Should I Kiss My Ex-boyfriend?

If your relationship ended and there’s no certainty that you’re getting back together, kissing your ex-boyfriend is not a very good idea. Not only would kissing confuse the person who was dumped, but it’d also give him or her a lot of hope that things would return to normal.

This romantic gesture would show that you still have feelings for your ex and that you want to get back together and be in a romantic relationship with your ex. And that may, unfortunately, not be true.

If you broke up with your ex, you likely don’t want to start a relationship with your ex. You want to disconnect from your ex, focus on yourself for a while, and then find someone else to date. And if your ex broke up with you, going for the kiss would be daring. It’d make your ex see that you have romantic expectations and that you haven’t accepted the breakup yet.

This would then smother your ex or if you’re “lucky,” get you into a friends with benefits kind of situation that would delay your healing for months. Maybe years if your ex keeps pulling you close and pushing you away afterwards. Many dumpees find themselves caught in friend zones as they believe it’s better to be friends with an ex than to cut their ex off and start no contact.

Such people soon realize that their ex doesn’t want them back and merely wants what’s best for him/her. They see that their ex is enjoying the breakup and the friendship won’t change that.

So unless you’ve broken up with your ex and want your ex back, don’t kiss your ex-boyfriend. Be respectful to your ex’s feelings instead and give your ex some space so he can process the breakup rather than look for hope in it. You may feel like he’s a good guy and that he deserves better, but that doesn’t mean you should raise his romantic expectations.

The guy may really want hope, but once you kiss him, you’ll stop his letting go process and make the purpose of his life to get back with you. That’s why it’s better that you’re honest with him from start to finish and prevent him from getting his hopes up.

As a dumpee, however, you must avoid doing anything that makes you feel more attached to your ex. This includes kissing your ex, sleeping with him, talking to him as a friend, analyzing his social media behavior, and stalking him in person.

All these things make you obsessed with your ex and stop you from accepting the breakup and letting go.

Today’s post is for those who wonder if they should kiss their ex-boyfriend. We’ll discuss what kissing does to an ex and why they should avoid doing it at all costs.

Should I kiss my ex-boyfriend?

Making out with your ex-boyfriend is harmful not because it releases the feel-good chemicals in your brain, but because it makes you addicted to those chemicals. Just like sex, it connects you with your ex on a deep level and makes you crave more recognition, more closeness, and more admiration.

It essentially makes you into a love (hormone) junkie and stops all the progress you’ve made since the breakup. Once you’ve kissed your ex-boyfriend, all you want is to keep kissing him, spending time with him, planning the future with him, and talking about things you talked about when you were together.

As you can see, all the things kissing makes you want are romantic. Couples have these cravings because they love each other and want to stay together. You and your ex, on the other hand, aren’t a couple. You’re an ex-couple who would do romantic things just because they feel good rather than because you have plans to get back together and stay together.

I don’t know if you got dumped or did the dumping yourself, but one thing you should keep in mind is that someone’s going to get hurt and strung along. That person will be the one with feelings as he or she is going to stay addicted to love hormones and will most likely eventually overwhelm the dumper with expectations.

That’s when the dumper will get some space from the dumpee and make the dumpee feel that he or she was deceived.

You see, kissing an ex-boyfriend has more cons than pros. The pros are that you feel happy and validated for a brief moment and think your ex respects you and finds you attractive. The bad side to kissing your ex-boyfriend though is that you feel hopeful or give hope, complicate and delay the dumpee’s healing, make the dumpee think about the dumper rather than himself/herself, and cause the dumpee to dream about the dumper and visualize getting back together.

If you’re still hanging out with your ex, know that this isn’t a good idea. You’re constantly putting yourself in a situation that would make detachment more difficult. Instead of allowing space and time to change the dynamics of the relationship, you’re meeting up as if you haven’t emotionally disconnected.

I’m not saying it’s wrong to be friends with your ex. But don’t be friends with your ex right away. Give it some time for both of you to process the breakup and naturally (when you’re ready) get back in touch to express what you want and don’t want. Most ex-couples need at least a few months before they can start talking and meeting up again.

Only those who had amicable breakups can communicate as if nothing happened sooner or right away. That’s because they had enough time to detach from each other and treated each other with respect.

So if you find your ex attractive, don’t kiss your ex until you know your ex wants to kiss you and have a relationship with you. If you go ahead and kiss your ex just because it feels right, you’re going to cause a lot of issues for yourself or your ex (depending on who the dumper is and what kind of expectations the kissing creates).

You need to be respectful and treat your relationship with your ex as a breakup (not as a friendship or something in between). Don’t act like you’re still together if you’re not and don’t plan to get back together. The only person who should initiate the kissing is the person who did the dumping.

And that’s only if he or she regrets it and wants to put the work in.

The following picture explains why you shouldn’t kiss your ex-boyfriend.

What if you’ve already kissed your ex-boyfriend?

If you’ve already kissed your ex and there was no discussion of getting back together, you need to make sure the kissing was a one-time thing. You can do that either by telling your ex you’re going to distance yourself from him or by agreeing on the kind of friendship you both want.

Either way, you need to have a conversation about this so your ex doesn’t feel that you’re heading in the right direction together when in reality, you’re just bored, lonely, and unsure about what to do.

Unfortunately, dumpers sometimes keep talking to their exes, meet up with them, kiss them, and even sleep with them. But they don’t do that because they still have feelings for their exes. They do it because they still find their exes attractive, feel bad for them, and want to appease their guilt and make themselves feel good.

Their emotions are raw, so they appear to be into their exes but actually don’t want to be in a relationship with them. It can be difficult for dumpees to understand dumpers’ behavior and respect themselves (stop interacting with dumpers). But that’s because they’re hopeful about getting back together and think they may be able to coax their exes into committing to them again.

More often than not though, they fail. They can’t persuade dumpers to return as dumpers have made up their minds and find persistence and desperation unattractive. They get turned off by any kind of behavior that forces them to invest emotions and time they aren’t ready to invest.

So if you’ve kissed your ex-boyfriend (once or many times) and you’re still ex-partners, keep in mind that your relationship with your ex will most likely stay the way it is. Nothing will change because if your ex found you worthy of love, he would have already gotten back together with you and apologized for leaving you.

Dumpers rarely slowly (by observing the dumpee) get back with the dumpee. Usually, they focus on themselves until they realize they’ve made the biggest mistake of their life. That’s when they come running at lightning speed and want to spend every waking moment with the dumpee.

Not being with their ex makes them uncertain and gives them anxiety, so they come back right away. You need to keep that in mind so you don’t think that you’re slowly going through the dating stages with an ex you’ve kissed. You and your ex already know each other, so you would skip the get to know each other phase if your ex wanted you back. You would go back to where you were before the breakup.

You may think you need to redeem yourself and rebuild trust, but dumpers who want you back don’t need to learn to trust you again. The ones who want you back are 100% certain they want you back. They’re in a hurry to obtain your validation and love and secure a spot in your heart. They don’t need you to prove anything to them.

If anything, they have to prove their loyalty to you.

When is it ok to kiss your ex?

Kissing an ex is almost always a bad thing. The only times it’s okay to do it on the lips is when you’re getting back together or when you agree to be friends with benefits. These are the only two situations I can think of where kissing your ex actually makes sense.

Any other situation is probably not okay as it creates more problems than it solves. There’s just no need to kiss your ex when you don’t have feelings and can’t or don’t intend to become romantic partners. So if you’re contemplating kissing your ex-boyfriend for no apparent reason, don’t kiss your ex.

Don’t add more confusion to an already confusing relationship you currently have with your ex and just stay away from your ex. If you’re over your ex and don’t want to stay away physically, then at the very least, don’t get close to him emotionally.

Be considerate of the situation you’re in and let the relationship between you and him stay the way it is. That’s the most sensible thing to do.

Are you wondering if you should kiss your ex-boyfriend? Have you considered the pros and cons of getting emotionally involved with your ex? Share your thoughts and feelings in the comments below.

And if you want to discuss whether you should kiss your ex-boyfriend with us, visit our coaching page to get in touch.