Can You Stay Friends With An Ex?
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A popular debate amongst the breakup community is this: can you actually be just friends with your ex?
I wanted to take on this question today as a breakup coach, and someone who has had her fair share of relationships and breakups.
I mean, Ross and Rachel managed to stay friends, but is that realistic?
Okay, full disclosure: I’m not a fan of the word “realistic” but I have a feeling you’re here because you want advice that might actually help you with your current reality.
Why do you want to actually stay friends though?
When a client comes to me and wants to fantasize about the idea of staying friends, I always open with, “why do you want to stay friends?”
To which they reply, “we had so much fun together” or “cause we still really care about each other!”
Okay, great.
So why did you break up then?
This is a serious question, I’m not trying to be facetious.
I’ve had relationships where we successfully stayed friends, and when we didn’t. Depending on your relationship and how things ended, you can gather insight that can help you with your situation. There’s no one-size-fits-all, this-or-that thinking.
It depends on what you want, and what makes you feel good and at peace, ultimately.
I know when my last relationship ended—the first time—my ex wanted to stay friends during that time. After all, we didn’t have a big blow-out or hate each other by the end of it.
I would say we were friends during our relationship as well, but our expectations in the relationship started to shift as we got to the one-year mark.
I wanted more commitment and time together, and he was already feeling pressured to meet the expectations of what I wanted in the relationship.
Because of this, we naturally broke up. And then when we broke up for the second and last time, we didn’t stay friends—we stayed cordial. Four years later, and we still touch base over email now and then and celebrate each other’s relationship successes.
All this being said, before I met my ex, I managed to stay friends with someone I dated for maybe 6 weeks when I first moved to the West Coast, and guess what? He ended being a big part of how I met my fiancé literally five years later.
So, yes, I do believe you can stay friends, and I believe they can show up for you in miraculous ways, but it’s situation-dependent.
But enough about me, let’s dive into what you need to know if you are seriously considering staying friends and wondering if this is the best option for you.
Is this the reason you’re trying to stay friends?
In my experience as a breakup coach, when I sit down with people in a private session, the conversation around staying friends does come up often.
Sure, good times were had, and laughs were abundant, but there’s another big reason that gets uncovered when we start to dig a little deeper.
The truth is this: they’re terrified of losing their ex completely from my life.
It’s okay to be afraid to lose them
The fear of losing someone you truly loved after a breakup is something at least one person in the relationship is feeling. Most likely, though, if it was a meaningful relationship, then both of you are feeling that way.
And if you’re like me, I’m sure you probably didn’t want to end the relationship for this reason, too.
But is being afraid to lose them enough to tag them as a friend now?
If you’re tacking on the label “friend” to cover up your fear of losing them, then maybe you don’t want to be their friend after all.
Maybe you want to still be with them, but you’re willing to settle for a demotion.
Does this ring true for you?
I believe you can evolve from being in a relationship to being just friends, as I shared earlier here, but it won’t be through fear.
When we keep people in our lives through fear, we sometimes sabotage our own needs and time to heal in the process. Think about that as you consider keeping your ex in your life.
But Nancy! We have friends in common!
Now we’re moving on to the whole friend-circle thing. It gets muddy, I know.
If you two were together for a long time, chances are your friends circle expanded or you met new friends together.
Now you’re afraid you might lose their side of friends, or your mutual friends will have to choose sides and you don’t want that. It sucks going through a breakup, but now you’re forced to break up with the friends you made together?
And believe me, this idea hit me like a TON of bricks 10 years ago.
In my first year of university, I got a boyfriend in the first semester, and he had a lot of friends who were girls—and we got along so well.
It seemed like the perfect arrangement—exactly what people want during their first year. I felt like I was all set—all ready to go and my future was set! We went on trips together and spent so many weekends together. You catch my drift.
But when I chose to end the relationship because I fell out of love, I lost every single one of those girl friends. They stayed loyal to him, and to a degree I understood why.
I remember how crappy it felt to not just lose him, but lose my entire social circle. I didn’t even want to go to school after that.
But here’s what I realized.
True friends will stay by your side even through this breakup.
If you’re just staying in this awkward just-friends situation in fear of losing your mutual friends or putting your friends in an in-between situation, that’s not enough of a reason to stay friends with your ex.
Why?
Because you need your own healing, and your own meaningful distance to process the grief of your breakup.
There were concrete reasons the relationship ended, and trying to remain friends right after to avoid any of the “backlash” of a breakup is only going to delay the healing process for you. And, your friends will sense the tension anyway even if you tried to make it work.
I know it’s tough, but you’ve got to do what’s best for you.
The right people will be by your side. In fact, old friends will resurface and your current even have the potential to grow right now.
One of the most unexpected things I hear from clients is how they never imagined certain friends showing up for them the way they did. Others talk about how they get closer with a parent. I know for me my relationship with my mom always grew when I faced hardships like each of my breakups.
That’s probably why we are so close, because I have had a lot of breakups.
Back to you: you wouldn’t even be reading this article if your just-friends arrangement was truly working, right?
I have—more often than not—seen fear be the culprit for staying friends.
If you truly, with every fibre of your being, think you can stay friends and that thats the healthy choice for you, then by all means do it.
But if there’s even a small part of you that is more afraid of losing them, or literally just not having someone to hang with on the weekends, you’ll want to reevaluate your priorities right now.
Give yourself permission to put yourself first and not worry about anyone else.
And if you need to talk this through with me, reach out to me to book a private session here.
Book your first breakup coaching session with me here.
Hey there, I’m Nancy! I’m a Conscious Breakup Coach dedicated to giving you conscious breakup advice during, well—one of the hardest times of your life. Let me know if this blog resonated for you by leaving a comment!
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