Questionable Advice by Jessica Leigh

My boyfriend and I broke up a week after Valentine's Day. We were together for almost six years.

I know I'm supposed to wait before getting involved with someone else, but does that include sex? Before getting together with my boyfriend, I left a casual relationship on friendly terms. He called me a while back to "get together," but I was unavailable. We've kept in touch off and on, and I know we're both unattached now.

What do you think about sex with an ex? And is it too soon? — Seconds, Please

Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of exes: the kind you're best never mingling privates with again, and the kind who are nothing short of manna from heaven. Those who fall into this latter group, SP, are to be cherished — and not like that Model T that sits pristine in the garage, but like that Harley you kickstart whenever you feel the primal call of the open road.

Good news: You have a Harley.

As for too soon, there are a lot of opinions out there on when is too soon to do what — my favorite being this arbitrary notion that it requires half the amount of time you were with someone to get over them.

IMHO, there is no such thing as an overarching "too soon" in sex or in love. Only you know whether it is too soon for you. Self-reflection certainly has its place in all this, but sex and self-reflection aren't mutually exclusive. And if you're revving your engine four months out, it's unlikely you need to devote three years of the present to hashing out the past.

The fact that your Harley is a known quantity is a plus.

You have a history of uncomplicated sex, you managed to maintain a friendship of sorts, and it must've been tasty, or you wouldn't be contemplating seconds.

If what you're craving is the kind of satisfaction a party of one just can't provide, and if this ex is healthy and available, then don't look a gift Harley in the mouth. Be grateful it's there, and take it for a ride.

 

Totally Unsolicited

Fateful tweeter and former New York Rep. Anthony Weiner wants to rewrite the narrative. Read: He wants Bloomberg's gig.

Rewriting the narrative is big now — see David Petraeus, Eliot Spitzer, John Edwards, Bill Clinton. But the thing about rewriting the narrative is that you first must have a narrative to speak of.

Take Clinton. If there were an all-star team for narrative rewriters, he would coach it, manage it and play all the positions.

The difference: When someone says to BC, "Hey, you're the dude who did that chick in the Oval," he can say, "Yeah, and I'm also the dude who dismantled the Reagan Revolution, made the Democratic Party synonymous with surplus, averted a Mexican peso crisis and scored in the Balkans." Ahem.

Weiner's story is more lacking: He worked as a congressional aide to New York Rep. Chuck Schumer, filled that seat when Schumer was elected to the Senate, sponsored a bill to increase the U.S. import of foreign fashion models and started tweeting unattractive pictures of his unadorned parts to random Twitter followers.

So my unsolicited advice to Weiner is to pay attention to story structure: First get a narrative, then eff it up, then rewrite it.

Follow Jessica on Twitter @sicaleigh, and ask her just about anything at askquestionable@gmail.com. To find out more about Jessica Leigh and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers, visit creators.com.

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