i am not friends with any ex boyfriend or any guy i’ve ever been romantically involved with. isn’t that what we fear most when it comes to relationships? the possibility of your favorite person no longer being in your life? i mean, there have been multiple times in my life where i didn’t want to take the risk with a friend who i had feelings for because of how much respect i had for our friendship. there have been other times where i believed that the amount of love, respect, & admiration was too strong not to pursue a relationship.
up until my first year in college, i always believed that exes could be friends. that with enough time & space to heal, that there could always be a possibility of friendship, as if there were a formula for it. i’m only 19, so i have a lot more life to live & people to love, but in the few relationships i have been in, i can almost guarantee that there will be no form of friendship in the near, and most likely far, future. here are a couple reasons why: a) being friends would just be too painful b) there isn’t any need for friendship (usually when the relationship ends badly) and/or c) future significant others wouldn’t appreciate our friendship
now let’s dissect these reasonings a little further. a) being friends would be too painful. this heavily applies to my first real relationship from high school. it’s been almost two years since we broke up so it’s not like it’s painful now, but when we first broke up, i didn’t want to see him as anything but my boyfriend. i had seen him as my partner for YEARS & when it was over, it was just too hurtful to see him continue to live his life. i would think about all the things he told me he wanted to do, but ,now, it would be without me by his side. he’ll make friends who won’t even know who i am and he’ll have a life that i’m not apart of. i think ab all those things at the end of every break up, and i have found a way to find the beauty in all those things! what i found funny about this relationship, is that we would switch back and forth over whether or not we thought we could handle friendship. one day he thought we could, other days i thought we could, & there were a couple moments in time where we both thought we could. when it came down to it, we were never going to be just regular friends. i mean, how could we? we have seen each other in the best and worst conditions, exchanged “i love you”s & promises of marriage (as cringy as it sounds), and had spent the majority of our teenage years as being each other’s significant others. as friends, we would both talk about random things, things that usually had no substance or real meaning. we would ask each other for dating advice, which would often hurt the feelings of the other. once we moved away from each other & months of silence had gone by, we tried to get to know each other for the people we had grown to be. despite there being good intention behind the efforts, there just really wasn’t a place for us to just be friends. sometimes, i felt like he was always going to see me as the person i was over a year and a half ago & there’s never a justification for anyone ever making you feel like you haven’t positively grown for the better, no matter how much you want that friendship to work out. if there’s anything you can take away from this reasoning, it’s that it’s okay if you want them to eat, just not at your table. this simply means that you can wish them all the success, happiness, and positivity in the world, it’s just better if you weren’t in the picture.
b) there’s no need for friendship. i feel this for the majority of my exes and failed relationships. it’s not always a bad thing, but most of time it is. i see this in the ex that cheated on me, the guy who told me i was “everything he hated in a girl” but continued to still see me, the guy who raved about how much more athletic he was than me, & some others that i just won’t mention because this list is already embarrassing enough. the one thing that THESE guys have in common is that they all made me feel badly. now, were there times where i felt over the moon with them? absolutely! even though i might remember them in the manner that they treated me, i will never truly believe that they are a bad person, just had a bad moment. sometimes, when you cut ties with someone, romantic or platonic, it’s okay to just thank them for their time, energy, love, & space, and just walk the other way. on the other side of this coin, you two might just need to go your separate ways because there was nothing there to piggy back off...nothing there worth salvaging a friendship for. this might seem bland, but sometimes, out of these scenarios, it might just be the best case. no animosity, just a mutual agreement of just moving on. no harm, no foul. some people just aren't meant to be together forever and it doesn't always have to be any deeper than that.
and finally, c) their new significant other doesn’t appreciate your friendship. i have been on both sides of this reasoning. i have stopped talking to exes in respect of my new relationship and i have been unfriended by exes who got into new relationships. if this has happened to you, don’t take it personal. acknowledging that you or the other party is doing what’s best for the new relationship is important. of course, parts of you will miss having that person in your life, but people move on & some may determine that you’re presence is not benefitting their relationship. it’s no longer about you or ur ex or what benefits the relationship between you two, it’s about them & their new partner now. this is tough pill to swallow, but it’s someone else’s turn to love them. but if you're unfriending an ex with the intention of respecting and bettering your new relation, i say good for you! it takes a lot to remove someone from your life that once used to be a big part of it. but it shows your maturity and willingness to make your new partner as comfortable as possible. the most important part in doing this is communication (my personal key to success in relationships)
it’s time to take care of yourself. someday, the silence won’t bother you the way it once did. it’s a peace I hope you find for yourself one day because you haven’t met everyone who’s gonna love u in this life yet! there's so many other friends to make out there anyways:)
with all my love,
♡steff
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