Being friends with your ex ?

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Have any of you tried to be friends with an ex after the relationship fizzled out or otherwise ended ?

If so, then did that go well ?

Was it worth the effort ?



I said that I didn't want to be friends with my last ex, but I just can't feel comfortable that it was the right thing to do.
My main reasons for saying no were -
(1) The friendship would always seem like a shadow of it's former glory,
(2) We got along well, and I wouldn't want to fall out with him. It seems better to not talk to each other (and look back on things fondly) than have that happen
(3) He seemed to kind of ... hold me at arm's reach a bit during the relationship... what I mean is, I often felt that he was keeping his distance but I don't think he was meaning to do that... but he could have been. He has Aspergers though, which might be causing that. I need to sort out my thoughts a bit better and make a different topic about that I think.
(4) It was him who dumped me and it was pretty sudden.... so I had enough trouble with how I felt without compounding the matter by trying to be friends while recovering from the split. That was a few months ago though, so that's no longer the situation.
(5) I know from experience that it really sucks when somebody dumps you and then gets a new partner, and wants to blabber on about them.

I'm not friends with any of my other exes, but they were kind of nasty people by the end of the relationship (and at least a bit during it also) , and the relationship ended unpleasantly.... while this last ex is a good sort of fellow, and the breakup wasn't too bad as those things go.

I have been friends with all my ex's after the fact, with one big exception. It has worked out great, most of the time we went from friends to lovers/relationship to friends, and then as time passed, merely aquaintances. Two of my three best friends today are former lovers, and all three of us get along very well. We frequently do things together, go out to eat, go to the movies, have coffee etc.
The way I see it, I don't get into a relationship with someone I'm not friends with, and I refuse to sacrifice a friendship just because we can't work as a couple. In my life, it has never been a hard thing, to remain friends, because that part has been constant.
The one person I did not remain friends with cheated on me with a close mutual friend, and that hurt me too much to be able to remain friends. We tried to remain friends for a few weeks, but what can I say... I had too much hurt and anger and resentment and it was poisoning all our lives. I'm not that good of a person.

tried but it doesn't work.
Either my obsessive side kicks in and I overwhelm them, or the feeling is just not reciprocated.
My ex wife is a real difficult one; we have a 13 y/o daughter, but if it wasn't for her we'd live in completely separate worlds; and practically do anyway.
If it works fine, if it doesn't don't force something that isn't working.

Thankyou both for your replies.

I should maybe clarify that I'm a friendly acquaintance to my last ex, but have not been writing via e-mail for some time.
To be honest even when we were in a relationship out total discussion via e-mail could have fit on a postage stamp... I always assumed that he just really didn't like that as a means of communication, or something like that.

If I go to the local wargame club, then we have a little talk and get on well.

What I said after we broke up was that I was happy to be friends in that kind of situation, but that I thought it would probably not be a good idea to try and be friends outside of the club.

But at the time I thought I would be going to the wargame club fairly often..

But what happened is that the club is very poorly run. The guy running it won't hire a room large enough, even though the club takes plenty enough money from the members to cover a larger room fee... then he steals all of the club's petty cash to keep for himself, and a number of other people at the club have been extremely unpleasant (the guy running the club's friends) if I try to even just say he ought not to be doing that because the club needs more room.
There wasn't even room to do anything the last time I went (not even a tiny bit of room to play a game, I guess I would have needed to take a book to lean on and played MTG on my lap - literally ! !! !) , and I haven't gone since then because it's a bit of a dead loss when that keeps happening.

So my notion that we would see each other often anyway has sort of fizzled out :-/ I did try to get the room-size situation improved, but nobody is giving me much support with that. Any support is just people complaining to me that they agree the room is too small (and because of that far too loud) , which will never improve the situation any on its own.

People I have dated or might be called exes... Never stayed friends with them. I tried with one, but the depression sunk in when I realized I was not over them yet and knowing that it never worked out, it became hard to stay friends. Considering the circumstances in which we got together in the first place, I had no choice but to let go for the time being, but I don't think she understood my decision and as a result has indicated a refusal to reconnect as friends down the road. No choice there.
Other people on the other hand never communicated back with me except one. But I have not even seen any ex or people I dated since things ended either. I am kind of stuck in life with seemingly no proof or references in the event I were to get involved in some sort of relationship moving forward. My track record really doesn't help me.

Yes, I have. I'm a diagnosed Aspie and I suspect she is also an Aspie but she refuses to do any tests to see.



For me, it has gone alright. She dumped me suddenly and unexpectedly but she cared enough to be there for me and support me because she still wanted to be friends. She actually broke down and cried as she told me we were no longer a couple; she knew it would hurt me badly. She knew she was my world and that I had no one in my life other than her. She has a couple of friends so it was easier for her. As was mentioned in this thread, my friendship with her has been a shadow of it's former glory since the breakup.

Luckily for me, she's been there even though we rarely have talked in the two years since the breakup. Without her, I wouldn't even be alive right now. At times I've been so depressed over what happened with her that I've planned suicide and she's talked me out of it every time. I've turned to her when I've had other major issues and she's always been there to help me through those things too. She always knows when something is wrong with me.

For me it has been worth the effort to remain her friend because of all the help and support she still gives me. It's just difficult for me to be her friend because of all the pain she caused me with the breakup. She knows I will always want her to change her mind about the relationship. It's a tough balancing act for her and I both when we chat because we know how easy it is for me to become obsessed with her. For the most part, I just turn to her whenever I'm having troubles because anything more than that becomes difficult for me.

you downgrade a failed relationship to a platonic friendship, then you get something that's even worse than the dysfunctional relationship. This has been my experience.

LOL, I see it as upgrading... Loose the garbage (all the messy emotional crud and sticky compromises) and enjoy the uncomplicated parts of being friends, having fun and respect / be respected.

Over time, especially decades, you find that friendships might still be there, or they might fade. Some people stay in your life after dating, others were simply never going to be lasting friends.

Basically, you lose the sex (unless you agree to be friends with benefits, in which case it's a win-win situation), but you have to listen to her rantings on how all men are the same (when nobody else wants to take her BS), you have to waste your time on her and all that. in a nutshell, you lose what's good about the relationship, but you're still stuck with all the bad stuff.

yes,I tried that. but I kept trying to get her back with me.

In the relationship I was talking about, we were really quite platonic.
This was because it went at a pace which he was comfortable with.
(I would have done more than we did if he'd wanted to though)

We mainly just held hands or would cuddle.
Sometimes we did kissing - he seemed to enjoy it but said that he didn't like it, so that fizzled out pretty quickly.

It lasted for three months before he ended it.
He says that he asked me out to see if romantic feelings developed, and he thought they did for a while (probably during the kissing phase) but then says that he got confused and decided that he didn't have romantic feelings for me after all ; and so that was why he had ended it.

I'm kind of in a mood because of some things anyway, which I think were probably things caused by him having Aspergers... but that doesn't make them any easier to deal with.

For example, when he was feeling a bit down (not long befre the relationship finished) I sent him a stylish picture of Nyan Cat in the style of the Ventruvian man - in order to cheer him up (sent via Xbox Live) ... I drew it myself with artist's marker pens.

Xbox Live messages stay in somebody's inbox for 30 days and then get automatically deleted.
He hadn't logged in for the two weeks after I sent it, so I sent an e-mail saying I'd sent it ; and he said that he would definitely look at that.

But I don't think he ever did. Then, after a month it got automatically deleted. Like I said it would, if he didn't look at it for weeks.
This was why I removed him from my XBL friends list after we broke up.
There's no point in having him as an XBL friend if he's unlikely to even look at my messages and just leaves them to be deleted, I reckon.

He never said anything about that, like "Sorry for not looking at your message sooner. It's been deleted now, but I'd really like to see that."
or even "I couldn't care less about your stupid Nyan cat, so I left it to be deleted."


Another thing that wound me up in the relationship was his level of self absorption.

He was forever talking AT me.... and no matter how much I tried to protest he'd just say that it was legitimate for me to find it confusing and annoying - but before long he would be doing it again.

The last date we had was particularly lame because we were supposed to be strolling about in a gentle sort of romantic way until the cinema opened (after him insisting we get there early) but he gallumphed off into the distance while blabbering away to thin air about the obscure compexities of Magic the Gathering.
So he marched off briskly (too brisk for me to keep up with without breaking into a jog at least) nattering away to thin air..... then politely held open a door for me even though it was a truly ridiculous distance away... and as soon as I'd caught up to him he began running up this long flight of stairs, waffling away at thin air again.
It was all a bit much for me, so I half-shouted something to the effect of "OI ! Aren't you meant to like, walk beside me romantically or something ?" Then got a bit embarrassed and added "Er... sorry if that was a bit of a rude way of putting it. I didn't mean to be rude. But really.... I can't even keep up !"
I have a bad long-term health condition, so I just can't run up stairs like he had been or go along at marching pace.
He was very sheepish and apologetic after that about it though, and made a great effort to stroll along next to me - while at least talking TO me about obscure MTG waffle which I had no idea what he was talking about.

And I actually LIKE magic the gathering... but even I couldn't figure out what he was rabbiting on about, because of the way he spoke being very (for want of a better description) obscure, and sort of a speech rather than a discussion.
He was supposed to be helping me to make decent decks for MTG not long before the final date... but when it came down to it, he decided that he didn't have the patience and couldn't be bothered. But to me, that would have needed to be done (at the very least) in order for me to even begin to understand what he was rambling on about.


When I said that he was welcome to borrow any of my anime or computer games which interested him, his response was :
"I'd rather lend you the things which I'm interested in" ... no thanks for the offer or anything, even as a social courtesy.

But I put that kind of thing down to him having Aspergers, would you say that was a fair way of interpreting his behaviour ?

I think ... that maybe... how I see friendship after a relationship is.... the things which drove you kind of nuts within the relationship (but which were tempered by your romantic interest in the other person) are not going to go away... in fact they're likely to become worse if the person no longer feels such a need to 'reign them in to suit their partner' ... whereas a lot of the nice parts of the relationship (like going on nice dates together) will end completely.

I'll have to agree with EmberEyes on this one.
Going from relationship to friends means less pressure to see each other so often, more freedom to do what you want to do with a friend instead of what you're supposed to do as a boyfriend, less worrying about whether this is going anywhere because friendships are more relaxed that way, and a proper friendship is still good by itself.
Although if you believe you'd be wasting your time with her, then definitely break it up. But then it wouldn't have been a friendship anyway, as time spent with friends is never time wasted.

I don't know about your friendships, but mine do not look or sound like that.

I haven't been able to keep any kind of lasting friendships with my exes. Didn't really try, though. Relations fail for a reason. And what breaks a relationship is perfectly capable of withering a normal friendship.

Me & my 1st girlfriend tried being friends after we broke up. We were friends 1st for a while but being friends after didn't work well. I was protective of her when we were friends & even more so when we were together. I still loved her & couldn't just quit caring about her & suddenly pull back. I have some anxiety issues including OCD & am obsessed with my partner. Having an ex in my life without letting her be a major focus may be impossible for me. My anxiety stuff is alot better than it was; meds are helping me a lot in my current relationship but if I were to stumble on a post by an ex about something bad, even if it wasn't recent I would probably have a minor anxiety attack worrying. Avoidance isn't a great way to deal but it's the way that works for me. Reminds me of a topic I should post about here but not sure if I will or not yet