Life Kit - Should you be friends with your ex?

Episode Date: May 23, 2024

When a romantic relationship ends, it can feel like a total loss. How do you go from being an important person in someone's life to a complete stranger? But experts say it doesn't have to be all or nothing. On this episode: Three questions to ask yourself before building a platonic connection with a former romantic partner.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Life Kit from NPR. Hey, everybody. It's Marielle. There's this Fiona Apple song that might be one of the saddest breakup tunes I've ever heard. Like, if you're going through a breakup and you really want to wallow, put this one on. It's called Love Written. In it, she describes the feeling of someone turning from partner to stranger. She calls her former lover a term of

endearment, baby, and then corrects herself. Dang, you know, we saw each other every day. We traveled together. I called you baby. And now I have to just call you Bob or Barbara. The next thing you know, we'll just be waving at each other from across the street. This sad realization is one reason people try to stay friends with their exes. I think sometimes it can just feel like such a loss to go from someone potentially being one of the closest people in your world to you not talking to them at all. That feels jarring. That feels devastating. And I think people want to lighten the weight of that loss.

That's Washington, D.C.-based psychologist Marissa Franco. She's a researcher and the author of the book Platonic, How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make and Keep Friends. And she says people tell themselves, you know, if my ex and I can be friends, then... It's not all a waste. It's not all a loss. There's still things that I can hold on to. Now, as anyone who's tried to be friends with an ex could tell you, things can get sticky real fast. You know, you might not be ready yet. You might not be friends for the right reasons. You might not even be compatible as friends.

Maybe your relationship was largely romantic and sexual. On today's episode of Life Kit, journalist Ruth Tam is going to give us some ground rules. A guide, basically, that'll help you determine whether to stay friends with an ex and what kind of friendship you both want. And I'll just say here, if you're still listening to sad Fiona Apple songs and crying over them yeah you're probably not ready I remember one time I broke up with someone and I mentioned it to my boss at the time and without knowing me very well not to mention who I was dating my boss simply said well him and that interaction said a lot to me about what people assume about breakups and how you should treat your exes afterwards. The thinking is that

whoever you are dating is dead to you. But sometimes that doesn't feel right. How can you go from feeling so close to someone to being estranged from them? Look, I know I'm not alone here. Countless songs have been written about this exact problem. So some people who break up try to stay friends. But that too doesn't always feel easy or natural. I do think it's possible to be friends with an ex. I think that sometimes it can be the exception to the rule. I think it's something you can't force, but it widely depends on like A, your definition of an ex, B, how long you were together, and I think it's something you can't force, but it widely depends on like A, your definition of an ex, B, how long you were together, and I think C, like how the relationship went and how it ended. This is Victoria Harding. She's a lesbian living in Somerville, Massachusetts.

When she first came out and was starting to navigate the dating world, she didn't have a lot of queer friends, so she started to build friendships with people she dated or hooked up with. When she realized she was ready for a serious partner, she turned to these friends, her former flings, for advice. I worked in the non-profit sector around this point. I was like, you know, my non-profit has a board of directors, like, why don't I just have a dating board of directors? So yeah, I just made a group chat with all of them. And I would just kind of text after dates or if I've seen someone being like, hey, is this kind of weird? Or like, is this good? Or like, should I end it with this person if they did like X, Y, and Z? Or am I being crazy? Dare I ask how many people are in the board of directors group chat? I think it's four or five. Hmm. One, two, three, four, five. Yep. I wanted information from people who knew what it

was like to date me. Like they were the first to be like, Victoria, that was weird. And also you did that on our first date. The idea of turning your exes into advisors. I love it. We may not want all our exes in the same group chat, but I think it's refreshing to see how we can still have meaningful connections with them once our romantic relationships end. Of course, there are times where it doesn't make sense to stay in contact with an ex. If you were mistreated, taken advantage of, or felt unsafe, you should definitely try to maintain your distance. But when relationships end for other reasons, figuring out a new dynamic with a former partner doesn't have to be all or nothing. They don't have to be either friends or strangers. You can develop a platonic relationship that works for

you. So how do you actually navigate that? Here's our first takeaway. Ask yourself the question, why do I want to maintain a connection with an ex? Here's friendship expert Marissa Franco. One of the primary questions we have to ask ourselves is, would I be friends with this person if I wasn't dating them? If I wasn't romantically involved, is this the kind of person I would want to be friends with? Marissa suggests asking, were you actually good friends before your relationship? What about during it? Or are you still hurting after a breakup and feel desperate to keep them in your life? Are you used to them being your main source of support as opposed to doing something solo, calling on friends or family,

or a professional? You may want to keep an ex in your life because you're a people pleaser and you don't want to let them or your mutual friends down. Or you may want to feel validated as a good partner, a good friend, or a good person, and you think being friendly with an ex is a sign of that. Whatever it is, be honest with yourself about your intentions. It's going to be easier to be friends if you were friends when you were dating, which is just not true for all couples. If this was a connection that was built on the romantic, built on the sexual, you might realize that you don't actually want to be friends with them,

that you're, you know, again, doing it for those reasons of trying to soften the blow of the breakup, but that they don't actually look like the people that you tend to want into your life platonically. Staying in touch with an ex might be about more than preserving your friendship. It might be about the shared life you used to have. Friendly acquaintances might be a good option if you have kids together,

or if you have a shared friend group. People are more likely to maintain friends with their ex when there's a shared friend group. People are more likely to maintain friends with their ex when there's a shared friend group. So, you know, there might be reasons to kind of be on a friendly level, even if emotionally you're not in a place where you can authentically dive headfirst into a full-blown friendship. Staying in touch might be normal for the community that you're both a part of. Perhaps you're both queer and you expect to see your ex in the same social circles post-breakup. Here's Xavier Pachke, a therapist based in New York with the Gender and Sexuality Therapy Center.

Within kind of the polyamorous and queer communities, it's more of like an ongoing kind of political effort to make it more like communal. I also would say like the community is smaller. You're going to run into some exes. So how to do that in a healthy way and how to make sure that it's a smooth transition because you're probably going to be in community after the breakup. Part of figuring out why you want to be in touch with an ex is asking yourself this crucial question.

Am I actually in a healthy place to be in contact with them? That's our second takeaway. You can't be authentic with a friend, whether you've dated them or not, if you have a hidden agenda. So you shouldn't be reaching out if you still desire them. Here again is psychologist and friendship expert Marissa Franco. There's research that finds it's just harder to get over your ex. If you stay friends, you're more likely to desire your ex romantically.

And they're more likely to desire you. And so if you want kind of like an honest friendship, I would try to wait until some of those feelings subside. If you're always tempted to bring up the past, it's probably not a good idea to hang out. One way of knowing you're ready to treat them as a friend is when you've fully forgiven them for the past. You want the best for them and are happy for them, whether or not their life includes you. Of course, all this is easier said than done, because the likelihood of being able to achieve all that depends on how you both handled the breakup.

So if it was a more destructive breakup, where you were ghosting or disengaging or withdrawing or not really giving resolution or clarity, you're less likely to be able to maintain friendship after. Whereas if you give like kind of like nice, honest, clear, upfront, transparent, not blaming or attacking, you're more likely to be able to maintain that friendship. So I would say the work of being friends with your ex actually starts before they become an ex. If you've spent some time thinking about why you want to stay in

touch and if you're in a healthy place to do that, it's time for our third takeaway. Ask yourself, what do I want our relationship to look like? Do you want a close friendship that involves calling each other for advice? Or would you be more comfortable with a friendly acquaintance's situation? It helps to know what you want first. That way you aren't overly influenced by what they want. This might be something to watch out for if you tend to have people-pleasing tendencies or have difficulty vocalizing what your needs are. Here's Xavier again. Really being honest with yourself and checking in and being like, this is what I want. If that doesn't match, then that's where a negotiation could happen, right? Like, they really want to be friends and you're like, I would like to be acquaintances, right? And then

we can kind of find something in between that. If there is a mismatch between what you both want, you'll have to figure out how to respect the needs of the person who wants less intimacy in this moment. Because just like a romantic relationship, you can't force a connection. Whether you've decided to be friends or friendly acquaintances, it helps to remember that you haven't necessarily been downgraded in your ex's life. Friendship might feel like a difficult pill to swallow because it feels like a consolation prize, you know, something you settle for after breaking up. But transitioning smoothly from being romantic to platonic means not placing either connection above or below the other. I think it's viewing the relationship bottom up rather than top down. Like top down, we were romantic, so now we should

be something similarly platonically that's very close and intimate, but rather, okay, this is how we're connecting now, post-relationship, given that information, where do we want it to go? To figure out what level of connection feels good, learn how to emotionally read the room. Try to survey the scene. What is the nature of your relationship currently, and how can you approach your ex in a way that reflects that? Just because you used to be close when you were romantic partners doesn't mean that once you're platonic, you have to have the same level of closeness. We don't necessarily want the most amount of intimacy there is. We want a level of intimacy that matches, you know, the nature of the relationship, right?

Like, in fact, friendship might work better for some people than a romantic connection does because when they're, you know, spending all their time together, they end up getting tired of each other. They end up getting annoyed with each other. You might actually find that giving each other space makes you better friends. Sometimes distance creates more intimacy. I'm sure people can relate to this with their families where they're like, I really love my family when I visit them on the holidays rather than living with them. So similarly, that can be the case for romantic relationships where you're like, hey, I'm actually happier and you're happier when we see each other once a month and have check-ins rather than when we're living with each other. And look, if you find yourself stuck on this question of what you actually want with an ex, it's okay to not know. Here's our therapist, Xavier. when people have boundary conversations, they think they need to have the exact answer and

articulate it perfectly of exactly what they want and why and how they're going to do that. But it's okay for the boundary to start at, I'm not sure. Like, I don't know if I want to hear about your future dates, but we'll try it and then we'll check in again and it'll be like, okay, that was fine, actually. I'm okay with that. Or nah, not for me. And I don't know is a perfectly okay boundary. If this is you and you don't know what you want, buy yourself some time to find out where you are emotionally. Here again is Victoria, who put five of her casual exes in a group chat. I do believe if you are going to be friends with a serious ex, you should probably try to go no contact at first. I've never tried it myself, but I look back and wish that I had.

You're not going to regret taking time to figure it out, but you can wind up regretting rushing the process. Our therapist Xavier suggests paying attention to how you react to an ex, not just emotionally, but physically. For example, how does your body feel when you get a text from them? If you like see the text and it's just like anxiety instead of, oh, okay, my friend, right? Like that might be a sign of taking some space or taking time away from that relationship. Sometimes with that time apart, you might realize you don't want to be friends actually. You might like have more hurt as the processing is happening. And you might like realize like, oh, actually, like we were really bad together and I don't

want to be around them. You can work through all these issues and find that the situation you're in is still dynamic, still changing. What if, for example, you start to have romantic feelings towards your ex again? I would ask what changed, like what would make it work right now. Just being clear on like if you want to rekindle something, then there should be a reason that you can state for why things might go better this time around. And sometimes there's really legitimate reasons. Maybe you were long distance and now you're in the same city. Or maybe sometimes you really have grown and realize how you were contributing to the issue and you're ready to be more mature about it.

I can't say that people should never get back with their exes, but I can say, at least from a research perspective, when you go back to someone that you dated prior, the relationship tends to have a lower likelihood of success than if they're a new person. After taking time for you both to reflect, remember that you don't need to be friends with an ex. Staying in touch may or may not feel optional, but the level of closeness is up to you. The new relationship you two have should ideally add to your life, not drain from it.

Here's Victoria again. Like, I think you can be in denial for a while and think like, oh my gosh, like I need this person. Like I'll keep them in my life in like any capacity. But you know, if they're not meeting you halfway, then you shouldn't have to force it. If you're going through a breakup, first off, I'm sorry. It can be so hard working your way through that pain. And if you're now trying to figure out a platonic dynamic with someone you used to date, here are three takeaways. Ask yourself,

1. Why do I want to stay in touch with my ex? 2. Am I in a healthy place to do so? And 3. What do I want our new relationship to look like? Just like a romantic relationship, you're not in complete control of the dynamic between you and a partner after you break up. It takes at least two of you to want the same thing, to take care of that dynamic and to communicate your boundaries, and maybe the boundaries of any new partners.

It'll require you to be considerate and communicative, but it can deliver some pretty delightful results. Just ask Victoria, with the board of directors group chat of exes. Did she ever find love? The last thing I wrote was like, hello board, I have a girlfriend. Thank you for following me on this journey. I think we should all get brunch.

And they were all like, wow, congratulations. Like, I love to hear it. Exes supporting exes. We truly love to hear it. That was journalist Ruth Tam. For more Life Kit, check out our other episodes. We have one on how to break up and another on how to date in real life without dating apps. You can find those at npr.org

slash life kit. And if you love Life Kit and you want even more, subscribe to our newsletter at npr.org slash life kit newsletter. Also, we love hearing from you. So if you have episode ideas or feedback you want to share, email us at life kit at npr.org. This episode of Life Kit was produced by Sylvie Douglas. Our visuals editor is Beck Harlan, and our digital editor is Malika Garit. Megan Cain is our supervising editor, and Beth Donovan is our executive producer. Our production team also includes Andy Tegel, Claire Marie Schneider, and Margaret Serino. Engineering support comes from James Willits. Special thanks to Fiona Scarborough and Rachel Friedman. I'm Marielle Seguera. Thanks for listening.