Why You Should Never Be Friends With Your Ex
It’s human nature to want to be friends with your exes. For a long time you were the most important people to each other, so it’s only natural that you’ll want to hold on to some of that.
We all have people we wish were still in our lives, and it can feel like there’s a piece of us missing when they’re not there anymore. This goes for exes as well.
However, if you’re currently in a new relationship or plan on getting into one in the near future, it might not be wise to stay friends with your exes. You might think that your friendship is harmless, and that you only have good intentions, but it’s still not a good idea.
This post will discuss some of the reasons why staying friends with your exes can be disastrous.
It’s a betrayal to your new partner
You’ve have history with your ex, and you’re bound to still have feelings for this person. You’ll have in-jokes, memories, and secrets that are personal to the two of you. That’s natural; everyone has a past filled with fond memories.
The problem is that by continuing to be friends with your ex, those memories and secrets don’t stay buried in the past, where they belong, you bring them into the present.
Your new partner should be the one with whom you now share those in-jokes and secrets. If your ex is still around, and you’re constantly talking about the good times, that will infringe on your relationship with your new beau.
Old feelings may be reignited
When your ex is your close friend, it can start to feel as though nothing has changed between you, and you might find yourself slipping back into old habits. How long would it take before you were back in bed with each other?
While you guys are in each other’s lives, there’s always the possibility that you’ll wonder what could have been. There’s always a high chance that you’ll long for the good old days.
Not the end of the world if you’re both still single, but disastrous if you’ve both moved on and are seeing new people.
It’s not good for your mental health
If you do choose to be friends with an ex, it is possible that this will lead into a toxic relationship.
These friendships often go south and end in one of two ways:
- one person wants to get back together and tries to use their “friendship” as leverage
- one person starts missing their ex, and the continued closeness makes it hard for them to let go
It could be that the person who proposed the friendship intended to use it as a means of winning the other person back. Whether you initiated the friendship or your ex did, it’s not a healthy way for either of you to live.
Your ex’s new partner might become jealous
The last thing you want is to interfere with your ex’s new relationship.
It can be very difficult for some people to accept that their partner is friends with their ex. This has been known to cause problems in many relationships, as the new partner will constantly wonder if they’re the third wheel to a couple that clearly want to get back together.
Feelings of jealously aren’t uncommon in this situation. In some cases, it could put you in danger. A crazy boyfriend or girlfriend could target you if they suspect (whether rightly or wrongly) that there’s still something going on between you and your ex.
Additionally, don’t be surprised when your ex decides to abruptly end the friendship. If they’re hoping to salvage their new relationship, they may be faced with an ultimatum – you or their new flame. 9/10 you’ll be the one to get the boot.
It might be difficult to set boundaries
After coming out of an intimate relationship with someone, it can be hard to know where the boundaries are. What will and will not be appropriate going forward? How much time can you spend together before it gets weird and starts looking like you’re an item again? That sort of thing.
This is especially tough when you stay friends. You know so much about each other, have seen each other at your best and worst, clothed and unclothed. Building a friendship after that won’t be easy to define.
It’s been said that the vast majority of heterosexual men are incapable of having platonic friendships with women. If this really is the case, then can you ever really have boundaries that both of you can stick to?
Conclusion
It would be completely unnatural to want to cut all ties with your ex, especially if you spent several years with them. In that time you would have become best friends, and separating from a close friend is never easy to do.
So it’s perfectly understandable that you’d seek to hold on to that friendship if it didn’t work out between the two of you romantically.
However, you should take any new partners’ feelings into consideration, and ask yourself how you would feel were the roles reversed. If you are jeopardizing your new relationship by maintaining a friendship with your ex, you might need to either distance yourself from them entirely, or limit the time you spend with them.