Friends With the Ex?

Of my two exes, one is gone and good riddance... haven't heard from her in, like, nine years by now - and seeing as she turned out to be a pathological liar who "catfished" me from day one, I prefer it to stay that way, TYVM.


The other one, R. (the one the breakup in my signature refers to), is still/again one of the closest friends I have in my life. It did take a few very rough months for both of us to get over the turmoil of the breakup, but we're really close again, now; except for spending less time together than we did as a couple, there's little difference from how we acted towards each other back then and how we act towards each other now; just proves again that "close/best friend" and "partner" are two terms that blur heavily at the edges, for me. (We never had sex in our six-plus years together, so that's not a factor there, anyway.)

We're not ever getting back together though - the things she was unhappy/frustrated about at the end of our 'ship were valid, and they haven't changed and aren't likely to do so, ever... so I guess it's best for her happiness if I stay in the "close friend" role in her life and leave the "partner" role for other folks who are better suited to her wants and needs (and it's clear that these two roles are more different to her than they are to me).

Like the new gal she's with, now - with whom I'm on pretty good terms, too. I'm glad these two fine gals found each other. :)
 
This has completely mystified me as I've gotten older. Sure, when I was an insecure young kid, the idea of my partner's ex threatened me, but that's only because I didn't truly understand anything yet: not love, not friendship, etc.

But as an adult (even when I was mono), like, I think it's a GOOD sign when people are friends with their exes. It means that they are mature enough and wise enough to have chosen good enough people as partners that they want to still know those people even when sex isn't involved anymore. It means that they are emotionally stable and mellow enough not to knee-jerk go to the "burn it all down" place just because they are hurting.

I have seen it a lot, but really don't get the typical mono mindset that not only do you have to actually not be fucking someone else, but you also have to pretend like you never even want to fuck anyone else, and almost like you never even have fucked anyone else. You basically have to pretend like the current person is the only attractive person in the whole world ever.

A person's past experiences with other people are part of what made them them—why would you not be happy and grateful for them and wish them ongoing pleasant interactions with those people? :confused:

My best friend is mono with her partner and they definitely have this weirdness going on. Like, neither one even wants to hear or know anything about each other's past partners, and if my best friend meets someone at a party that she suspects her guy may have hooked up with in the past, she gets jealous and decides from the get-go that she doesn't want to be friendly with that person. It's so bizarre!

I might ask Zen to read this thread sometime. He has not done a lot of relationship stuff in life, so getting into some of these discussions isn't easy with him. But I'm in complete agreement with your post, this stuff is really weird to me. I would love to hear about anyone's exes, I consider previous interactions to be part of the life story, the building blocks, of the person that I love. They did not just spring forth out of a crack in the ground, come into being in that moment simply to be my very own. I would like for them to be interested in my life and history and everything that makes me WHO I AM, and I most certainly do reciprocate.

And so long as their exes are not liable to cause drama, I am also quite open to meeting and being friendly with them. Why would I put it that way? Well frankly everyone might make mistakes, and none of us are perfect. I was young and stupid and I have a crazy ex. I don't want any of my lovers since him, or in the future, to meet him, ever. I wouldn't wish him on pretty much anyone...because he is loony and possibly dangerous.

It's actually been a benefit of still having him on my Facebook though. It is one thing for people to hear me tell the stories...they might be thinking, "well, he's her ex...maybe he's not really THAT bad, maybe she's blowing it all out of proportion." And then they see him get into a discussion on one of my comments or something, and how he talks...it's jaw-dropping. Like take a tinfoil-hat conspiracy gun nut Trump supporting MRA/PUA zombie apocalypse prepper guy and add an extra side of Fox News and garnish with a sprig of creepy. And I'm like, "SEE??? I AM NOT MAKING THIS SHIT UP."

There are exes that nobody really needs to meet.

Although I do pride myself on being able to get along with practically anyone, I can smell petty game playing and passive aggressive nonsense a mile off, and I've got no patience for it. But if someone is groovy with me, I will be groovy with them.
 
There is a huge difference between remaining friends with an ex and continuing to have sex with an ex, which was KC43's question, I believe.
 
Both were my question... Do you (general "you") stay friends with exes, and if so, do you continue having sex, or at least keep sex open as a possibility, with the exes with whom you remain friends?

So far, it seems that the majority do stay friends with at least some exes, but don't keep sex on the table of possibilities with those exes.
 
I haven't kept an ex as a friend in 20 years.

When a relationship is over for me it is over. The one or two exes I have as friends I do not see in person and were men I dated in my teens and early 20's.
 
Most of my past relationships have become friendships. Only due to that they were friendships before anything happened. If I could I would have cut my ex husband off, but we had a son together so that wasn't happening. And unfortunately we share the same interests.

My last relationship with W&B, fell apart through non-communication between W & myself. B tried to force to keep everything together, but there was too much hurt on either side.
 
I just tried to be friends with Punk, who I dated (and loved) for 9 months. He broke up with me when his mom died. Well, he left me hanging for 6 weeks, then formally dumped me. Suddenly he no longer "felt romantic." He didn't even say, it's temporary, she was a bad mom, she fucked me up, I need to rebuild my life, have patience with me as I regroup. Nope, he said, romantic feelings are gone, he doesn't see them coming back, ever.

Seems like a very weird reason to break up! If I was a support when she was dying, why wouldn't I be a support now? If he desired me sexually before, why wouldn't he see a return of desire once the initial grief had passed? In my opinion (and in many others' opinions) sex can be a healing, an affirmation of life force after a death.

No, I found out last night, he had some sort of idea I am "broken, damaged," by my association with his mother's illness. And now that she's dead, he lost that feeling for me. The romantic feeling. He even brought forth, seemingly as a new idea, that he'd been using me (like a crutch) during her illness, and now that crutch is useless.

Oh thanks! Glad to be of service! NOT.

So... he had requested 2 weeks ago we remain friends. I tried. Now, with this new information, I realised I had kept a spark of hope alive for a resumption of romance. I am not going to beg him for it, and I am not going to live on a stupid HOPE.

I am done. I am mad he used me before, and seemingly is just using me again, in a different way, that isn't even fulfilling to me. Pffft. Fuck it. I'm done.
 
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I'm also in the camp of "things vary greatly by whether an ex is an FWB that ended the B or was a romantic relationship". HipsterBoy and I failed at being friends, for instance, because that relationship had always been romantic and while there could have been friendship there, there were too many hurt feelings on my side and now we don't speak. On the other hand, I'm still very good friends with TheBride, who I've had an always-close-friends but only sexual part of the time relationship with for over a decade - and I think part of that is that it was never "romantic". I am also oddly close to MartialArtist, who was a FWB with hints of romance and we now have a friendship with sexual undertones, I guess I would call it. There's some potential we may someday be intimate again, though I think it unlikely. Other romances have gone to "vague acquaintance". ::shrug:: Really I think it just depends on the amount of hurt involved in the breakup - if it was an "easy" breakup, then friendship is also easy. But if not...
 
Yeah, I'd say if there was a lot of nastiness in the relationship (such as abuse) and/or a lot of hurt in the breakup, then staying friends doesn't make a lot of sense.

If one of the people is clinging to a sneaky hope that the relationship might come back together, then that isn't really good either, but they can quietly deal with that on their own without wrecking a friendship. Especially if they KNOW (like really 100% know) that the relationship will never come back to life...they can eventually internalize that fact and transition to a proper place of friendship. (EDIT: They CAN, if they WANT to. Sometimes they don't want to. That's also alright.)

I did have sex ONCE with Old Wolf after we broke up. And it was awful. And after that, every time he came onto me and tried, because he wasn't getting anywhere in dating and hoped I'd be an outlet for some of his sexual frustration...it creeped me out and put me off SO MUCH. I finally just told him in very formal tones, that I did not feel comfortable being vulnerable in that way with him anymore, and he no longer had my consent. He's had a vague cloud of "kicked dog" hanging around him ever since...which if anything, makes it worse.

However, I recall a boy in high school, where we had a boyfriend/girlfriend thing going on (clearly our levels of entanglement were never going to be adult-level, but we had pretty good sex!) And he broke up with me, and it hurt a while, but I got over it...but then he transitioned to being one of many boys who came back to me whenever they wanted an uncomplicated friend to spill their guts and nuts to, basically. Which was fine with me at the time. But of course he eventually got a girlfriend, and that had to stop, because mono rules were in play. Even the friendship had to stop, because the new girl wasn't cool with me. I look back at that and realize that's the first picture of how I was wishing that polyamory could happen in my life without even knowing what it was. I simply didn't understand why she and I couldn't become friends, and why my interaction with the boy had to stop, why it was a threat to them. It was completely different! I would have been quite fine with her being his primary girl, and him still coming by even to hang out sometimes. But no. That's not how it was done.
 
For me it depends. With my now ex, I can't totally cut her out as I have a father/daughter relationship with her eldest who is currently at college. So, I plan to be at least civil to her and her husband. (she lied to me about being married and we were physically intimate after they were married, but I had no clue)
 
I'm in more of an "it depends" camp. It depends on the breakup. It depends on the feelings I have for them. it depends on the feelings they have for me.

Mary is an ex from high school. We reconnected. Sex was/is on the table, but the friendship is the most important thing. MK was my first wife. When we broke up we still had sex because the sex was great. The other stuff wasn't so great. Now the sex is great but the other stuff isn't so great.

A few years ago I reconnected with an ex. Same thing good sex, not much else. She cut off all contact after that. She didn't even reply when I informed her of Cat's passing. They were friendly after our breakup.

For me, sex is sex. Yes, there is always a reason for breaking up, but bad sex was never one of those reasons. As for staying friends, I'm open to it. Yes, again there were reasons for the breakup, but there were also reasons we were together. The problem is I haven't always seen that the ex really wants to get back together.
 
To be honest, I wouldn't like my relationships to ever end (unless neither benefits from them), especially since there aren't many people I get close to. It's pretty relieving to know I don't need to end the previous relationship to start a new one.
Friendship is in the base of my relationships and it's always there. Whether my friends become my partners of friends with benefits depends on the circumstances and how much we're attracted to each other. If we stop being lovers for some reason, we'll be just friends again. I imagine I'd keep in touch with them regularly like before, so I wouldn't even call them my exes since few things would change (just hope they'd think the same way).

But if we stopped being friends, that would be something quite different.
I have two exes I don't communicate with anymore and wouldn't like to, because... they weren't nice to me. The only really good thing I got from them was experience. By the way, those were my last and only monogamous relationships.

I tried hitting on one of my friends who's monogamous. Ever since he found a girlfriend, I couldn't think of it again. At first I still felt sexually attracted to him and I thought it wouldn't go away, but now I'm fine just being friends with him.

I can't comprehend wanting to stay friends with someone you've been romantic and sexual with when the romance and sex is no longer a thing. It sounds excruciatingly and unnecessarily painful to me. I have no desire to even consider staying friends with an ex-partner. (I'll note that staying friends with a friend-with-benefits if the benefits stop is a different situation.)
Would that mean for KC43 that all my partners are friends with benefits by default? :confused:
 
I'm not sure what you mean by your question. Are you asking if I would consider your romantic partners "friends with benefits" because you stay friends with them even if sex and romance are no longer a thing?

Um... no. I wouldn't. I'm having a hard time seeing how that would even make sense.

First of all, I said *I* would not stay friends with a former romantic partner. That's me. Others don't operate that way.

Second, I don't determine how to designate *other people's* partners. If you have a partner that you consider a partner, my opinion about staying friends with my partners is entirely irrelevant as to what your partners are to you.

For *me*, romantic relationships don't start with friendship. The closest I've ever had to being friends with someone before having a relationship with them is my boyfriend, and the friendship lasted about 3 weeks before it became something more. And during that time, we didn't even really know each other well enough for me to consider him a friend; he was someone I was getting to know, and he might have become a friend *or* a partner.

On the other hand, with Hubby, I spent the night with him the night we met, and within two days we'd decided we were in a relationship. With other partners, it hasn't gone quite that quickly, but since I met them from dating sites, we started off meeting to see whether we wanted to *date*, and then we dated. There was never a friendship. (Where "friendship" means "connection that is neither sexual nor romantic.")

I suppose if I became sexually and romantically involved with someone who was already my friend, the friendship might exist after the sex and romance stopped, but honestly, I doubt it, because I wouldn't want it to. Which is *why* I don't get romantically involved with friends. I do sometimes get sexually involved with friends, but none of them have ever wanted to continue the friendship after the fucking stopped. Fortunately, at this point everyone I might consider a friend is either monogamously involved with someone else, knows Hubby's family (which puts them off-limits for me to date or fuck), or is female, which puts them off limits because I'm straight.
 
Yeah clearly the disconnect is just in one's preferences and choices in relating and defining connections and stuff. It's all fine.

Actually Zen is one where I'm really not sure if we'd keep being friends if we broke up. Because we really didn't do friendship first. I mean, speaking from my own perspective, I was sizing him up for sex the first night I met him. We do have a great connection of the minds I think, I love our conversations and we've got a lot in common. But. We're both so lovey and affectionate...I think that our relationship as lovers eclipses our friend-mojo quite a bit.

And so I do think that a breakup would hurt. One or both of us, I think, quite a lot. And we might not salvage a friendship out of that, I don't know. But I think we have a long span ahead of us, and I'm not worried about it.

My quad though...I consider them friends, personally. The guys felt differently, maybe they saw our relationships in a different light than I did. I very much want and wanted to continue friendship with Fire, but when it comes to finding the TIME to nurture it...I'm falling flat on my face here. I only hope that we find the time for each other in the future, and that she knows I still adore her, and that if the opportunity comes, we'll be able to reconnect.

I've been in kind of a phase lately...I do a thing of being mega extroverted and pulling tons of people into my life and being super social...and then I sort of run out of steam and have to have a phase where I retreat a bit. Focus on some life stuff, maybe a few vital relationships...I'll be back once I'm recharged.

Funny thing is, I'm doing quite a bit to stay friends with my ex, Old Wolf, even though we have a rocky history and we haven't always done right by one another. Thing is, we really ought to try and cooperate at least for the kids' sake and we both know it. So we try. Whether we are FRIENDS, we are at least FRIENDLY.
 
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