constructive.

That’s why, after a divorce, it is so important to try to pinpoint the role you played in the breakdown. It takes two to unravel a marriage and if you are going to have healthy, new relationships, you need to identify unhelpful habits and behaviours and avoid repeating them.

Maybe, for example, you found it hard to talk to your ex-husband about your feelings, or maybe your sexual needs weren’t met because you couldn’t admit penetrative sex didn’t lead to an orgasm. The more emotional baggage you unpack now, the less you will have in a new relationship.

* Send your queries to: [e-mail]