Can you be friends with them without any agenda/reason?
Can you see yourself being good friends with your ex assuming you’re over them?
It really depends on the ex and why we broke up in the first place and if they’ve grown since. I’ve been in 7 exclusive relationships and I can only see myself being friends with one of my exes. Even though I’d never want to get back together with them, I still wish them well and hope they find happiness.
Flashbacks of painful memories kill the attraction I once had for them. I do still have a soft spot for them, but I will also never trust them with my heart again.
I could be friends, but not close friends. I still care about them, but I can’t be vulnerable with them. Vulnerability is important for the closeness of any relationship, romantic or otherwise, so our friendship would be have its limitations.
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The only way I see that working is to have a healthy amicable breakup or else there is no use in trying to be friends if kids are not involved. Why would you want to be just friends with someone that you had positive romance and intimacy with? I wouldn't.
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- 1.7K opinions shared on Break Up & Divorce topic.
No, I can't pretend that everything is okay when reality says everything is not okay. Friendship after love affair is impossible for me because no matter how politely everything ends between us, we still have a shared history that I can't put behind my back and pretend that nothing happened. I just can't.
- 2.4K opinions shared on Break Up & Divorce topic. u
I suppose that if I tried, I COULD be friendly with some of them, but why would I want to do that?
- 579 opinions shared on Break Up & Divorce topic.
I want them to be happy and healthy and safe but I don’t think we can ever be friends again.
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I don’t know why but if you end things with me my heart closes towards you romantically and just moves on. Literally I used to really like one guy and he said he liked me to a lot. Thennn out of the blues he said he wanted to just be friends at first I was shocked but after I slept literally felt like friends. He tried to rekindle what we had but nah it was over I had zero feelings just thought of him as a friend. 🙈 funny story I ended up dating his friend and one time he came to school to see me. And we were talking casually like friends with space and distance observed. Then he tried to gaslight me to giving him my friends number which I said no too. Because she actually doesn’t like her number being given out. Then he started spewing bullshittttt about me being jealous that he’d call her not me and I was sooo confused. Because I’ve spoken to him once in two months for my assignment. And I’m the last person to get jealous. Honestly if someone isn’t giving me attention and would rather give someone else attention then I’m gone and my heart closed towards you. After that meeting I just put more space between us no more conversations. Oh and I told his friend 😇
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Not really. I left my previous partners because I was outgrowing them.
They were stagnant, not investing time or effort into improving their lives or their situations. I'm not able to stay stagnant. I have to build, create, do - we were a poor match, but lessons I needed to learn.
Well, technically, I'm good friends with my first ex. But we "dated" for months in junior high and stayed friends through high school and uni. He's like my gay mentor now.
But with my exes from my long term relationships, I don't think they'd have anything to contribute to my life. The first helped me address my mental health, but neglected his own. The second admired my mental health progress but refused to work on his own.
Both earned less than me and had less professional experience. I'm fairly career and goal oriented, so those relationships would have nothing to offer me.
Neither was able to keep up with me physically, and I like active things.
There's just not enough in common. -
For me, yes. In my case, I never actually dated this girl. She lead me on for 3 months then told me she just wanted to stay friends. Made me feel I just got shot with a.50 caliber bullet. Also made me feel very resentful of her. And after time passed, I had an opportunity to see her again. I thought it would be my perfect chance to tel her how much she hurt me and how awful a person she was. Then she said hi to me with her cutesy little head tilt. I knew after that I couldn’t tell her what I wanted to. Then as we started talking I realized that she just sucks at trying to date. When you just spend time with her as a friend, it’s pretty nice. So if I have the chance to be friends with her again, I would definitely try it out. Never ever ever going to attempt to date her again (even if she figures herself out and matures). But I certainly wouldn’t mind having her back on my close friends list. She lives half way across the country now, which is fine with me. But if she ever decided to move back, I would gladly welcome her.
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I have a general strict rule around relationships, " once its over we go no contact. point blank period." I would of course allow time for there to be continued communication for like a week in case either of us left something behind at the other persons' house. But once that time is up. That person will not be able to get a hold of me. Ever again.
I don't like being in contact with exes to limit any potential messiness from happening. Such as, them wanting to reminisce on the good times and that leading to a regretful one last act of sex, stirring up old feelings, etc.
Cold-hearted, maybe but it helps cut down on stress and unnecessary drama so I'm sticking to it. -
No... but with 2 exes (before I got married) we'd be in touch maybe once every 5 years or so just to say hi. No negative vibes. But everybody has moved on basically. It's like talking to your 2nd cousin who you haven't seen since you were 6 or something. I guess if I lived in the same city with them, maybe BUT my wife would be 100% welcome to be friends with them too and if she didn't like me talking to them I wouldn't cause they don't mean more to me than what I have with the wife & I expect the wife to do the same for me.
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yes.. I strive to be first and foremost very good/best friend with my partner. Will be awesome to keep the friendship to some extent after if it does not work out romantically. I'd definitely be sad to see them dissappear completely from my life.
That is one of the worst things about breaking up. That it is common enough that people move completely on so it kinda becomes more of a death. In some cases it makes sense, if one was treated very badly, but a longterm relationship has more often contained a close and solid relation for long which is a shame to neglect because it ends. -
It seems unlikely. I have a grown son with my former spouse and he's such an angry person, he can barely be around me and never speaks to me unless it's an emergency about our son. We never co parented either.
It was and still is, 22 years later, a sad situation. I don't understand it. He had many good qualities and one or two glaring bad ones that ended our marriage. Since I'm not married to him anymore, the bad qualities don't affect me, so why not? Because he STILL can't get over it.
I think that's the usual case. But, I'm about being happy. I think we have a well adjusted and happy son who's finding his way in. his life. I think we've done OK. Clearly, emotionally, he hasn't done as well. And that's how it's ended up. But I am always open to new friends and when I make them, I usually make good choices. People who are kind and supportive. He's unable to be that. No loss. But would be better for our son. Can't have everything, though! -
My ex-wife is a very beautiful, but sadistic and emotionally abusive bipolar type of person. She's the type to only be nice to me if she wants something, otherwise it's like trying to talk to some psychopath about your feeling. She doesn't care, she has no feelings. There's no way to be friends, she has no soul.
Talking to her is like being in the presence of evil and I get chills, and I feel heartbroken.
I'm still attracted to her physically which is dangerous because she is a succubus. A real life demon unfortunately. I don't see a friendship in the future unless she gets a new heart or something. -
Depends on what the relationship ended. If it's for reasons like you couldn't be on the same page with your future goals or reasons like that instead of one person treating the other badly (such as abuse, cheating etc) then yes you can be friends after breakup.
- 379 opinions shared on Break Up & Divorce topic. u
I am best and close friends with my first two girlfriends, yes...
and yes, we are in very good terms, and our past relationships are well gone as well... more than 10 or 12 years ago
so, nowadays it feels a whole lot more like old time friends rather than ex-girlfriends, that makes it very easy -
Me personally absolutely not, but that’s also because all of my relationships have been toxic and just not healthy people to have in my life period. But I think if your ex and you end on a good note (of at least a respectful note) then absolutely you can stay friends. The only problem that arises is that if you stay friends with your ex straight after the breakup it can be hard to get over them. Maybe try creating some space by saying something like “I value you and want to keep you in my life as a friend, but I need some time to process my feelings first.” The space can be a day to a week to a month, whatever you need. If you can do that then there’s a big chance y’all can stay healthy platonic friends :))
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Yes, but 9 out of 10 times... why would you?
When I was younger I was friends with all my exes after, but things change when they've seen you moved on and you realized on some level they get off on the sexual tension.
When you get a girl and the ex disappears or starts getting moody because her attention from you is in question you can see it's not quite friendship -
Sure. I remained good friends with a couple of my exes. They were really good people. And it's not like we were looking to get back together.
I'm even Facebook friends with my very first girlfriend from when I was 16 and she was 14 back in 1970. -
Nope. I have no respect for narcissists. Especially the ones who caused me emotional abuse. I'm not going to pretend. Narc or not, an ex is an ex. And I don't keep exes around in my life. Their time within my life is over and I respect my partner enough not to have them around.
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Am. We took our time breaking up which helped us to realize we were better friends than lovers.
The downside is that we both enjoy bickering and squabbling and that's the thing that thing our friendship is based on. It takes time to build up that sort of friendship!
Not much has changed when I look critically. -
I personally can't. I don't know how other people are able to just see the person they were intimate and had sex and not have even a slight irritation when they see them with another person. It's not that I'm not over them. I definitely am and don't want to be with them, but it still irks me to see them with someone else. I just want to be happy for them from a distance.
- 471 opinions shared on Break Up & Divorce topic.
If I was single no problem. We ended it in neutral terms and if we run into eachother we catch up. But out of respect for my current relationship, I don't see it happen. Seeing my ex regularly now even if it's just as friends is not a good idea.
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