Can you be friends?

[raider5]

This is what I believe at the moment and I'd like you all to critize my belief:

If, after enough time, you're still trying to be friends, and you can actually still stand being friends with your ex then one of two things is happening

- you're still hoping for something more

- you really don't love her that much

 

You can never really be content with "just friends". Being so close yet so far really hurt me bad. You can never truly be a friends, because you'll always be hoping for something more. I know what you're thinking, I've been there, "I love her so much that I want to keep her in my life." Well to that I say, "Do you love her enough to let her go?" There comes a point where you just can't take the friendship anymore, you can't take the pain anymore. You want that bond, that life, that "just friends" just won't provide.

 

Don't get me wrong, if you truly love someone, at the end of the day their happiness is all that matters. But that's at the end of the day. In the meantime you have a manifold of emotions to deal with. Hey I'm a strong man, but there came a point where I just couldn't take the pain anymore. But all I want is for her to be happy. And if her hapiness hinged on me then she would have told me that.

 

But I do wonder. If you love them enough you would probably endure any pain. But what's worse, going through the pain of having them in your life or never having them in your life ever again? That's a tough call. But I realized that I love her enough that I don't need her in my life, that she doesn't have to be around, and she doesn't even have to love me back. I will always love her and she will always carry a piece of my heart, whether or not she wanted it. Now, to me, that sounds like the hardest and sadest thing to do--letting them go but still loving them with all you are.

 

Let me know what you think

[ForAnother]

I cannot agree with you more. It is a catch 22. I am going throught the same thing right now. Do I be friends with her for my own jealousy? I will always always want her back, even know what she has done to me. I think that letting someone go would be better, and because I am going to college next year, my ex will be left alone. Remaining friends is one hard decision. But after enough time of being away, I think that there is a point where you might realize that you like another type of girl... and your attraction will fade from her. However I don't think this is possible for a very long time.

 

I want to be friends but I am afraid it is selfish. Letting her go, will leave me hurting too. Its too hard of a call. I think I would prefer letting them go.

 

ForAnother

[wngsonfeet]

I agree as well, and on the flip side you should look out for yourself in a real sort of way. Ie was the relationship hurting you to be in it. Maybe not but just a thought. I do agree with you.

[hurtbylove]

Yes letting go hurts the most.

 

At this point I really couldn't handle seeing my ex with someone else.

 

It feels like even if I were friends with her, I still have ulterior motives i.e. I want to win her back.

[Hannibal]

When you let someone go you have to let them out of your mind aswell. It is better to make a quick severance from each other for the sake of each party involved. What ever you do don't ask about who they're dating unless you either know the answer or think you're strong enough to hear the answer...

[DrNick]

I think being friends depends on a lot of factors, and there's no general answer to this question. however, if you are in love with someone, and they only want to be friends, then it will never work out, because you'll always be secretly hoping that something more will come of your friendship. It will cause you more pain in the long run. If, however, you've both fallen out of love, or you just had a quick fling and decided you weren't meant for each other, then it's probably OK to remain friends because it's a mutual decision.

 

One piece of advice: NEVER stay friends in the belief that you will win your ex's heart back. It never works, and while it will save some pain in the short term, it will cause a lot more pain in the long term. If you've been dumped and you love the person, for your own sanity, walk away and try to move on!

[spatzcolumbo]

Another great topic raider!!

 

I've had this one going round my head for a while now. It basically seems to be a no-win situation. If i stay friends with her then i risk it taking much much longer to get over her, and i know that i will also just want her back. Any time i see ehr as 'friends' i will be doing it with the aim of showing her that i am still the guy she fell for in the first place. I also then have to handle the fact that she is with someone else.

 

On the flip side, i could walk away totally, and lose her from my life completely. She was my best friend. I still want her to be my best friend, so walking away is more painful than anything else. I don't want to lose her from my life, but what can i do??

 

My answer at the moment is to try to remain friends but on a very distant level. She is 6 hours away for most of the year, and so i do not risk seeing her all the time. Basically this seems to be keeping in contact every now and then, but with large spells of no contact in the middle!!??!!

 

I disagree with the opinion that remaining friends means nothing can ever work out again. I see no reason why people who try to remain in each others lives can't find their way back to each other as more than friends in the future. It does happen every now and then.

 

I guess its another one of those judgement calls which just feels like you lose out either way!!

[determined]

well, I still speak to my ex as I do still have feelings for her, very deep ones. She cheated on me and we ended up breaking up and she went off with some complete toss pot.

 

She is always nervous when speaking to me but then tends to warm when she knows I'm not going to shout at her. I say live and let live, if you have issues then abandon that person. I'm not prepared to make myself a victim from her somewhat uneducated decisions as she will be the one with a situation to handle. I wouldn't say we are friends despite we are still close in many ways, we keep our distant and communicate feelings from afar.

 

Besides if you take the harsh line with the ex it makes it very easy for them to turn around and decide to hate you back. This way is much more satisfying knowing you don't have any pent up hatred etc

[spatzcolumbo]

but how many people can TRULY say that they have no pent up hatred / resentment for the ex...i know i do...but it changes day to day - sometimes i feel great, sometimes i feel awful and get really angry with her...the trick is to make sure you don't show that anger to them. I have done a few times, and i now semi regret it (only semi regret it because i know that i needed to say the things that i said).

 

Feelings obviously run high with these kinds of things, which is why i think it is only natural to harbour some feelings of anger and bitterness. I think that is one of the ways that you know you still have feelings for them...if you didn't then the feelings of bitterness and anger would ust not be there, or at least would not be significant or important.

 

This is the vicious circle that i find myself in - i want to go out and meet someone else, but my main reasoning for wanting to do this is to show the ex that i have moved on, and show her that i am making someone else happy. Basically, i want to make her jealous. I want to make HER feel the hurt and jealousy that i feel now. but what does that tell me? it tells me that i am not over her. If i was over her then i'd meet someone else and i wouldn't give a toss about my ex or how it made her feel.

 

But then my ex has also told me that if i did find someone else that she would feel upset, and that it would stir up a load of emotions in her? WTF?? Whats that all about!!!!!

[Mix Maxster]

Well I know I'm not over my ex and I love her deeply. That is why I KNOW I cannot be her friend if I ever did intend on getting her back because she has to learn on her own what it means to love someone. She loved me so much that she would have done anything to keep me, but something happened and she started to pull away. I think that was because her new friend came into town and her other friend kept trying to push her to do things and go out and party and thought I was holding her back. In any case though, I cannot see how I could be any sort of a friend and like the guy at the beginning of this post said IT IS a catch 22 and because of that you either have them as your lover or you just don't have them at all. How can you expect to be a friend? how can SHE expect you to be a friend? Much like Raider said, the only way YOU will want to remain friends is if you still love them and think that by remaining friends one day she'll come back or that you have truly lost your love for them and you can be a good friend. I know I can't because I love her so much that everytime I see her will be that much harder because I'm not with her. I love her enough to really want to see her happy and even if she came up to me right now and asked if I really meant that I WOULD say to her that I only wanted her to be happy and I would be happy for her if she found that special one because I love her enough to want what's best for her. That is why I couldn't be the friend for her, I know in other's minds it would seem like you're not showing that to her by her losing that support she had with me or losing that closeness she had with me, but I wouldn't be fair to her if I loved her and remained her friend. It just doesn't seem plausible, IMO, because how could I be any sort of a real friend if I cannot trust myself not to act on my emotions for her and it's just as friends you usually want what's best for each other too and she wouldn't be happy if I was doing it for her while suffering on the inside. That's the truth about why I told her I couldn't be her friend, so she truly is by herself in this and I just hope that this new guy respects her and treats her well and isn't doing all of this to get in her pants. I think he is based on his hasted need to ask my ex BEFORE I broke up with her, if me and her had sex and if he stood a chance at getting some. Plus he was just trying too hard to get her to like him and trying to hard to be loved by her, I dunno it ALL SEEMED so fake when I heard it I know I'm not a pushover and everythign I did with her was real and everythign I worked hard at was real and my love IS that deep, so I'm hoping that my being gone will be HER wake up call like her leaving me was MY wake up call to smarten up.

 

In the end of all of it, I can't be her friend for in the same mannor she can't be mine. It's not fair to either one of us to force a friendship when she knows how much I love her and that it would hurt me too much to hear about her new flings and to her being a friend doesn't mean hurting them like that HOWEVER unintentional. So really that's why I know it cannot work like that, but as funny as this sounds being gone and not being her friend is the true way to show how much I love her and I do wish her the best and if she comes back to me, well hot damn hey??? lol I'm not expectign it though, really, but I don't care what the odds are or what the percentages are of her coming back because she's gone and that's the reality. I will never stop her from trying to come back, but she's a really smart girl and I don't want her making her decisions rashly because then that's not really genuine and I wouldn't trust her judgement on it. If she came back on her own and PROVED to me what she knows and feels, then who am I to stop her?

[Rysen]

My situtation is a bit complicated with this. My ex and I were together for a year and 4 months, and have now been apart for almost 3 months. The complication is that I work for her father, who just so happens to have his business on the same property as his home.

 

Most of the time it's okay, because she is at school all day, and usually by the time I'm finished work she's not home. (I work part time from 10am-3pm). However, she's been coming home earlier than usual recently so I bump into her all the time. Today, for example, there weren't any classes, so she was there all day. She came out and said hi, and then left to visit a friend. She'll be there far more often when summer hits as well.

 

She has expressed since the beginning of the break up that she wanted to be friends, that I was her best-friend and she never wanted to lose me. At first I thought that this could work out, but I knew, just like so many of you, that I had a hidden agenda, which was to get her back. I think a part of me is still thinking that if I remain her friend, and spend time with her, creating positive moments, that she'll maybe fall for me again....but, I know that that is probably not going to happen.

 

I find the most difficult part of it all is the "hot and cold" feelings she seems to show me. Some times she's really happy to see me, other times she's cold and distant. Some times she'll give me a big hug before we part, and other times she'll just leave. So it's really frustrating at times because it's hard for me to know what she's feeling. We spent the day together last Sunday and went shopping. After, her parents invited me to stay for dinner (I'm very close with both of them) and she asked if I would like to watch a movie. She sat right next to me, very close, and she even fell asleep and put her feet under my leg (something she used to do when we were together to keep them warm). Then, for the next few days, she becomes distant, or gives me her fake "Happy-tone", as I call it. (This is the voice she uses when she's shy/around new people/nerouvs. It's higher than her normal tone, and she acts incredibly polite, but if you ever got to know her well you'd realise that she is a polite girl, but you just know that really isn't her true self.)

 

In any event, I'm not really sure *what* we are. We aren't friends, because we don't act like friends around each other, and were definitely not together anymore. So we're somewhere in the middle. I think that my conclusion is to agree with those that said it takes a long time before one can truly be just friends with their ex. It seems that becuase our break-up is still fairly recent, we're just not sure how to act around each other.

 

So if I could, I think the best option would be to cut contact with her, but as I said, it's very difficult to institute NC when the chance of running into her is so incredibly high. But the bottom line is that yeah, I agree. It takes a very long time to be just friends with an ex, especially if you've spent a significant amount of time together, and impossible if you still harbour feelings for them.

[raider5]

I love her enough to really want to see her happy and even if she came up to me right now and asked if I really meant that I WOULD say to her that I only wanted her to be happy and I would be happy for her if she found that special one because I love her enough to want what's best for her. That is why I couldn't be the friend for her, I know in other's minds it would seem like you're not showing that to her by her losing that support she had with me or losing that closeness she had with me, but I wouldn't be fair to her if I loved her and remained her friend.

 

The point is that they may or may not be happy without us, but if we were actually an integral part of their happiness then they only need tell us. If my ex came to me and said, "I still want to be friends with you, it would make me happy." I would tell her that it would pain me to live with this unrealized potential, with this life that I so badly wanting to live being right in front of me that I couldn't live. But I would bear that pain if she wanted me to. But she didn't ask me that, so as long as she's happy! well you know...

[LMTT]

I dunno about having any feelings of hatred or resentment for my ex. I hate what she did by ending our relationship because it's been by far the worst experience of my life (moreso than the ending of any of my previous relationships) but, given her reasoning, I can't hate or resent her for doing it because, if I were in her shoes I might well have made the same decision as she did.

 

However she wanted us to remain friends, she said her feelings for me hadn't changed but she felt differently about our relationship, she still thought the world of me and wanted me to be part of her life, but just not as boyfriend and girlfriend. I tried 'no contact' but it never lasted for more than a week before there was an exchange of emails or text messages initiated by either her or myself. I considered cutting her off altogether but, bearing in mind how many close mutual friends we have, it wasn't like we'd be able to avoid one another completely. Also we had booked an expensive 'holiday or a lifetime' together with friends before we had split up and both of us still wanted to go on that holiday so I decided to make an effort to pursue the friendship route. Sure, I wanted her back..I still do, but our split was in no way acrimonious, no other party was involved and I knew she wasn't looking for another relationship.

 

Anyway, we split in early Feb, the holiday was in April, it was very awkward at first and I almost abandoned it after a couple of days but chose to stick it out, and then something clicked between us. And now we seem to be about 80% of the way back to where we were a few months before we split. We enjoy one another's company, we *do* love one another (we have said as much), we still share a bed on occasion, the *chemistry* is still there, we are quite tactile with one another and whenever we spend time together we seem to grow a little bit closer before backing off slightly. We still treat one another as though we are bf/gf and indeed it feels like we are bf/gf in many respects, but without the physical aspect. The best way I can describe it is that we're somewhere between being in a relationship and being best friends but I am not sure where. It's akin to a 'comfort zone' in many ways. My ex is not relationship dependent, she doesn't do short term relationships either, nor has she wanted to stay friends with an ex before as most have treated her badly at some point.