Can exes be friends?
If you’re anything like me, I have a tendency to replay a lot of things in my mind. I tend to conjure so many scenarios of what could have happened, or what could have been, and get stuck there for a significant amount of time. As much as I hate to admit it, I have done it multiple times for the relationships I have had to let go of in the past.
In light of this, join me for a bit in walking through this hypothetical situation, of a recent dissolution of a romantic relationship.
You take a look at the mirror and finally realize that you’re single. It’s that sobering thought that you’re no longer a part of a duo, and there now seems to be a void that you want to avoid. It’s displaced and filled by new hobbies, new people, and new routines. Some make sense, some fit, while some others don’t, and you try so hard to make sure that relationship is but a distant memory, never to be unearthed, at least in the foreseeable future. But the milestone dates come — his birthday, your anniversary, the first time you kissed, Christmas. You stare blankly on your phone screen, waiting for that notification that a message has been received from them. You click and unclick it, obsessively checking, until you resign to the fact that it’s long done — it’s really, 100% over.
But is it really over? What about settling in that maybe/maybe not in-between and get back together as friends?
Let’s take a look at what two of our favorite Netflix series say about this situation.
We start with Ross and Rachel from FRIENDS. The on and off and on again bickering always leaves us questioning if they were really truly on a break. Let’s rehash the situation. Ross has had feelings for Rachel, primarily because he’s known her since she was in high school. When Rachel was formally adopted into the gang, we waited for time to actually tell when they would eventually fall in love and be together.
However, after they had broken up (which, until now apparently, is still a longstanding debate), Ross and Rachel always fell back into that same old dance that hindered them from truly exploring if they really fell in love with each other, or if they fell in love with the comfort of falling in love with their best friend.
Then we move to Ted and Robin from How I Met Your Mother. Robin was one of the first girls Ted dated at the beginning of the series, and naturally, Robin had been adopted into the group. It wasn’t hard to picture it happening anyway, as Robin was such an endearing character, a bit relatable, with the baggage that she had carried throughout the series. But as the story progressed, it became more and more apparent that they both had held on to their feelings for each other for so long, that nobody else stood a chance. Ted and Robin had to deliberately make the choice to move on, and they were successful for the most part, that they were able to fall in love with who would-be the loves of their lives. However, as fate or luck or the universe would have it, they still ended up back together.
Both couples held everyone else against that standard and everyone just fell short. They tried again and again to outplay and outlast each other, even to the point of letting go of current partners who made them choose between them or their exes. The choice always seemed obvious, but can we really say that it was fueled by feelings that were merely platonic?
While it is appealing for a healing heart to hope for a reconciliation, exes being friends isn’t the rule. It’s more the exception to it:
- Being friends with your ex entails boundaries, the hard and fast rules of engagement, and both parties need to respect that. Much more so if there are new SOs involved.
- Being friends with your ex entails fully surrendering to the fact that things may not go back to the way things were before you even became a duo. It means understanding that there were issues that were not resolved by being in a relationship with each other, and it might not change just because you’re friends again.
- Being friends with your ex means trying to compartmentalize each other’s vulnerabilities that were shared in the safe space of a romantic relationship versus those that were shared when you were simply friends.
- Being friends with your ex most definitely does not mean you’re getting back together. It’s having the mature understanding of why certain relationships fail while others thrive, and choosing the narrow road to health, healing, and balance.
Can exes be friends? Of course. There is that possibility it may happen, the same way that Haley’s Comet comes around, the blue supermoon appears, and you win the lottery jackpot, all at the same time. ;)
