Why Befriending Your Ex Should be The New Normal
How to take steps towards a valuable friendship.
You think you’re going to spend the rest of your life with someone and then, all of a sudden, you break up.
Maybe it was your call or maybe it was theirs, but either way … one minute you’re hearing wedding bells and fantasizing about cake tastings and beautiful white gowns. The next minute you’re all alone, heartbroken and ugly-crying on your bathroom floor.
Usually, you spend the first painful part of a break-up hopelessly torn between heartbreak and hatred. You’re devastated and lonely, but you’re simultaneously seriously pissed off. Your life for the upcoming weeks is written for you, and it goes something like this; there’s a lot of crying, a lot of wine drinking, and a lot of empty ice-cream cartons in the trash can.
Then, one day, you pick yourself up out of your Ben-and-Jerrys-induced stupor and you take the plunge. You block your ex out of your life and you try to move on.
Someone who was an important part of your life completely ceases to exist to you anymore.
Now, there’s definitely situations where it’s probably a good thing if you cut out your old beau. They cheated on you? Adios! They were abusive? Sayonara! They ghosted you and left you feeling utterly worthless? So long, sucker!
But there’s plenty of scenarios these days where none of the latter are the cause of a failed relationship. Nothing bad or deceptive happens, there’s no “throw things at the wall and storm out” argument…
Time and time again, the cause of a separation is simply that some couples just don’t make it.
I called it quits after two years with a man I once thought was ‘the one’. Now, there were a number of factors that played in to my decision. We weren’t living in the same state (which is hard as hell, by the way,) we were having petty arguments way too often, and a bunch of other typical couple-y stuff that makes you go kind of coo-coo.
The tough thing was, there wasn’t any BIG event that tipped our love over the edge. There was no cheating, there was no big scandal. I had tried everything within my power to fix our relationship and make it work again and in the end what it boiled down to was I just wasn’t as happy as I knew I deserved to be.
Until one day I decided enough was enough. All the back and forth, the worrying about what to do, the long sleepless nights. I knew that if he was the man I was supposed to spend the rest of my life with, loving him shouldn’t feel scary or wrong.
I pulled the trigger. I ended the relationship.
I’m not going to lie… the weeks that followed were a nightmare. I didn’t know which way was up. I oscillated between moments of elation where I knew I had made the right decision, and moments of complete despair; lying in bed all day in a zombie-like state thinking I would never find love again.
But, after grappling with my ever-changing emotions, the realization that neither of us had really done anything wrong began to sink in.
Ok, so we didn’t work out as a romantic couple, but why couldn’t we just be friends?
I mean, we get along great! We have fun together, we do cool shit together, we laugh, joke, and poke friendly fun at each other. We had all the makings of a fantastic friendship, so why let the fact that we were no longer romantically involved stop us from being valuable parts of each other’s lives?
You see, there’s this stigma that your ex is your ex. That’s all they will (and all they should) ever be. We’re made to believe that it’s virtually impossible to stay friends, one of you always ends up getting hurt.
But why?
It’s not such a crazy idea to be friends with your ex, and it’s not impossible to make that friendship work.
Sure, at first, having a friendship with someone I dated for two years did seem almost impossible. Usually, the advice we hear is to just move on, to cut them out and start over. You’re better off without them.
But when I really thought about it, like really thought about it, I realized it didn’t matter what I was expected to do, what my friends or my mom said I should do… what the “right” way to breakup with someone was. I didn’t want to cut him out of my life. And despite everything, he didn’t want to cut me out of his life either.
Just because we were no longer together it didn’t mean we needed to be dead to one another.
Now, obviously, this is where the big caveat comes in; both parties have to want a friendship. You can’t just decide you want to be their friend if they want nothing to do with you (and if they don’t want to be in your life, good riddance to them, btw!)
If you’re both fortunate enough to reach a mature understanding about the ending of your relationship and there’s a mutual desire to remain connected, friendship is entirely possible, and potentially very fulfilling. But newsflash; it doesn’t come easy, and it doesn’t happen overnight.
There’s no magic “friendship” wand you can wave, there’s going to be some work involved. You have to heal, you have to allow some time, and you have to grow the hell up.
The latter sounds kind of harsh, but it’s true. It’s also vitally important in making an ‘ex-and-ex’ friendship work. There’s a certain level of maturity that goes in to befriending someone you were once in a relationship with.
You’re going to have to forgive them for stuff that happened between you when you were together. You’re going to have to take the high-road and recognize, actually and honestly recognize, that you just weren’t meant to be.
AND (and this is a BIG and) you’re going to have to prepare yourself for when they start dating again.
That right there is the deal-breaker for most people.
They don’t think they can be friends with their ex because they don’t want to watch them make it work with someone new.
This is where the part comes in about accepting that you guys just weren’t meant to be. Really accepting it. Until you can truly come to terms with the ending of your romantic relationship you’re not going to feel at peace when they start dating someone new.
Do some soul-searching, grapple with the reasons why, go through all the gritty motions… then let it go. It’s a hard truth, but sometimes there isn’t a reason why things don’t work… they just don’t, and that’s okay.
What’s meant to be will be.
And remember, when all else fails or you feel as though being buddies with your ex-lover isn’t possible… time is the greatest healer of all.
It’s easy when you’re freshly heartbroken to grasp onto the idea of friendship as a way to soften the blow. I think this is where most people go wrong when they try to be friends with an ex. They jump into the friendship pool too deep, too quickly.
Don’t expect a solid freindship to blossom overnight, the part of you that is used to being romantically involved needs space to heal. Allow yourself the time to go through the motions of the breakup before you delve in to the “friend-zone”.
After I had gone through all the motions, when I had made my peace with our situation and healed from our breakup, it seemed so natural and right to be his friend.
I wasn’t holding any grudges, I knew that neither one of us was to blame, and most importantly; I knew I wanted to have him in my life. I reached a point that allowed me to say “he’s a good human, the past is the past and I value him, let’s be friends.” It was, inarguably, the right decision for our sitation. I don’t regret it one bit.
A good friendship can be just as valuable and special and rewarding as a romantic relationship; sometimes even more so.
Sure, we were once in love and that died out, which is always a sad scenario, but I didn’t lose him. I actually gained something; a friendship that means a great deal to me.
