Is it ever a good idea to have break-up sex?

Get ready for a whole lot of information you probably do not need about me (but that somehow does not include details about my own sex life but I hope will invite you to share as many details about your own as you like):

I've just broken up with my boyfriend. It hasn't been pretty, friends. I've been sad and conflicted -- and yes, that has meant some of the ugly kind of crying. Even though I did the breaking up, it has been very hard to move on.

I'm trying to take good care. I call my girlfriends for advice and to fill my time with long phone conversations and dinner plans and reminders of why it is healthier for me to not be in this relationship right now.

But there have still been some moments of weakness, like when I listened to one of my new favorite musicians, the ethereal Bat for Lashes, for a full-hour immersion into depressing, heart-wrenching agony. Normally, this kind of music wouldn't be equal to self-inflicted torture for me, but it just happens to be the last music that boyfriend introduced me to while we were dating. He said I'd love Bat for Lashes. He said it would speak to me. He was right.

As I played the song "Daniel" over and over, I realized there was a line in it that I couldn't understand. And because I was weak and teary and sappy and slightly obsessed in that moment, I searched for the lyrics and found something that turned the whole song around for me. It goes like this:

In a goodbye bed
With my arms around your neck
Into our love the tears crept


Ahhh, the old goodbye bed. I imagine that we've all been familiar with a goodbye bed during some break-up or another. And I imagine there have been both great and horrible experiences in the goodbye bed.

I hit the repeat button and played the song once again, listening carefully to any inflection in her voice as she sang that line. Does Bat for Lashes know something about that farewell ummm...you know...that I don't? She did write a song about it. Maybe there's something more to it than a last chance to get laid before you move on.

Hearing that line, and subsequently that song, didn't make me dash to dial up the boyfriend. But it did make me wonder if it is ever a good idea for people who are leaving a relationship to climb into that goodbye bed before they say their final farewells.

Does break-up sex make a break-up any easier? Can it help heal some of that pain, even temporarily? Or does it just make everything more emotionally muddled?

I've quieted some of my own sadness by playing songs that are a lot louder and harder. While I hit repeat on music that is all my own, won't you share your opinion of the goodbye bed?

What do you think? Is it ever a good idea to have break-up sex?