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Staying friends with your ex, can it work?
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It's very difficult to generalise and talk about everyone's situation, but yes I do.
In terms of your feelings of loss, if it was a relationship that lasted for a few years - as yours was - I don't think it's abnormal or even unusual to still have feelings for someone after eight months apart. I think your problem is that you've tried to sail smoothly from a relationship to a friendship from the start (at least that's my understanding of it) and you need to give yourself a period of time and a degree of space that's going to enable you to grieve for the relationship you've lost, dust yourself off and start to focus on a future that either doesn't include him... or in which he plays only a very minor, supporting role. You need to stop having frequent phone conversations with him, I think talking on the phone is even worse for your situation than actually meeting face to face. Talking to a faceless person who you have lingering feelings for is just gutwrenching, I've always found it creates a pretty unbearable sense of yearning for them that I don't seem to feel when I meet and talk to them face to face. There's something about the phone that does that to me, and I haven't yet put my finger on why exactly that is.
Of course it is possible to be friends with an ex, but it's extremely difficult and (in my opinion) hinges on whether or not you've allowed yourself to get over the romantic relationship before you attempt a platonic one. After splitting up with my most signifigant ex, I too had that feeling of disgust about other men who I'd probably have been very interested in if I wasn't carrying such baggage. I'd get an overwhelming feeling that I wanted them to get the hell away from me, and I found it very difficult being intimate with the next bloke I was "seeing" as he wasn't my ex. He hadn't done a thing wrong, I just wasn't ready.
I really feel for you, the loneliness and the memories can be haunting. Especially when you've been drinking. Didn't you start a thread about quitting drinking (or at least cutting down)? I think that'd possibly be for the best, for a while, I would always get very maudlin when drinking and that'd be the time I'd be most likely to call him up or text and break my self-imposed "no contact" rules. It's one of those situations that is only ever going to be resolved by a bit of time, space and clearing the cobwebs from your head. You need at least a short period of time with no contact. I think that if you're anything like me, you'll find that with no contact and a little time that the feelings of hurt, loneliness and "love" (or yearning for the love you did share) will just gradually die away, until one the memory that they were once a colossal part of your life actually starts to feel quite surreal. The only way I can describe my feelings towards my ex now is that it's like thinking back to an occasion or even and having that questioning feeling about whether or not it actually happened - or if it was just some strange dream you once had. I suspect you might be holding onto a lot of trinkets, gifts and memorabilia of your relationship, and may well not want to get rid of it. But I did, and after flushing the evidence I have to say there's actually not much to show that our relationship wasn't just a recurring dream/nightmare I had for a couple of years.
One day you'll wake up and realise that you haven't thought about him in x days/weeks/months. You will get there, it just does take what seems like an eternity and there's no fast forward button.
Previously, the circumstances were entirely different, but somehow we've managed to stay amicable and in touch. Last summer, me and my first girlfriend broke up, mainly because of my commitment phobia at the time. For the sake of her son, (she was a single mum) we kept things amicable. He still thought we were together until his sudden death late last year. She's since moved away to London to live with her sister, and I saw her again recently. We're in touch, but things will never be the same again.
As to whether it can work... it's too early in my life for me to answer that definitively.
Seriously? I've never known anyone to actually catch their other half in the act. Whose bed was it? Were they mid-shag?
Sorry if it's sensitive subject (but you did bring it up), but I can't resist asking... it sounds like a scene out of Emmerdale :chin:
I think all bar one of my exes I'd be happy to be friendly with, if there's any grudges there then they aint from my end (even though I'm constantly told they should be)
I think it'd be really hard to be proper good friends with any of them though, because every breakup I've had someones been hurt or someones cheated or whatever.
It is a bit gutting when you're really good mates with someone, it turns into something more, shit hits the fan, wanky breakup and there's no friendship left at the end.
Maybe I might get proved wrong in time, but I'd definitley rather have had them as friends rather than exes :yes:
In the end, a crying and upset SG went to stay over with another work colleague. The next morning, she was unceremoniously dumped.
I dont even understand how this works. How can a person possibly just cut someone completely off who has been around for the past few years? Especially if they haven't cheated on you or you have no real reason to properly hate them? It's like cutting off a leg or something.
Tbh im finding doing that extremely difficult myself at the minute, guess its what advice ive been given. But i guess all our situations are different. I mean if you are happy to be just friends and wont feel shit all the time if thats all it is then i don't see there being much of problem being friends, just in my case its abit different. If i am constantly in contact with this person and i know those old feelings havent gone anyway then i know it wont work as being friends at the moment, i'd just feel shit all the time.
Good stuff, I reckon if both peeps have a grown up attitude and are mature enough then there's a better chance of it working.
I'm lucky enough because 99.99999% of my past flings and shags and exes and stuff are all back home or back in Dundee (except the one off here obviously :wave: ) because I moved a few months ago, so it's not like I've much chance of bumping into them or anything, so any friendship would probably just be an occasional texts type of thing anyway.
for me its impossible......ex's are horrible i cling onto them and cant get them out of my life
Thats a terrible thing to do to someone planned or not! Anyone would have been upset in that situation.
Now, if we see each other we speak to be polite, but I wouldn't say that he's a mate. Just someone from my past.
If you can both be mature about it (my ex couldn't, I think simply as he had no other relationship experience until me) then being mates is fine. But in most circumstances, one party is going to find it more difficult than the other.
I no longer talk to my ex of three years. I tried the whole friends thing with him but it just didn't work. I found it hard to move on properly too.
No your right, there is no way it would work if its like that. The other person is just gonna end up getting hurt or just feel crap. I agree.
I agree with Mr Skellington, I broke up with my ex because it wasn't working while he was at uni. We broke up at the beginning of the Christmas holidays and it was too hard not to be err...friends with conveniences...but then when he went back to uni we said that's it. He came back at Easter and we were good pals again and still are. We go out together loads because we have all the same friends.
Nice to be nice, no point holding things against people years after the event.