When We Should (and Shouldn’t) Stay Friends with Our Ex

A lot of people are going through a breakup right now, or maybe they are just curious and want to know the answer to one question. The question many people ask themselves and close people around them is “Can I stay friends with my ex?”

It’s a tough question, and the decision as well. How can we decide whether to stay friends with someone we dated after the spark is gone?

Sometimes you don’t have a choice about this decision. In case you have children together, you may have to communicate or be co-parenting. The inevitable question comes: “ How can be open to someone new if you have one foot in the ex-door?”

You should take a moment and think about why would you want to stay friends with someone you dated. Do you see qualities they add to your life, or is it simply because you don’t want to be alone?

You need to understand that staying friends with an ex, is similar to when you are in a relationship, you need to ensure that both of you want the same thing. It would be hard if one individual still has feelings and hopes of reconciliation.

Also, it would be hard to be friends with your ex, if you are still hurt by the relationship. So, when should you and when shouldn’t stay with an ex? Let’s get one thing clear; the breakup has a lot to do with the fact that you can stay friends afterward.

If it was an unexpected and bad breakup, the reality is that you cannot stay friends. Maybe, eventually later in life, but not immediately after you break up.

If you break up, but you still love that person, you cannot stay friends because you will only hope for them to return to you. Perhaps, later after you get over them, you will have the emotional strength to be friends.

So the above mentioned are the situations where you shouldn’t stay friends, but what about when you should stay friends? Well, you should stay friends if you feel that breaking up was the best thing for both of you.

If you both agreed on this maturely then there is a high chance that both of you can stay friends afterward. You should also stay friends if after some time you realize that you can be that, just friends.

What if your ex wants to stay friends? If you don’t want to stay friends with your ex since you don’t feel emotionally stable to be friends you should be honest.

You need to honor your sense of self-preservation and say that you don’t want to be in touch. That desire to be friends with someone you dated might be connected to the desire for a clean narrative.

Perhaps, you think that if you stay friends, you won’t think of your relationship as a failure, but as a meaningful experience. Maybe you would see your relationship as a crucial part of your life, even if it wasn’t what you hoped it would be.

Every person, couple, and relationship is different. Whether you can stay friends or not, depends on both people. Depends on the way you broke up, depends on the reason why you broke up, and depends if both of you are still in love or not.

The answer to that question is not simple like “yes” or “no,” it is much more complicated, the same as relationships are.

So, what about you? Can you be friends with your ex?