There is a debate raging across America’s heartland. It’s being discussed in our homes, our schools, our offices, the halls of Congress … okay, maybe not the halls of Congress. I’m not talking about the presidential election or health care reform or even American Idol. I’m talking about the perennial and heated question of whether or not one can or should be friends with her ex.
The funny thing is I always thought I fell squarely on one side of the debate. I always thought I was the girl who stayed buddy-buddy with her exes. I was all (cocky voice), “Yeah, I’m friends with like, all my old boyfriends.” How kind of me, huh? Especially as I’m always the dumpee rather than the dumper.
Liar. I was lying to myself and to the people I said it to. Only recently have I adjusted my thinking and accepted that, in most cases, I’m actually not friends with my exes—maybe friendly with them, but not friends—and that’s okay. This has kind of rocked my world.
Truthfully, there are only two guys I’ve dated who I am sincerely good friends with now, and that’s only after time and distance. We are past the weirdness, but only because we both realized early on that we were not meant to be together. These were not my life’s great loves or drawn-out affairs. This was a matter of dipping our toes in the water, feeling it was kind of chilly, and deciding to float on the raft and sun ourselves rather than take a swim. Catch my drift?
My ex/friends were exes in the denotation of the word but not the connotation. There was not excessive hand-wringing and sobbing uncontrollably on the bathroom floor when these courtships ended. There were a few tears because I am an overly emotional person, but there was no separation anxiety, no rehashing of past wrongs, no coming back together only to be painfully torn apart again. I do love these ex/friends, and I do not use that word lightly, but I love them in a platonic way that does not involve me wanting to take off my clothes.
But the other boyfriends, the ones I fell head over heels for, the ones I imagined a future with, the ones who were my best friends during our relationship, the ones with whom I fathomed jumping off the proverbial cliff by uttering those words—“I love you”—that make a woman so vulnerable. Those men I don’t speak with. There’s one I wouldn’t even know how to begin to get in touch with. Even the ones I wasn’t totally gaga over—the ones I was only kind of head over knees for—I don’t really have a desire to call up when I want to see a movie or grab a drink or talk about my life. I’m happy leaving my exes in my past. To have tried to maintain a friendship with them would only have been a subtle (or maybe not so subtle) way to cling to what we had had, which was not, in fact, a friendship, but a relationship. Upon closer examination, I see what I thought was my norm—the successful ex/friends—are actually pleasant anomalies.
This is not because I harbor ill will toward my exes (well, maybe for one whose behavior I still consider reprehensible). In fact, I’d love to run into most of them, catch up, reminisce about the old days, share a few laughs … and then part ways until our next chance meeting a few months or years down the line. I’ve realized that these men came into my life to be my lessons, not my friends.
I am not an idiot. I know that going out for “friendly” drinks with an ex only leads to one of two things (or possibly both): sex and heartache. I speak from experience. So why have I been deluding myself, convincing myself, for so long that if I were a mature and balanced individual with a kind heart, I could put aside the feelings I’d spent months, even years, cultivating—literally will them to evaporate—and establish a healthy and mutually satisfying platonic relationship with these men? Because maybe I am an idiot.
That guy I wrote so glowingly and hopefully about recently … yeah, he dumped me. (Guess I should have knocked on wood.) And when he did it, sitting in my bedroom, trying and failing to explain to me why he just wasn’t happy in our relationship, he started to utter those words, “Maybe one day we can—”and that’s where I had to stop him cold in his tracks. “Please don’t,” I said, those words piercing my heart more than any others he had uttered that day. I did not want to hear that cliché. It was not something I was then willing (or still am willing) to even ponder. When he hurt my heart, he lost my friendship. I say this not to punish him or put on a strong front, but because I have to protect myself, and because I’ve switched sides in the debate. I do believe now that sometimes the stronger thing to do, the kinder thing to do, is to let your friends be your friends and your exes be your exes. That’s at least one lesson learned.