I have only ever had one shortly after my first wife went odd with PTSD. Hooked up with a sister of a good friend. It worked for a while and then got a little weird. Can’t say I was on my game at the time either but it was a good fit in those days. Has a rebound relationship ever worked out for you or has it mostly been passing through?
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@be3169 I dont want to be “that person” but your remark about your ex and PTSD just gave me the ick. Not kind, may want to rephrase.
Poor mental health isn’t a bundle of laughs for the person involved.
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Fair point so I will expand rather than retract. I had a happy 10 year marriage with her and never knew anything about PTSD. When her daughter left for college it was a trigger of some sort and she became…um… unstable? I had no clue what was going on and didn’t know how to cope. I lost a long term marriage because of it. That was 20 years ago. I assume she is doing better now and I am happily remarried but I also went through the rebound relationships trying to find my way, hence this topic. I don’t belittle mental issues one bit. I just wish there was some type of support available that could have explained to me what was happening at the time.
I broke up with my kids dad a few years ago we’ve both been with other people, we are back together now sex is better than ever but I still need more
@be3169 you say “I” an awful lot.
I stand by my comment, not kind
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You’ve had so many opinions on my posts tonight I think you’re doing ok
be3169 can I reach out to you not sex related
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Ok. I will reread and reconsider. Not sure I agree with you but will give it a second think. May I ask if your family has also had mental health challenges making this a little more sensitive than I had intended?
I think I’m struggling with mental health I’m using sex as a relief my son has a brain tumour so between hospital appointments and chemo I like to be horny
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@be3169 no you haven’t hit a nerve. Im just used to this forum being a really inclusive and supportive place.
You may not have intended it but calling someone who I assume you once loved “odd” when you know they had a very serious condition just seems really cruel.
Id think my regret (in your shoe’s) would be not having more empathy and awareness to have supported her at that time. Lets hope wife two never gets in a bad way mentally!
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Other than that I’m fine
Edited by mod
This discussion has not gone in the direction I had intended.
Re direct then
Think you’ve hit a nerve
Hey @Izzy76, there is no facility to contact or message privately, and exchanging contact details is against the forum rules 
If I may offer some help? And some assistance in getting the discussion in the right direction:
Recently, a close of friend of mine seperated after their marriage had been struggling. There were many ups and downs, and the challenges of life, health, both physical and mental became an obstacle that couldn’t be overcome.
After break ups, is it worth trying a casual relationship, like a ‘rebound relationship’ to help move past the separation? Does this work?
Has this ever become more permanent than a casual fling?
How do people know if it is casual and flirty or more serious and filling a need that was just lost?
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Oof, there’s a lot going on on this thread, but I’m hoping my experiences can help redirect here - whilst still acknowledging mental health and health conditions at the same time. A word of coution, there’s going to be some trauma dumping, but, it’s hard to talk about the what without talking about the why.
The short version: I had a rebound relationship with my ex-friend’s ex and we’ve been happily married 11 years.
The long version: I had a friend, we’ll call her Claire (that’s what I call her on my blog anyway). Claire and I went to school together, we hung out and played video games together, we went to social groups together. I thought we were friends for life and could do no wrong to one another. One day, Claire asked me who my crush was at the social group we were at, so I told her and the next thing I knew, they were dating. Of course I felt betrayed.
Fast forward some years, Claire is dating an “amazing” boy who happens to work in my office, so she introduced us to one another at the Christmas party. After that, he and I chatted more - not in a flirtatious way but as “friends of friends”. One day, Claire calls me up and tells me that she’s thinking about dumping him; I’m shocked because she seemed so happy and I advised her against it - he’s a genuinely lovely guy! It turns out, he’d lost his job, and with that all of the gifts and fancy dinners had come to an end.
So I’m annoyed at her, and after she ditched me for being friendly to him (despite introducing me to him), I couldn’t care less about her anymore. I didn’t have loyalties anymore, she’d betrayed me and she’d hurt me. So, I told him to move on - I told him to find someone more worthy of him. I didn’t care who, I just felt he deserved better. I also felt like I’d “settled the score” for what she did to me.
Some months later I had a birthday party, that I’d already invited them both to. She hardly spoke to me, but my distant relatives got the wrong idea and they thought he liked me, so they tried to pair us up. That caused a lot of commotion and my cousin (who is military) threatened to beat him up. So, my Dad gave him a lift home from the venue to ours, and then from ours to the party. That was how he came to know that I had dogs - the three of them bowled him over!
I didn’t expect him to talk to me again after that, but he did and we became dog-walking friends. Again, it wasn’t about me, it was about the dogs.
Well, as often goes when a single boy and a single girl start hanging out together and enjoying one another’s company, sooner or later we did both want to start fooling around a little. We were both adamant that it wasn’t a relationship; we really are just friends with benefits. If one of us started dating, it all stopped.
Things at home were not good for me: my Nan (RIP) had Alzheimer’s and I was sharing a bedroom with her and caring for her. My mother and I were fighting most days and she was verbally abusive, because she wasn’t coping with the stress. She wouldn’t call my friend by his name because she was worried he would take me away from her, she would only call him “it” instead. That only exacerbated things. I felt unloved and undesired by her, and casual sex with my friend made me feel both of those things.
Eventually, we both started dating other people. He got a girlfriend first, and about a week later, I got a boyfriend. Neither relationship was particularly deep but we still had to cool things off out of respect. Trouble was, we couldn’t. We realised after that we were in love.
That was 18 years ago, our mutual friends told me at his birthday party that he liked me. Three months later, January 2008, he officially asked me to be his girlfriend. We got married 2013 and we’ve been happy ever since. Yes, we also have a dog, a 9-year-old Jack Russell called Hugo 
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My favourite part
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My wife was a rebound relationship.
I’d just split from someone I fell hard for. I’d moved back to the UK from California after the split to pull myself together for a few months with the intention of going back. I had a fantastic career and a great life out there and wanted to get back to it when I’d got over her.
Met this random hot girl on a night out and a few hours later shagged her. We found we were actually on a very similar wavelength even though I was only a month out of a long term relationship. We went on a date a few weeks later and took it slow.
I never went back to the USA.
22 years later we are still happily married with kids.
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