Tuesday, 30 September 2008
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Friends with Exes?
I grew up calling my mom’s ex husband uncle Robert. They were best friends and my dad actually ended up being the best man at his wedding when he remarried. So I always assumed that exes could be friends. Easy.
Lately I’m finding this not to be so true for me. This whole being friends with your ex thing is hard. I don’t like it when people are completely removed from my life and so I've always made an effort to stay friends with my exes, but I am starting to think that sometimes you just have to let people fall out of your life and not look back.
In the beginning of my dating “career,” I was friends with all my exes. But honestly most of those friendships have fizzled out for one reason or another. And looking back at the guys I’ve dated in the past few years… I’m not really friends with most of them either. In fact, most of them are people I try to avoid because they were messy situations. And the few of us who are friends.... it's like we can't hang out without our history coming up and getting into a very serious conversation.
The Army Guy (one of my exes) just came back from training and he contacted me, like we had arranged beforehand. But there’s still a lot of anger in me (though that’s mostly because he broke his promise not to contact me until he got back and emailed me this awful email about a month ago). He called me the other day. Even just seeing his name appear on my phone and listening to the voicemail he left made me want to throw my phone across the room. That’s how filled with anger I still am. So I emailed him back and I told him I’m not ready to talk to him yet. But honestly, I’m not sure I’ll ever be. Maybe I should just give up on this whole idea of being friends with my exes. Especially for those who I was never friends with in the first place. Clearly it hasn’t gone so well thus far and I'm not sure it's worth the pain.
What do you think? Is it possible to be friends with an ex? And if so, how do you heal those wounds and overcome your romantic history together?
And now I leave you with two opposing songs (and no "We're Going to be Friends" is NOT by Jack Black people! Come on now... The White Stripes did it first)
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Comments (4)
I love the White Stripes ...
I think these types of friendships are different for every individual. Some people manage it fine. Others can't. There are many factors, and I think you have to be willing to take it as it comes. Let go when it is time and appreciate the friendships you are able to maintain
Super cool on your mom's ex BTW. That is really difficult to manage, and I admire those who can
I agree that it is extremely difficult to be friends with ex-companions. I think one of the ways you can remain friends is if you were truly friends to begin with before you started dating. Otherwise, like you mention, you tend to fall into patterns of a broken relationship.
I am friends with a couple of my ex-girlfriends. One of which I was really in love with and repeatedly thought of asking to marry. Until she ripped my heart out and told me that she was seeing someone else. Whom she is now married to with two kids. It took me a few years to be able to speak with her again but after recognizing that it was not something that will happen for me (read: give up) with her, I fell back into a friendship with her prior to dating her.
The other was easy. We both agreed that the relationship was not going anywhere and that being friends is better. Poof. Sounds easy but also as you mention, we have periods of time where we don't talk or get together. Still, we get together now and again. We still maintain that friend-type of relationship.
All the rest... went away because we barely had a friendship relationship to begin with. (It was all lust!) (Just kidding.)
It took years for me to be friends with a few of my ex's...being away from the situation and getting some perspective helps tremendously. I'm not sure my ex-husband and I will ever be able to set aside our anger and truly be friends.
@uwrote - Yeah my ex and I were never friends so we don't know how to be friends and it seems like every time we try to be friends, we basically end up getting back together without officially getting back together and having these really unhealthy interactions.