Popular culture has recently publicized a seemingly new postbreakup behavior called breakup sex. While the media expresses the benefits of participating in breakup sex, there is no research to support these claimed benefits. The current research was designed to begin to better understand this postbreakup behavior. In the first study, we examined how past breakup sex experiences made the individuals feel and how people predict they would feel in the future (n = 212). Results suggested that men are more likely than women to have felt better about themselves, while women tend to state they felt better about the relationship after breakup sex. The second study (n = 585) investigated why men and women engage in breakup sex. Results revealed that most breakup sex appears to be motivated by three factors: relationship maintenance, hedonism, and ambivalence. Men tended to support hedonistic and ambivalent reasons for having breakup sex more often than women. The two studies revealed that breakup sex may be differentially motivated (and may have different psychological consequences) for men and women and may not be as beneficial as the media suggests.

流行文化最近宣传了一种看似新的分手后行为，称为分手性行为。虽然媒体表达了参与分手性行为的好处，但没有研究支持这些声称的好处。目前的研究旨在更好地理解这种分手后的行为。在第一项研究中，我们研究了过去的分手性经历给个人带来的感受以及人们预测他们未来的感受（n = 212）。结果表明，男性比女性更有可能对自己感觉更好，而女性则倾向于表示在分手后对恋爱关系感觉更好。第二项研究（n = 585）调查了男性和女性进行分手性行为的原因。结果显示，大多数分手性行为似乎是由三个因素驱动的：关系维持、享乐主义和矛盾心理。与女性相比，男性更倾向于支持享乐主义和矛盾的分手原因。这两项研究表明，分手性行为对于男性和女性来说可能有不同的动机（并且可能产生不同的心理后果），并且可能不像媒体所说的那样有益。