No sex, we're so over

One of the songs that has had a lot of airplay on my iPod recently is Friends, Lovers or Nothing by John Mayer. In his ditty, Mayer throws down the gauntlet to his ex by insisting that they are either friends, lovers or nothing.

My favourite line is: "There will never be an in-between, so give it up." But is it really that simple?

In an ideal world, break-ups should be clean and decisive. There should be no back and forth. There should be no making up and breaking up. There should be no contact to seek clarity or closure. Ideally, once the decision has been made, both parties should walk away and separately mourn the end of the relationship.

But that is not what happens. Anyone who has had a gut-wrenching break-up knows that things get really messy - no matter how noble the intentions - before they get better, if they ever get better. And sometimes, after a break-up, you can find yourself in that murky no-man's land where the relationship status isn't clear.

Things are further complicated if the two of you decide to be friends immediately afterwards. While it always seems like a good idea in theory, friends with the ex is a lot more complicated in reality. Because what do you do with all the feelings and memories?

In my experience, the expectation is that the friendship you had while you were a couple will now wind its way down to a clear-cut platonic friendship. You expect that the two of you will somehow be able to sit across a table from one another and share niceties and somehow forget that you regularly jumped each other's bones and shared intimacies you would never share with friends.

Worse still, you expect your mutual friends, and in some cases family, to suddenly switch gears and accept your new-found friendship status and not refer to the past.

But perhaps the murkiest area after a break-up is the post-break-up sex, which is what Mayer may be referring to in his lyrics. It has happened to the best of us - when, after the initial break-up, in the heat of emotion and lapse of judgment you fall back into bed with your ex. But what happens when it is more than once?

I recently stumbled on a term and situation called "ex-sex". The gist of it is that you and your ex break up, but continue to have regular sex for an indefinite period afterwards.

A friend who advocates ex-sex says she does it because sex with her ex is comforting - because of their history, they can dispense with introductions. The rules of engagement of ex-sex, according to my trusted source, are that it is just sex until you move on. Her theory, like all theories, sounds nice but lacks practicality.

I was afraid to tell her what I really thought in case I came off as a bitch, so I will just share it here.

I understand that there are times when it is better to stick to the devil you know than meet the one you don't, but in that case, what is the point of breaking up? Maybe I am a stickler for clarity. I like knowing where I stand.

Ex-sex has too many grey areas, too much room for unnecessary torture. What it sounds like is one person holding on at another's expense. Granted, break-ups are not always simple, but what I do like to simplify, for sanity's sake, is whether we are going to be friends, lovers or nothing.