Should You Stay Friends With Your Ex?
“I hope we can still be friends.” Is this cruel or kind?
Everyone’s relationship is different, but society deems being friends with your ex-partner a big no. Why is that? Staying friends after a healthy romantic relationship has been proven to help relieve any feelings of anger and resentment, especially when the breakup was mutual. Under no circumstances should a relationship that was abusive, manipulative or toxic transition into a friendship. Yet others say that prolonging the emotional investment regardless is unfair on both parties- it’s a sign of not actually being ready to break things off.
The impulse to stay friends after a break-up is definitely a more recent development in the past few generations. Rebecca Adams, a sociology professor at the University of North Carolina, found that this is due to gender stereotypes evolving over time. In the late 1970s, “women had grown up in an era where if you had a male friend, it was because he was part of a couple.” Whereas today, fewer young people are getting married in their early to mid 20’s. Instead, they are choosing to live in shared housing, often without any romantic connection to those they live with.
Research at (Online Library) has shown that there are four main reasons behind exes staying friends: to stay civil with one another, to keep the possibility of coming back to the relationship because they work together or share friends, they don’t want their issues to affect other aspects of their life, and because they’ve built up trust between each other and don’t want to lose that.
Not every relationship ends because one party cheated, and I feel like a lot of us tend to forget that. But staying friends on the off chance that you might get back together isn’t the healthiest. Jealousy can easily arise and may put a strain on a potential friendship. Meanwhile, friendships that grow from security are proven to be the most fulfilling of friendships.
It is beneficial to consider why you want to be friends with them in the first place, or why they would want to remain friends with you. If you weren’t friends before you started dating, it might be difficult to completely change your dynamic. It might be awkward if you’re meeting a new person for the first time. If you were friends before, it might be easier to switch back to something familiar.
Will staying friends with your ex cause future relationship problems? When entering a new relationship, many will see being friends with your ex as a red flag and be less inclined to consider pursuing the relationship further. Particularly if you consider your ex to be one of your closest friends.
Staying on friendly terms with your ex when children are involved can be a completely different story. Healthy co-parenting relationships can positively affect your child’s growth if staying on friendly terms is an option for the two of you. Similarly, many LGBTQ+ partners find themselves more likely to maintain friendships with exes because the community is close-knit.
We see this reflected in popular culture, too. In Dolly Alderton’s best-selling debut novel, Ghosts, the protagonist Nina is still close to her last partner. I have personally read this book and highly recommend it! Hard To Do: The Surprising Feminist History of Breaking Up by Kelli María Korducki and Rachel Sussman’s The Breakup Bible are two books I’d highly recommend to learn more about what it means to be friends with your ex.
I am still friends with one of my ex-boyfriends because we are part of the same friendship group. But we did take a break from contacting each other outside the group chat for about a year before casually talking to each other and forming a friendship. We broke up due to distance after both moving away for university, so while we are friends, we only talk every few months over messenger. Us being friends has not affected my current relationship, but as to whether I’m lucky on that front, I don’t know.
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