Let's be friends... not
It is of far stronger character to be able to let go than to defend and hang on. Letting go is a part of life. We hardly ever get to decide how life is going to show up for us and life surely brings us pain, loss and rejection. We can feel so vulnerable to wanting to avoid these feelings that we are willing to hang onto a relationship that is not supposed to be for us anymore.
To grow and mature, it is best to accept what hurts and move on. As you do this, your life will change, you will change and with time away from your ex, you will also begin to see that maybe they just weren’t as great as the version of them that you thought they were or wanted them to be.
1
Because hope is dope
Staying in touch and trying to be friends after a split fuels hope. Hope is easy to get hooked on, but it doesn’t promote your forward moving progress. It is not possible for emotions to go from being in love to just friends in a nanosecond. The mind may convince you this is so, but it is not possible. The heart moves much slower than the mind. Take time before trying to be friends.
2
To avoid the gray area
When you hit the gray area and one of you is more in love than the other, the one with the greatest need will suffer the most. If your partner cannot commit to you but they don’t want anyone else to have you and you allow this, this is a recipe for emotional disaster. This puts you into a place of being strung along emotionally and your partner can always use the excuse that they are doing nothing wrong because you agreed to just be friends.
3
Because you cannot move on
If you choose to remain friends, you are still stuck in the same spot in your love life that you were when you were together, and you cannot make room for new people, events and circumstances to come your way. Nor do you carve out any time to heal. You essentially stay hooked to your ex and cannot move on. You must face the emptiness for a while, so you can get back to loving yourself enough to set the correct boundaries.
4
It won't make you feel less alone
If you are so afraid to be alone and going through the pain that you would rather hang onto any table scrap your ex offers, this makes you desperate and needy, and this also doesn't make you a good friend. You must face being alone, learn to love yourself again and let go so you can change your own life for the better.
5
You need peace of mind
A breakup changes everything about the relationship you had. You cannot be affectionate and loving like you used to be whenever you feel like it. There will always be that awkwardness between you until you both are completely over each other. You must question if staying friends with you ex is worth sacrificing your peace of mind. Your peace of mind should be your number one commitment because without peace of mind, you cannot heal.
The bottom line
Often when couples break up, to let the other one down easy, the dumper proposes just being friends. This is not a good idea. Each person needs a certain amount of time to get over the breakup before deciding on a new form the relationship can take. The only reason to stay friends immediately after a split is to secure a shot at getting back together. Unfortunately, it only ensures that you cannot or will not let go and take the brave step into the life of being single and authentically moving on.
Little life message: If someone is leaving your life, it's because something better is about to enter.
Comments
// Love never dies but kills with a mentality that didn't match. And to answer your question, I never broke up with you. //
Also note No matter your motives, navigating a friendship with an ex isn't always easy, but you're not alone: Some evidence suggests that most of us (roughly 60 percent) are friends with at least one ex-romantic partner, with about 20 percent reporting that they're friends with more than one ex (Griffith et al., 2017). Clearly, not all post-romantic relationship friendships are the same, and their quality and stability vary as well. This is a burgeoning area of research and we have much more to learn about how these relationships differ from those without a romantic history, how they change over time, and how they address the needs of each person in the “new” friendship.