Can You Ever Be Friends With Your Ex? Although it would make things much easier in the dating world, relationships rarely see mutual breakups. One person is usually the heartbreaker, while the other mulls over the breakup and pain for weeks, even months. It's never easy to break up with someone you've shared good times with (and even if they were bad times, they were still times). But the person who does the breaking up feels like less of a bad guy by offering that sense of truce: "It's not you, it's me. We'll still be friends, right?" This peace offering of friendship provides the dumper with the solace of knowing they aren't such a horrible person because they still want to be friends with their ex.
Not only does it give the dumper the comfort of knowing they aren't monsters, but by wanting t! o remain friends, it also allows the dumper to feel that their former lover will still be in their life, and they won't have to miss having them around. So now the dumper can move on with their life with ease, and with the pleasure of having coffee with their former mate every so often -- but the ex whose heart was ripped out and chewed up by the person who keeps leaving them friendly messages and e-mail isn't a happy camper. Obviously, these messages on the machine and coffee dates don't last long, and if they do, they end even worse than the breakup. Yes, being friends with an ex-lover is an impossible feat: find out why. Exes must stay that way.
Although it may be possible to have casual sex with a friend, even this can damage a relationship. As hard as it is to accept, it's difficult to bring a relationship back to its normal state after having been most intimate with someone. You will alwa! ys have an image of that person naked, and memories of the trysts will always be triggered by the smell of her skin or perfume, or even by hearing a song that you once made passionate love to. And as thick-skinned as you are, it's hard to see the person in the same light after being entangled in each other's skin and sharing a moment of sheer ecstasy with one another. Why else can't exes become friends?
As hard as two exes try to stay friends, they can never really confide in one another other. How do you tell your ex that you have a hot date tonight, or that you and your new lover are going away on a steamy getaway? You can't even tell your ex that the reason you're smiling so much is because a woman has just pleasured you like never before. You can tell her these things, but new lovers and mates are always going to be a sensitive issue. It's even harder to tell her how hurt you were that your date stood you up the other night, thanks to your sense of pride. Remaining friends seems to provide us with the security blanket that the person who has been in our life will still be there, and we can call on them every once in a while to find out how they are -- but we'll never actually know how they really are. Always One-Sided Bitterness Since breakups are rarely one-sided, one party will always feel resentment or bitterness towards the other person. Even if your ex is feigning friendship, she's not sincerely your friend; so if it seems like plans with your new potential woman are always being sabotaged, they just might be.
And where there's bitterness, there's jealousy. And the truth of the matter is, it's hard to be sincerely happy for your ex when they've just found the new love of their life.
It's human nature to be jealous or resentful when our ex finds a new person to cuddle up to, even if we don't have feelings for them anymore. It almost becomes a race of who will find the new lover first, a challenge especially brought on by the person who was dumped. Even for the person who did the breaking up, the thought of someone else taking your place in the memories that you and your ex shared is hard, and sometimes extremely painful to fathom.
Even if your relationship was completely problem-ridden, chances are that the passion and sexual chemistry between the two of you still exists (unless lack of attraction was the reason for your breakup). This is a recipe for disaster because it means that every time you get together under this new "friendship" premise, the lust and passion you have makes it more likely that you'll end up in "one more" night of unbridled "goodbye" sex, for old times sake. This brings you right back to square one -- how you felt right after your breakup, and just when you were doing so well.
Leaving the past behind is hard enough, and you don't want part of your past still programmed in your cell phone. Although it's easier for the dumper, recovering from a breakup is still a hard thing to do since it means being single again, getting back into the dating scene, and no longer making that daily goodnight call you and your ex used to share. But having that person still lingering in your life as a constant reminder makes it even harder to move on with your life, meet new people and turn a fresh page. It's almost like keeping one foot in the past, and another struggling to make it back into the pickup scene. It also might be a better idea to leave things with pleasant memories of the other person, rather than drag the potentially doomed relationship through the mud.
|
