How to stay friends after a breakup
So you’ve broken up, but you want to stay friends (but you also want to stay broken up).
Okay.
Emotions aside, let’s talk logistics.
First things first:
You need to create space from your ex.
You need to.
I know, you don’t want to. You barely even want to breakup!! They’re so great. (At least I assume they’re great, right? Why else would you want to stay friends with them?)
So if they’re great, then perhaps the last thing you want to do is to stop talking to them and hanging out with them, especially if you share a friend group or hobbies or your favorite restaurant. (There’s nothing like sharing custody of the best taco joint in town.)
But.
You need time to pass.
You need time to see them in a new light.
Time to meet other shiny people who will remind you that you are able to admire more than one person in your lifetime. Time to refocus on you. Time to reeeaally recognize and digest the reasons that you are better together… AS FRIENDS.
Because let me tell you, if you keep in touch with them regularly, and especially if you keep hanging out, it’s a lot easier for those lines to be blurred. One couch hang and accidental bone session later, and you’re in messy territory: what does this mean, are we getting back together, are we soulmates, were we wrong to breakup, wait why are you leaving and not staying the night, do you not love me anymore, why don’t you love me, am I not loveable? Oh god ~cries for 2 days straight~
Messy.
You need to create space.
And THEN…
After time…
You might be able to see them as just this lovely human that you would like to have access to AS FRIENDS occasionally, not the ravishing specimen that you harbor romantic and sexual feelings for.
You might reason it would be a shame to lose touch with them because you have common interests and support each other’s dreams and want to hear how their nephew is doing with his spelling bees.
If that sounds nice to you, please know that you will have to work to get that place.
It’s important to recognize that you’re NOT at that place right now.
You’re not.
You’re in breakup territory, where feelings are messy and emotions are foggy and hearts are racing.
You need the nervous system of the relationship to calm down.
And you can be friends once the relationship is changed.
But you definitely need to change the relationship to go from more than friends, to just friends.
And you need to be honest with yourself.
Do you really want to be friends? Do you want to be just friends?
It’s like that one acting exercise. Emphasize each word in that question and see if anything changes about your answer:
DO you want to be just friends?
Do YOU want to be just friends?
Do you WANT to be just friends?
Do you want to BE just friends?
Do you want to be JUST friends?
Do you want to be just FRIENDS?
This might be a comical little exercise, but did anything change for you??
Chances are, there might have been a little shift or tweak when one or more words were emphasized. Try to connect to your deepest inner wisdom – the one that will never steer you wrong and always wants what’s best for you (in the long run!), and listen to what that wisdom has to tell you.
And then, after getting honest with yourself, and after creating space, (and maybe after receiving a little therapy) THEN you can hang out with your ex just as friends. ;)