For those of you who became friends/reconciled with an ex...

[LN1987]

So I spoke to ex on Sunday and told him I didn't want to hate him and agreed things were not working out. He told me he was not sure why I was calling him, that I am no longer in his life, and that he never sees us being friends. When we first broke up (he dumped me) he told me he would like to be friends one day, he now says the thought of me ever with another guy is too much for him to handle so he can never be my friend. Have you guys had someone say this to you (we will never be in each others lives again in any form) and found after time you can be?

[endy]

I have but it's rare that I am friends again with an ex. I mean honestly really friends. I see my ex before this recent one and we talk normally. I said this to her and I'm now friends with her. It's probably just way too soon for that LN. He hasn't forgiven you yet. I'de just stay NC and let him heal as well.

[iBroken]

So I spoke to ex on Sunday and told him I didn't want to hate him and agreed things were not working out. He told me he was not sure why I was calling him, that I am no longer in his life, and that he never sees us being friends. When we first broke up (he dumped me) he told me he would like to be friends one day, he now says the thought of me ever with another guy is too much for him to handle so he can never be my friend. Have you guys had someone say this to you (we will never be in each others lives again in any form) and found after time you can be?

 

 

Yes - and we are friends

[charity]

So I spoke to ex on Sunday and told him I didn't want to hate him and agreed things were not working out. He told me he was not sure why I was calling him, that I am no longer in his life, and that he never sees us being friends. When we first broke up (he dumped me) he told me he would like to be friends one day, he now says the thought of me ever with another guy is too much for him to handle so he can never be my friend. Have you guys had someone say this to you (we will never be in each others lives again in any form) and found after time you can be?

 

 

i said it to my last 2 ex's and now i am friends with both of them. time passes, you learn that people make mistakes that they never intended, you get over it and realize it was for the best and...... then you can be friends. but it takes a lot of time. all the emotion has to be gone. and the romantic love of course.

[mouseno4]

I will be honest and say, no i have particularly avoided them because of what you describe. I just dont want issues, and meeting/talking to them again will bring issues to the table... yuk!

[capuccino83]

My ex is friends with his ex's and still occasionally tries to get in touch with me, even though I've told me him I don't want to be his friend. I don't see any valid reason to be friends with an ex, therefore, I will never be friends with him. My current boyfriend feels the same way - why live in the past? I'd say it's something that is individual and varies from person to person.

[LN1987]

I guess I am just missing my best friend you know. (I have lots of friends but you know the feeling)

 

I trusted him and he has become really nasty, I am just trying to come to terms with thinking he may never be in my life again... Big hurdle

[LN1987]

I will be honest and say, no i have particularly avoided them because of what you describe. I just dont want issues, and meeting/talking to them again will bring issues to the table... yuk!

 

And mouseno4 as someone who has been important dont you think it would be nice to have them as a friend, if you could both just be adults about what had happened and move on from such issues?

[charity]

My ex is friends with his ex's and still occasionally tries to get in touch with me, even though I've told me him I don't want to be his friend. I don't see any valid reason to be friends with an ex, therefore, I will never be friends with him. My current boyfriend feels the same way - why live in the past? I'd say it's something that is individual and varies from person to person.

 

 

its not like that though once you are truly over them and they you. then what's left is a bond with someone that once you had something great with. you can look at them and see the things you never saw before, good or bad and its just normal and nice. they know you really well and in my experience i can be really honest with them when we're talking about our current bf/gf and they offer some really good advice. i've never been tempted to go back. but its great to salvage a friendship with someone you were so close to after the relationship has gone sour and a lot of time has passed.

[capuccino83]

its not like that though once you are truly over them and they you. then what's left is a bond with someone that once you had something great with. you can look at them and see the things you never saw before, good or bad and its just normal and nice. they know you really well and in my experience i can be really honest with them when we're talking about our current bf/gf and they offer some really good advice. i've never been tempted to go back. but its great to salvage a friendship with someone you were so close to after the relationship has gone sour and a lot of time has passed.

 

No, because I think that real relationship are based on friendship and not romantic love. Romantic love varies and goes up and down; the friendship bond is stable and consistent - it holds the relationship together through thick and thin. If there is a break-up (in our points of view - both the bf and myself) it's because there was something fundamentally wrong with the friendship and we couldn't make it work. If the guy breaks up with me, I see it as he didn't value me enough to try - so why bother being friends with someone who kind of liked me over some bond that I shared in the past? Life is full of opportunities and people who want to be in your life COMPLETELY, I don't see any reason to carve out room for those who willingly chose not to be in it completely. Of course, I understand that there are special circumstances of where people maybe truly couldn't be together and can have a friendship, but that's more the exception than the norm and not something that I've experienced.

 

Of course, this is my opinion only. I know that many people develop friendships with their ex's, I would just not chose to do so nor would I feel comfortable dating someone who was still really good friends with their ex.

 

I've also noticed from a lot of my friends, and myself, that we often use the 'friends' excuse because we don't want to let go rather than really want to be friends with the ex. Once we got over the relationship or found someone knew, the desire for friendship quickly leaves! So if you do want to be friends with the ex, I say - wait until that happens so that you are sure that you want to be friends with them for them, not because you want them.

[Eocsor]

When people say they are friends with an ex it always makes me laugh. Usually they mean they are civil to each other when they occasionally meet on the street or that they e-mail or phone a couple of times a year to catch up. It's not a real friendship. It's a hollow shell of a former relationship that fulfills some need for them. Real friendship it's not.

[pl3asehelp]

When people say they are friends with an ex it always makes me laugh. Usually they mean they are civil to each other when they occasionally meet on the street or that they e-mail or phone a couple of times a year to catch up. It's not a real friendship. It's a hollow shell of a former relationship that fulfills some need for them. Real friendship it's not.

 

 

Yeah, this is as close as I ever get to an ex. I myself wouldn't call this a friendship. Maybe some would call this friendship. Why be any closer than this? Really just interferes with new relationships and living life. On to the future.

[browneyedgirl36]

I am actually friends -- real friends -- with an ex. We don't live near each other, but we e-mail and talk on the phone regularly. If we could meet up from time to time -- just as friends -- we probably would, but he lives about 400 miles away from me! The key to our friendship is this: We broke up over 20 years ago. I broke up with him, when we were 20, and I broke his heart. I cared about him a lot, but he had been my first boyfriend, I had dated him since age 15, and I was pretty sure at a certain point that I wasn't going to spend the rest of my life with him. He's a great guy, really -- he just wasn't "the one" for me and I wasn't "the one" for him. He has since married and is happy. When we first broke up, he was SO hurt. I told him that we would only be friends if HE was ok with it, that I would miss having him in my life but that I did not expect him to try and be my friend if it was too hard for him. For a few years after the break-up, we kept in sporadic contact - birthday cards, the occasional letter, and we even met up once in our hometown. Then...12 years went by, and I heard nothing from him. It made me sad, but I understood that he needed to move on and figured he had probably met someone else, so I never contacted him again. Then, nearly 4 years ago, he e-mailed me out of the blue. Since then, we have kept in touch regularly, and I definitely count him among my friends. I would love to meet his wife someday if I am able to travel to their area. The key to us being friends was TIME -- LOTS OF TIME. He told me that it took him a long time to come to terms with our breakup, and apologized for losing contact for so long. I understood. Even if I had never heard from him again, I would have understood why.

 

As for my other exes -- two of them I no longer speak to. I cut ties with both once it became clear that I was holding onto false hope and that they were perfectly content with their decisions not to be with me. One of them claimed he wanted to be "friends," but I didn't bite. His idea of "friendship" was basically just saying we were friends so that he could feel good about himself and not feel like the bad guy for dumping me, I think for someone else -- of the 5 e-mails (and one e-card for his birthday) that I sent in the 4 or 5 months after he dumped me with the "friends" line, he responded with one or two sentences to two of them and deleted one altogether without even reading it! (A really heartfelt one at that -- ugh!) I finally got the hint. I e-mailed him one last time, and he finally wrote back and admitted he was with someone else and that he should have told me sooner. He said he still wanted to be "friends" (oh, there's that word again!) and then promptly, in the next sentence, said "We could go for coffee sometime. My schedule is crazy, though." OOoooooookkkk. That's when I got smart (finally!) and realized how big of a fool I was making of myself. I wrote back a few sentences saying that coffee wasn't necessary, and that perhaps at some point we could be friends, but not now. I then threw away his phone number, deleted his e-mail address from my address book, and never contacted him or heard from him again. The other guy was a sketchy liar, and his idea of "friendship" was propositioning me while he was actually in a relationship with someone else (I didn't know he was with her, and NO, I did NOT take him up on his proposition!) So...I abruptly cut him off with a letter telling him what I thought of him, and that was the end of that one -- it's been 8 years and not a peep out of him...whew!

 

The most recent one is more difficult. He and I work together, and he thinks we're friends, but...I'm in love with him, he knows it, he loves me but apparently isn't "in love" with me -- he has never said that, but that's the conclusion I've come to -- so it's kinda messy. If things had gone a bit differently -- i.e. if we'd kept our clothes on and never gotten as physically AND emotionally close as we did -- things would be a lot different, and I think we'd be able to hang out as friends. But, I want him as a boyfriend, he knows that, I haven't gotten past that yet, so for me, there can't be a real friendship at this point. Maybe it will happen someday, or maybe we'll just drift into that place where we're colleagues that used to date and that's all...I don't know...To be continued...

 

For me, the key issues in friendships with exes are 1) Has enough time passed for the hurt to have subsided? and 2) Do I really want this person in my life? It really depends on the person and the circumstances.

[CatsMeeoow]

One thing you really have to understand is that the "I want to remain friends" line after a break up is fairly standard thing to say with little meaning behind it.

 

Since saying it to you he has then stated he doesn't see the two of you remaining friends and I'm going to guess that he has displayed no actions in showing you that he wishes to remain friends.

 

Sometimes a friendship can develop and stay but its not common. But, it only happens when both people are open to the idea of this playing out. He clearly isn't and I wouldn't put any hope that one day down the road he will have a change of heart about it.

 

You need to dust yourself off and keep on moving. Not everyone you meet is destined to be in your life forever. Some of the best parts are played by those who step in for just a short time... we get what we need and we are pushed into another direction. The more you move on and make your life full of other things, friends, new bf's the less you will be concerned that this guy once told you a big line about wanting to stay friends.

 

HUGS

[charity]

When people say they are friends with an ex it always makes me laugh. Usually they mean they are civil to each other when they occasionally meet on the street or that they e-mail or phone a couple of times a year to catch up. It's not a real friendship. It's a hollow shell of a former relationship that fulfills some need for them. Real friendship it's not.

 

i'd better clarify.i am friends with a few of my ex's but that doesn't mean that they are my BEST friends. that doesn't mean that its shallow or 'not real'. i have lots of friends. some are everyday friends, some we meet up every couple of months, some might only be twice a year but we chat on phone. there are different types of friendships and this stands whether its its an ex or someone of the same sex. i have no real attraction to my closest ex. i wouldn't go back to him. i LOVE when he calls, we will chat for an hour but its only every few months or so. we may go watch a movie or hang out like twice a year. our relationship didn't work but we managed to remain friends after a few years had passed and we had had other relationships. i really find it kinda sad that so many people here are adamant that they couldn't be friends with their ex.

[Eocsor]

It's not sad, it's just human nature. Most can't do it, a very rare few can.

[Grace696]

My ex who was my very first boyfriend, and who I was with on and off for 7 years, is now one of my best friends and has been one of my biggest supports during this break-up. We always stayed in touch, but certainly weren't able to be really close friends until a few years after the break-up. But I always knew he would be remain in my life in some capacity forever. Part of the reason why a friendship might work for us is that the break-up was pretty much mutual, and neither of us was brokenhearted over it.

 

I admit that it's not exactly like a friendship I might have with someone who I didn't once have a romantic relationship with. In some ways it's actually much closer. He knows me so well, and he is someone who I feel able to ask for support. When I went on holiday by myself a couple months after this latest break-up, I was worried about being lonely and sad and asked 2 people if I could stay in text contact over the time, and if I could call them if I needed to: my mum and this ex. So in some ways he's become like family.