What do you think happens when we die?"
"We get to have sex again."
- Stephen Caffrey and Campbell Scott
Longtime Companion

My friend Tristan, who's happily attached, spent the last two weeks surreptitiously scouting out gay bars and cruising hotspots for a sight of his ex-boyfriend whom he hadn't seen in years since they broke up in university. Now, Tristan has a great partner and they share a mortgage together. What Tristan and his partner don't share are the delicious stolen moments at the hostel's common bathroom and the nights of erotic sweaty workouts at the deserted university stadium.

But before you hitch up your skirt and stand on your moral high-horse to derisively ask why any attached gay man (or lesbian) would slink around looking for an ex when his alpha-man is away on a business trip - hear him out. Tristan (and I'm sure there are many others like him) repeatedly confessed that it's because he had never really gotten over his ex.

Many of us, like Tristan, will forever find that our ex-boyfriends or girlfriends still occupy a special place in our hearts. The appeal of ex-lovers can be perhaps to attributed to the fact that they share a comfort zone with us that is irreplaceable. Besides being a perpetual source of insider jokes and predictable behavior, ex-lovers know all our auto-erotic zones and heck, they even accept the fact that if our mattresses could talk, they would be Joan Rivers. More importantly, if you find yourself back in the sack with them again, it's no big deal - after all, it's not like you're parking your privates in a new lot (plus you find yourself free from any performance anxiety).

There is also the assurance that arises from a sense of the concrete and the dependable in an old relationship, especially when gay life is filled with transient experience - forwarding addresses, changing fashion trends and chance encounters at public swimming pools. For who amongst us can deny our yearning for that moment when we can finally say with conviction that we have found someone in our lives to whom we could turn at all times, good or bad.

To most, the unshakable attraction to an ex-lover could be attributed to the idea of personal significance: we console ourselves with the knowledge that in that brief incandescent moment we touched the life of another person and connected on levels never thought possible. After all, our ex-lovers did share our obsession with aging divas and even tolerate us when we launch into cringe-worthy songs like "Stand By Your Man". Most (self) importantly, they did think we were good lovers (or so we hope) and they did shower us with gifts galore.

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Over time, we tend to be more forgiving of our ex-lovers and on occasions, even exercise a bit of creative editing and censorship over the story of our lives spent together. Thus it's no surprise that we tend to gloss over the unpleasant parts such as the tear-jerking moment they told us that they were interested in someone else or that dreaded line, "this isn't working".

Yet in most cases, lusting after your ex may be a defense mechanism to delay an honest appraisal of a current relationship that is not working out or an unconscious excuse for not having any relationships at all. The phenomenon could also be due to issues that remain unresolved even after the relationship ended. Or it could simply be that either one of you (or in some cases, both of you) never really wanted the relationship to end in the first place.

However, going back to an ex-lover is not merely a clear-cut case of recycling an old relationship. The drawback to dating your ex lies in the fact that the circumstances or personality deficiencies that wrecked the relationship in the first place still lurk beneath the surface. Few, if any, second-time-around relationships have a happy ending.

For instance, if the reason why you split up in the first place was due to his or her philandering ways, you will probably face the same issues again - even if this is in the form of simply not forgetting the last time. And if the break-up was due to unmatched interests, what are the chances that he has now become a fan of topless roller-blading especially when he was last seen heading for an orchestra recital?

Perhaps it would be best to ask yourself honestly what you find most desirable about your ex. Could it be due to the fact that someone else has found her sexy? Does his worth rise now that he is the prized catch of someone else? Could it be that you want an adoring puppy around you or you're offering friendship as the consolation prize for dumping her in the first place? Be honest.

For your information, Tristan never found his ex-partner. So his elusive ex remains, frozen in time, just the way Tristan wanted him to be. And Tristan will probably never find the ex he's been looking for, cause he'll very likely discover a guy who is older, paunchier, and less appealing. Then he would need to wake up from the rose-tinted version of an already closed chapter in his life, and extinguish the torch that he has been carrying for so long.