Can You Ever Be Friends With Your Ex?
• Does it have to be all-or-nothing?

In most relationships, the time to say goodbye usually arrives at one point or another -- unless you never intend to walk down the aisle, of course (and even then...).

Donde hubo fuego, cenizas quedan (where there was fire, ashes remain) is a popular phrase often heard spoken by Latinas. In other words, if you have had a romantic relationship with someone, short or long... there are still feelings? The best answer is "Depends on the situation...for some, the feelings linger a long time. For others, they end fairly quickly".

With your ex, you've shared memories that will either make you laugh or cry, and it's time to take your experiences, put them in your back pocket and move on. But somewhere on the road of parting ways couples feel the need to promise to stay friends -- which ultimately leads to more broken promises.

So, can you ever be friends with your ex?

Comfort zone
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 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 can still be friends." 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.

I've created a monster
Not only does it give the dumper the comfort of knowing they aren't monsters, but by wanting to 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. The person who got dumped, however, has the pleasure of being constantly reminded of the person who ripped out their heart when they receive friendly messages and e-mail.

Obviously, these messages on the machine and coffee dates don't last long, and if they do, they end even worse than the breakup.

So, having considered all this, can you ever be friends with your ex? The clear answer is it all depends on the individuals involved, some can, while most others cannot.

Here are a few things to consider before you can decide if you can be friends with your ex:

You've seen each other naked!
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 intimate with someone.

You will always 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.

You can't confide in each other
As hard as two exes try to stay friends, they can never really confide in each 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, however, we'll never actually know how they really are.

There will always be one-sided bitterness
Since breakups are rarely one-sided, one party will always feel resentment or bitterness toward the other. Even if your ex is feigning friendship, she's not sincerely your friend. If it seems like plans with your new potential woman are always being sabotaged, they just might be.

Jealousy comes into play
And where there's bitterness, there's jealousy. And the truth of the matter is that it's hard to be sincerely happy for your ex when she's just found the new love of her life.

You don't want them with anyone else
It's human nature to be jealous or resentful when our ex finds a new person to cuddle up to, even if our feelings have somewhat faded. It 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.

Passion still exists
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.

Moving on
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 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.

In a perfect world, the ideal would be for exes to succeed at being friends, but in one where bitterness, jealousy, passion, and human nature exceed reasoning and rational thought, it's impossible. Unless the two of you were the best of friends before, both broke up on the same terms in a perfectly mutual breakup, both have no qualms about either of you seeing new people, and have both instilled a policy of total honesty, you're better to leave the friendship behind... along with the memories.


From Askmen.com