Why I Can’t Be Friends with My Exes
Once our relationship is over, it’s over.
I can’t relate to people who are “just friends” with their exes. How? Why? For what?
I’ve never been able to do it.
There’s an intimacy present in romantic relationships that isn’t there for friendships. If you two still like being around each other, why aren’t you still together?
Obviously it wasn’t a hurtful breakup, otherwise you wouldn’t have remained friends. But how can you just turn off the romantic attraction like that?
I understand that feelings change. People stop liking each other romantically all the time, but how often is that change mutual? Isn’t one person usually hurt in a breakup?
And if you’re the one who gets hurt, how can you muster the maturity to still be around them and move on in a healthy way?
One way I could understand this friendship with your ex is if you were friends before. I’m talking about being good platonic friends for a while, not one person keeping the other in the friend zone.
A true platonic friendship is one where neither person is interested in anything more, ever.
If you two happened to cross the romantic boundary one night, but then you both mutually decide that friendship is the best option, that I can understand.
But even in that scenario, you’re not ‘exes.’ You hooked up once or just a few times, didn’t feel any chemistry and went right back to your usual relationship.
Another exception is if you share children with this ex. Obviously, it’s in the child’s best interest for you two to be cordial with each other. You should definitely be on friendly terms to raise a child together to create a loving, nurturing environment.
Without a strong friendship foundation or sharing a kid together, the friendship becoming strictly platonic after a breakup with no awkwardness or lingering feelings is a rare thing.
In my case, I’ve never been in a relationship where I was just friends with him first. From the beginning, we were dating and getting to know each other.
The attraction was always there. There was mutual interest in making this something more than friendship from the start. So when we broke up, I didn’t see the point in maintaining a relationship.
I wasn’t ever just a friend, so why would I want that now? That was never the main thing that held us together.
I don’t want to hear about any new person you’re interested in after we’ve broken up. I really don’t care to hang out platonically. We had a good run while it lasted, but the relationship is over.
Why continue on if we don’t need to for the sake of being in the same friend group or working together in business?
Things also get tricky when there’s a new significant other and you’ve kept in touch with your ex. I’m sure that any new man I dated would not be happy with me still hanging out with an ex.
Even for the most secure man, it’s threatening and it’s confusing.
I know that a dealbreaker for me would be if the man I was dating told me that he still talked to his ex all the time and they were good friends. Yea. No thanks.
The point of a new relationship is to start fresh with a clean slate. That slate is not clean if your ex is still in the picture. I think that more often than not, one person is still attracted and still interested in maybe getting back together.
I’ve been that person who claimed I could still be friends, but that was only because I hoped that we would get back together. I wanted to continue to be around him because I missed him and wanted to be in a relationship again.
Once I realized that wasn’t going to happen, I had to completely stop talking to him in order to get over the loss the of the relationship.
It’s hard to get closure, if the relationship never closes.
I just don’t see the point in keeping the lines open. If you two are still attracted to each other, then it’s easy to fall into old patterns.
Chances are high that you’ll probably get intimate again. Then what? How can you not feel confused after that?
Friends can’t have sex without complications. Someone will usually want something more, eventually. If you’ve found someone where this type of relationship works for the both of you long term, that’s great, but it’s not a common thing.
I know plenty of people who seem to be great friends with their exes, but only if neither of them is still attracted to the other. I applaud them.
I know that for me, it’s much easier to move on and get over the breakup if I cut off the relationship entirely. Whether I’ve been dumped or I broke it off, I don’t want to remain friends.
I’ll always be respectful and nice if I run into an ex again. I do still care about them and will always wish them well. I’ll just choose to do my caring from a distance.
