We’ve all either said it or heard it at least once after a breakup: “Let’s be friends.” But is it a good idea to remain friends with an ex? Is it even possible? Was Billy Crystal’s character in When Harry Met Sally right when he said, “Men and women can’t be friends because the sex part always gets in the way”?
Relationship and advice columns have made their money almost solely from discussing this thorny issue, yet it never seems to get totally resolved. Just as every relationship has its own dynamic, so does the aftermath of every breakup.
It Ain’t Over ’Til It’s Over
I once went to a birthday party for my older brother and was shocked to find that the guest list seemed to come straight out of his little black book; just about everyone there was a past girlfriend, and many of them had their new boyfriends in tow.
I was torn between two reactions to this situation—admiration that my brother was mature enough to maintain civil, even close, bonds with his former flames, and a lingering suspicion that those relationships couldn’t have been so fantastic in the first place if no one seemed to care that they were over.
My brother, Zac, and I are two very different people, though. He is cool and authoritative; he believes in some higher logic that governs the universe and dictates the correct answers to those who seek them. I, on the other hand, am passionate and high-strung; I often allow my strong emotions to take hold of my reason. The arc of my relationships seems to go from ecstatically good to tragically bad, whereas his seem to have much more equilibrium.
Once I understood all of this, I realized that Zac really had moved on from these women, and that they (by all outward appearances) had moved on from him. I, other the other hand, don’t seem to be finished with any of my exes. And by finished, I mean that I’m either still falling in love with them or still breaking up with them.
Rack ’Em Up
According to most relationship counselors, Zac has the healthier, more mature attitude toward the ex situation than I do. That’s probably right.
Just the fact that both men and women are waiting longer to get married, and therefore are racking up more partners before settling down, means that we are all going to have many more exes than our parents and grandparents did. In fact, neither my maternal nor paternal grandparents had any exes; they married young and stayed married their whole lives. They left us with no guidebook to deal with the changing landscape of modern relationships, leaving us to figure out for ourselves the healthiest ways of dealing with an ex-partner after the relationship ends.
Savage Love and Peaceful Friendship
Though, if we are in need of a guidebook, Dan Savage’s internationally syndicated column Savage Love is probably the best out there. In his usual salty language and wry, blunt sense of humor, Savage has cumulatively offered a wealth of advice on dealing with exes throughout both his column and podcast. Take these gems, for example:
- Exes are a part of your life and history, and the same goes for your partner’s exes. Don’t expect to exclude them from your life altogether; it’s impossible. The experiences you had with them have shaped you and your future. The only reasonable thing to do going forward is to set boundaries—both long- and short-term—that make both of you, and both of your new partners, comfortable.
- Don’t expect to be friends all at once. Your relationship took time to build, and it will take time to separate. You might need a period of no contact that lasts anywhere from a few weeks to a few years before you have both moved on enough to have a healthy connection with the person.
