Maybe One Day We Can Not Be Friends
“I still miss my ex, but my aim is improving.”
Anonymous
Can you be friends with an ex? Really? Genuine friends? I don’t think so, not usually. Not if one of you got hurt. You may be amicable, you may chat online or feel fine when you run into each other. But I don’t think you can ever be soulmates. Especially if you once were. And why would you want to be? Are friends so hard to come by that we need to be in touch with the exes we failed with?
Recently, I encouraged a young woman to get revenge on her ex by hooking up with someone new, knowing that it would make him crazy. She (less than half my age, but obviously far more emotionally mature), said, “But I don’t want to hurt him. What I want is to be indifferent to him.” Amen to that. Indifference. That’s what you should be going for.
Below are some excerpts from an insightful take on the subject. What do you think? Have you been successful at this? Was it worth it? Or have you learned the hard way that it doesn’t work? Click the post-it above right to comment.
Maybe One Day We Can Not Be Friends
By: Kathryn Williams
There is a debate raging across America’s heartland. I’m talking about the perennial and heated question of whether or not one can or should be friends with her ex.
The funny thing is I always thought I fell squarely on one side of the debate. I always thought I was the girl who stayed buddy-buddy with her exes. I was all (cocky voice), “Yeah, I’m friends with like, all my old boyfriends.” How kind of me, huh? Especially as I’m always the dumpee rather than the dumper.
Liar. I was lying to myself and to the people I said it to. Only recently have I adjusted my thinking and accepted that, in most cases, I’m actually not friends with my exes-maybe friendly with them, but not friends-and that’s okay. This has kind of rocked my world.
Truthfully, there are only two guys I’ve dated who I am sincerely good friends with now, and that’s only after time and distance. We are past the weirdness, but only because we both realized early on that we were not meant to be together. There was not excessive hand-wringing and sobbing uncontrollably on the bathroom floor when these courtships ended. There were a few tears because I am an overly emotional person, but there was no separation anxiety, no rehashing of past wrongs, no coming back together only to be painfully torn apart again. I do love these ex/friends, and I do not use that word lightly, but I love them in a platonic way that does not involve me wanting to take off my clothes.
But the other boyfriends, the ones I fell head over heels for, the ones I imagined a future with, the ones who were my best friends during our relationship, the ones with whom I fathomed jumping off the proverbial cliff by uttering those words -”I love you”- that make a woman so vulnerable. Those men I don’t speak with. I’m happy leaving my exes in my past. To have tried to maintain a friendship with them would only have been a subtle (or maybe not so subtle) way to cling to what we had had, which was not, in fact, a friendship, but a relationship. I’ve realized that these men came into my life to be my lessons, not my friends.
[A] guy I wrote so glowingly and hopefully about recently dumped me. And when he did it, sitting in my bedroom, trying and failing to explain to me why he just wasn’t happy in our relationship, he started to utter those words, “Maybe one day we can-” and that’s where I had to stop him cold in his tracks. “Please don’t,” I said, those words piercing my heart more than any others he had uttered that day. I did not want to hear that cliché. It was not something I was then willing (or still am willing) to even ponder. When he hurt my heart, he lost my friendship. I say this because I’ve switched sides in the debate. I do believe now that sometimes the stronger thing to do, the kinder thing to do, is to let your friends be your friends and your exes be your exes. That’s at least one lesson learned.
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I have personally had the experience of breaking up with a serious girlfriend (mutual), moving away for a couple of years, and reconnecting as serious friends upon return. I think that it takes a few things for it to be successful. First, the breakup had to be on good terms. Secondly, both people need to be confident and secure in themselves. Lastly, both people need to realize that in order to remain friends, the past needs to stay in the past. The previous relationship can be referred to, but not rekindled.