I Don't Understand Make Up Sex

Am I the weird one?

We were all sitting at the cafeteria table, listening to one of our friends go over the latest fight she had with her boyfriend.

“Ugh, he’s such a dick!” one of us said. The rest nodded in agreement.

“But,” she continued, her angry look softening into a sly grin, “at least you’ll get to have some amazing make up sex!”

Everyone giggled and agreed loudly.

Everyone except me. Instead of a giggle, I could only give a nervous laughter. “Totally,” I mumbled and then took a long sip from my strawberry-kiwi juice. I avoided making eye contact with any of them.

I had never had make up sex. I didn’t even have fights - just breakups. I was often in situationships that were so meaningless they weren’t worth fighting over.

All my friends were starry eyed over make up sex but I couldn’t even understand the appeal. Even in theory, it didn’t make sense to me.

Why would you want to fuck someone you just had a fight with?

How could you even get horny after being so upset?

Some of my friends spent more time fighting their boyfriends than loving them. It didn’t seem to bother them, though, because they would come out of it with stories about the a-ma-zing sex they had afterwards.

It’s like they could transform anger into passion, and turn uncomfortable tension into intense horniness.

The make up sex comments kept coming and I just stayed confused.

Sixteen years later, I still haven’t had make up sex and the appeal is still lost on me.

I Need Intimacy, Not Sex

I fight with Mr. Austin very rarely. But we’ve been married 11 years and we were chronically sleep deprived for most of that time. There are bound to be a few heated disagreements along the way.

Whenever they happen, they play out about the same way. We both make bitchy comments. We get louder as we’re trying to talk over each other. Eventually, we both feel huffy and needing distance. We go our separate ways to process whatever the hell we were fighting over.

It never turns to sex. All it turns to is us cooling off in separate rooms so we can come back and discuss our problems with level heads.

After that, we sit in bed together and discuss everything, figure out some kind of middle ground, and laugh or cry (or both).

But still no sex.

I consider sex to be a very vulnerable act. And to be that vulnerable with someone (even my husband) I need to feel like we’re good. I need trust, safety, and security I can actually feel.

It takes a lot of reconnecting to get there. It takes cuddles, stupid jokes over dinner, and a hundred reminders that we love each other.

After all that, I’m ready for sex again. But we usually wait until the next day. All that stress doesn’t put me in a horny mood and it’s usually pretty late by the time we’re done reconnecting.

Even when we fuck on the same day, it’s not make up sex. It’s not anger sliding into heat. It’s not reconciling through sex. It’s just getting back to where we were before the fight.

There’s nothing special about it.

Like, it’s great sex. Don’t get me wrong. But it’s the same kind of great sex I always have with my husband.

There’s no extra rush of excitement. There’s no powerful sense of relief. I’m not left panting into the mattress thinking “Wow… What were we fighting about again?”

It’s just sex.

My Toxic Experience with Make Up Sex

The closest I’ve come to make up sex isn’t with Mr. Austin, though. It was with James - the last serious boyfriend I had before I met him.

James and I didn’t fight, exactly. It was more subtle than that. There was just a lot of tension, and it was like a wedge between us.

It always had to do with sex. Unless I gave him everything he wanted - swallowing and anal, mostly - he acted like he had lost interest in me.

There was only one way to get us back to a good place. If I gave him what he wanted, he’d warm up and act sweet. The tension melted away.

When I gave in, I felt relieved because he was showing me love again. His attention reassured me. I didn’t give a fuck about the sex. It wasn’t mindblowing. It wasn’t intense. It wasn’t much of anything, really. It was just how I got him to reconnect with me after he withheld intimacy.

For some people, sex is a big signal that everything’s okay. After you’ve had a falling apart, fucking makes you feel like you’re bonded again.

I never experienced that.

It was the attention, not the sex, that made me feel bonded to James.

With other guys, there wasn’t even that. Most of them were one night stands who treated my body like a sex toy.

It’s different with my husband. I do feel closer to him when we fuck. But those other experiences taught me that sex and connection don’t always go together.

So, using sex to reconnect doesn’t make sense to me on a gut level. .

What Does Sex Mean to You?

It seems to come down to the kind of person you are.

If you use sex as a way to connect (and reconnect), then make up sex probably makes a lot of sense to you.

But if you need that connection first - if you can’t fully get aroused or interested unless you’re feeling it - then it probably doesn’t compute.

That’s the way it is for me. I need that connection before having sex, not the other way around.

It’s too bad, because I can’t help but wonder if I’m missing out. The way people talk about make up sex makes it sound so intense and explosive.

But there are advantages to hating make up sex.

My friends used to joke that they’d start fights with their boyfriends because they craved the make up sex that came after.

They were kidding, obviously, but I think there was a little grain of truth buried in there.

Some of them used sex as a band-aid. They just wanted the fighting to stop. They wanted to be on good terms again. Having sex was an easy way to get that.

They’d fuck right in the middle of a fight and then everything would be okay. But the problems that caused the fight didn’t get addressed. Fucking didn’t fix the problem - it just put it on the back burner.

Within a week, the fighting would start again.

That would lead to more fucking, because it’s better than being mad. And the cycle continued.

I know that’s not all make up sex. Sometimes, it’s as simple as feeling hot, bothered, and horny after a fight. If it’s not a shortcut out of a difficult conversation, that’s great.

But I need other kinds of intimacy first.

If you like make up sex and it brings you closer together, more power to you. But if you ever have a fight with me, you can expect to cuddle my ass before you get to pound it.

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