Of all the break up situations you could run into, the one dealing with friendship is the hardest to figure out. You’ll find people who tell you it’s okay to be friends with your ex boyfriend or girlfriend, as long as you don’t still love them. But what if you do? What if you want your ex back very badly, but are afraid to refuse their offer of friendship?
Well, first of all, you need to understand something: friendship is NOT a relationship. Period. Don’t ever believe you can substitute a false, pseudo-friendship for the real relationship you’d rather be having with an ex boyfriend or ex girlfriend. If you want your ex back, you need to work toward getting your ex back. Trying to play the role of the happy, platonic friend is going to end in heartache at best. And at worst? It’ll explode into a jealous, messy disaster that could wind up hurting you worse than any breakup.
Getting back together with an ex-girlfriend or ex-boyfriend involves many steps. One of the first and more important ones is disappearing for a while, in order to make your ex miss you. This cannot happen if you’re still friends with your ex. For this reason, when your ex wants to be friends with you there’s no way you should be accepting that offer. Instead, you should politely decline, walk away, and drop out of your ex-boyfriend’s or ex-girlfriend’s sight for a few weeks.
Understand that your ex wants to stay friendly with you for a good reason: he or she isn’t totally over the relationship just yet. Your ex wants the option to go backward if it suits them… to reverse the break up and date you again if their new single life just doesn’t work out. But in giving them the green light here, you’re effectively letting your ex do whatever he or she wants – date other people, continue being single, etc… etc… all while they feel comfortable in knowing you’re still hanging around for them.
But by refusing friendship and doing your own thing? Your ex is faced with the reality that they might lose you. Your ex wants to be friends so he or she can keep an eye on you – they don’t want you moving on and dating anyone else just as much as you don’t want them to. Seeing that you’ve got a life planned that doesn’t include them in it will force your ex to make hard choices. He or she will need to determine whether or not they want you back, and if so, they’ll need to act quickly or risk losing you forever.
Staying friends with an ex after your break up is never really an option. Not if you still love and want your ex boyfriend or girlfriend back. The best thing to do is to be honest – both with them, and with yourself. Let your ex know that you have stronger feelings than just friendship, and that pretending to be buddies is just not your thing. Either your ex dates you or loses you – those are the two options you need to present them with. Because when you do that, you’ll be shocked at how fast your ex might come running back to your old relationship.
