You might need to unfollow your ex on social media, stop listening to music that triggers certain feelings, or avoid favorite spots you frequented together. Fully processing the dissolution of your romantic relationship could take months or even years. Before friendship, take a breakīefore transitioning into a friendship, it’s important to take some time, says Zoe Shaw, a psychotherapist and the host of the Stronger in the Difficult Places podcast. “This isn’t us breaking up, continued.” When preparing to foster the new relationship, it’s important to go in with a plan. “If you’re trying to be friends with your ex, you have to think of it as a different relationship,” said Franco. It is possible to be emotionally in tune with someone or platonically drawn to them, even if the romance dwindled. You may share kids or attend the same temple. Maybe you have different goals in life but still enjoy playing tennis together.
Maybe you realized you are incompatible as partners but love discussing politics with each other. There are copious reasons to strive for friendship. “You can retain platonic intimacy, which is part of a relationship, without romantic intimacy, without sexual intimacy.” This shows that “you don’t have to grieve all of these at once,” Franco says. According to a 2002 study published in Communication Quarterly, members of the queer community often retain higher levels of interpersonal contact with exes and are more satisfied with the friendship than members of the straight community. You often work with your ex, run in the same circles, or share the same chosen family. Franco, professor, speaker, and author of Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make-and Keep-Friends, “so that you can’t cuddle with a friend without it seeming like it’s sexual.”īut the queer community is smaller. Heterosexual people often “conflate all different types of love at once, platonic, romantic, sexual,” says Marisa G. How you feel about friendship with an ex can depend on the culture of the community you surround yourself with. “But that isn’t what you have to do because of what seems to be expected. “If you need to not be friends, and you need that space, that’s okay,” says Jesse Kahn, a psychotherapist and the founder, director, and sex therapist at The Gender & Sexuality Therapy Center in New York City.
Sometimes, friendship is a goal you shouldn’t give up on.
After years of growing together and taking joy in their joy, it can feel impossible to let that friendship go, even if your romantic relationship wasn’t working. But sometimes, your ex-partner was once your best friend, someone whose influence on you is undeniable. Sometimes, ties need to be severed completely. Sometimes, romantic relationships end with explosions.
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