Let me ask you a question. Answer it with either a yes or no, but most importantly, answer it honestly.
Is it possible to be friends with your ex?
Throughout all of high school, I dated this guy on and off. At the time, he was my high school sweetheart. When I got to college, things started to change. I met new friends, love interests and overall our lives were on different paths. Feelings weren't mutual anymore and I realized I wasn't fully happy. With that, we ended up breaking up and going out separate ways. But of course, it's not as cut and dry as words make it seem. Let's put it this way, breakups are never meant to be easy in which this breakup involved a lot of hurt emotions and messiness. It's more than just losing a boyfriend or girlfriend, you're losing a friend and in my case, I was losing one of my best friends. It hurt and although the breakup was my decision, it still didn't mend the pain of losing that person. We went from best friends to strangers, at least so we thought.
Fast forwarding four years later, my current boyfriend and I were having a discussion regarding if it is or is not possible to be friends with your ex. Some people say, "you can never be friends with someone you were in love with," while others say, "being friends with your ex shows you two are mature enough to get over the fact you weren't meant to be together." But it all comes down to a few factors such as time between the breakup, your definition of friends and if you're over it or not.
In my case, it took years of not speaking, awkwardness when we were both at parties and many years of attempting to hate one another. I realized it took a lot of unnecessary energy and time to do that. We broke up because of a bunch of things but nothing detrimental to the point where I hated him as an individual. I knew it was possible because I was able to still say semi-decent, overall good things about him.
Being friends with someone differs on the person in my opinion. For example, there's a few people I see daily who I'm able to small talk with and get along with but I don't go out of my way to text them to hangout. Even so, I still consider that person a friend of mine. In the case of my ex, no, we do not hangout and we don't Snapchat one another 24/7. We don't text on the regular and overall, we don't know what's truly going on in each others lives. That's the key to the "friendship." The reason it's possible to be friends with your ex is because after years of not talking and years of trying to hate each other, you realize you don't know that person. You know the old person but not the current day person you call your ex.
In the long run, it may be uncomfortable, but it is possible to be civil, friends with your ex regardless if you are or are not dating someone new. In order to get to that point, it comes with fights, awkwardness and the most important aspect: maturity. It got to that point that talking about our old relationship and our old feelings and just talking in general about the same thing wasn't important anymore. I'm able to go to one of our mutual friends house for a party and not have to worry about the weirdness. Or I'm able to talk to my ex like an actual human being and not somebody I'm trying to hate. It took time to grow up and realize we aren't the same people we once were.
So when I'm asked, are you friends with your ex? My answer is yes.
But it's to an extent in which, I'm happy the way it is. Our society is hooked on the stigma of ex's can never be friends and that the moment you see two ex's together, they're most definitely either back together or friends with benefits. Although that could potentially be it, there's also the possibility that maybe the two of you mutually decided it was old news to keep hating each other and how it was easier to just consider yourself friends after all that time. It's the actions that follow that define the friendship and rather define if you're mature enough to move on from the past and live in the now.
