Why You Shouldn’t Be ‘Just Friends’ With Your Ex

When a romantic relationship has foundered and finally come undone, what happens next can be incredibly difficult for both parties.

Generally speaking, though, ‘friendship’ in the true sense of the word cannot and will not work.

At least, not for a very long time.

Here’s the truth of the matter—-people break up for a reason.

And that reason is often (although not always) more pressing for one side than the other

What I mean by that is that if it was your decision to break it off with your ex, then you likely have extremely good reasons for that. It’s likely that you spent a lot of time thinking about the situation, and what you were going to do.

But for your ex, it’s entirely different. Your ex hasn’t spent weeks, or months, or years, contemplating a breakup. Quite possibly, it has come entirely out of the blue as far as they’re concerned.

And when something that we previously has is snatched away from us (or so it seems from our point of view) then our natural tendency is to try to retain it via any means possible.

‘Dropping Their Bid’

In a relationship scenario, what that means (regrettably) is that men (and women) will be tempted to immediately ‘drop their bid’ in an effort to hang on to whatever they can with the other person.

And then (even if they don’t consciously admit it to themselves) they hope to use the ‘friendship’ as a starting point to revive the relationship to its former glory.

To put it in simple terms, when a man is dumped and desperate to get his girl back his thinking will be something like this:

‘OK, I get that this is serious. I understand that a sexual and romantic relationship is no longer on the cards right now. So what can I do? I know—-I’ll pitch for ‘friendship’ as a stopgap solution. That will at least allow me to keep in contact with her for a little while. Hopefully then I’ll figure out a way to get her back in the meantime’.

But this is far from satisfactory from the other woman’s point of view. From her point of view the relationship is defunct. And while she may still have tender feelings towards her ex, there is no chance that she is up for a re-run of the relationship.

OK, some men will say ‘But what we had is / was so special that we should at least remain friends to honour that’.

Well, I’m going to make a bold claim here—-it is impossible to genuinely be ‘friends’ with someone who has just romantically rejected you. At least in the short-medium term.

Why? Because there are the inevitable feelings of hurt, resentment and even anger to be worked through. And because anyway it’s not really friendship that they want—-it’s a chance to rekindle love.

That being said, after a decent amount of time has passed (and by that I’m talking years rather than months) then, if the will is there, it is possible for former lovers to be ‘friends’ of a kind—-although this typically means a friendship on a fairly superficial, ‘acquaintance’ level rather than anything else.

But if you have an ex who is pushing for friendship immediately after the breakup has happened (or if you are the ex who is pushing for it) then both parties need to take a step back and recognise that a major ‘time out’ is required before such a thing should even be contemplated.

Because when it comes down to it, ‘friendship’ immediately after a breakup is dishonest—-on one side it is composed of pity; on the other, the hope for something more.

And no friendship should be based in dishonesty, no matter how close the participants were before.

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