The Ex Files: Navigating Friendship Post-Breakup
Transitioning from a sexy relationship to a platonic one is absolutely possible, if that is what you both want, and if you avoid a few common pitfalls. Here’s what the evidence of psychological research suggests.
Reasons for wanting to stay friends
A 2017(1) study showed that the main reasons are security, practical, civility, and unresolved romantic desires. Staying friends for security and practical reasons actually seemed to work pretty well, although friendships based on practicality and civility reasons didn’t last very long.
Unsurprisingly, unresolved romantic desires of one partner and not the other did not result in a flourishing friendship.
Setting your friendship up for success
A study in 2011(2) showed that the happier people were about the breakup and after the breakup, if both parties knew it was the right decision are ok with it, the more likely they were to stay friends.
Setting your friendship up for success Tip # 1: be aware of your motivation.
Have you actually accepted the separation? Why do you want to stay friends with your ex? Is it to stay on their health insurance until you can figure out your next move, or because you have kids together and want to co-parent with kindness? If so, your chance for success is considerable. However, if you’re secretly hoping this is just a phase and you’ll get back together eventually, you may be disappointed. I know it’s hard, but all relationships go through phases and it’s ok if they change shape over time. Take the time you need to grieve, and talk to a professional if you need more support than your friends and family can provide.
Gender differences & the “Dark Triad”
Another 2017(3) study showed a clear gender difference. Men’s motivations to stay friends were mainly practical and related to maintaining access to sex, money, or status after breaking up. Especially if they also scored high on the so-called non-pathological dark triad personality traits of machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy, which indicates that those individuals are more interested in short-term hook-ups than long-term relationships anyway. It’s a sobering fact, and of course the researchers are not saying that all men have these traits, but it’s something to be aware of.
This study also found that participants who were friends first were more likely to be friends afterwards as well. However, they pointed out that lack of support from friends or family, and new romantic partners pose some challenges to keep the friendship going. After you break up, when they hear you’re still friends, they might have a hard time believing that your relationship has shifted out of romance.
How do you know when a relationship has shifted?
Let’s unpack some of the moving parts that all influence not just our ability to stay friends with exes, but also our psychological well-being.
what’s your level of separation acceptance?
what’s your level of attachment to your ex?
Are you in contact with your ex?
Are you having sex with your ex?
Break-ups and Attachment
We already talked about separation acceptance in tip number 1, and here’s what a 2012(4) paper shows. If we take attachment theory as a lens, romantic separations can feel like a threat and cause feelings of emotional and physical abandonment.
Because you learned to co-regulate with your partner, not having them around anymore literally dys-regulates your nervous system. The one person who you used to turn to to make you feel better is now the reason you feel bad.
Which is why some people find it hard to go “no contact”, because reconnecting with the ex or staying in touch somehow - even if it’s just seeing what they post online - can provide temporary relief from those feelings of abandonment.
Unfortunately, this kind of online “stalking” tends to cause more pain as it leads you to remember what you no longer have, which then makes you suffer for longer.
Tip #2: be aware of your level of emotional attachment to your ex.
Be aware that if you miss them, it is probably your nervous system that wants to co-regulate with them because that’s what you’re used to doing. Since you are no longer together, it would be more helpful if you transfer those needs away from your ex and towards other supportive people in your network. Who else can you call for a chat or meet for a walk, until your emotional attachment to your ex has stabilized?
But wait, there’s more. Assuming you had sex with your ex, your body activated a deep physiological reward system. In other words, sex feels great and is good for your mental and overall health - and your mind links that to your ex.
If you still have sex with your ex after breaking up, your physiological attachment continues. This might comfort you if you haven’t accepted the separation yet, but it also gets in the way of moving on.
How you feel about this sex with your ex determines whether you end up more depressed because you’re delaying the inevitable separation or de-tachment, or whether it’s a crutch until you can walk by yourself again.
Tip #3: be aware of your level of physical attachment to your ex.
Be aware that if you keep sleeping with them, you’re satisfying physical needs, but you are also feeding your separation anxiety. Do what you can to raise your level of acceptance that the romantic part of your relationship is over.
To quote the researchers:
“Continuing to rely fruitlessly on an ex-partner for the fulfillment of needs is clearly maladaptive, yet less-accepting people may be more likely to persist in precisely this manner.”
Main factors for healthy psychological adjustment
Overall, they found that people with less separation acceptance (i.e., greater longing for and attachment to an ex-partner) experienced poorer psychological adjustment (i.e., feeling irritable, angry, trouble concentrating, trouble falling and/or staying asleep, intrusive thoughts about it).
Participants reporting the best psychological adjustment of all were those reporting more acceptance and having non-sexual contact.
Having said that, the researchers mentioned the importance of not assuming that more separation acceptance automatically leads to better psychological adjustment.
For example, a person who leaves their partner after an affair may report having accepted that the relationship is truly over and may avoid contact with his ex-partner. That doesn’t mean the intrusive thoughts about the separation experience and former relationship stop over night.
Again, if you’re finding yourself stuck, seeking support from a professional might be a good idea.
Something to consider
Even the language we often use of “going back to being just friends” shows you how much we as a society are focused on romantic relationships as being the end goal. There’s this expectation of a relationship moving forward and upward through several stages, the so-called “relationship escalator” where you start dating someone and people ask, when are you gonna get engaged, and then you do that and the question is, when are you gonna get married, and then it’s when are you gonna have kids, etc etc, and then you’re just supposed to have it all figured out and be together.
Most societies measures the quality of a relationship by how long it lasts. And relationships just don’t work that way. I don’t know how many people I’ve talked to that tell me variations of their parents only stayed together for the kids. Unfortunately, all the kids learned in that scenario is how not to have a happy relationship.
Marriage and romantic intimate relationships are great, but they have to be allowed to change, quite simply because the people in them do. All the time.
So what I want to say is don’t feel bad if the romance ends, and maybe using some of the tips from this video let it morph into a friendship if that’s what both of you want.
It’s also ok not to stay friends, by the way, just because you shared a bed for 10 years doesn’t mean you have to keep talking - even if there’s no reason other than you no longer feel like it.
You’re allowed to change your mind, and you can step off the relationship escalator at any point. To do that, you have to be aware of it first though, so I hope this video has given you some pointers.
If you’re struggling with accepting your separation, here is a post with a few self-coaching questions that might help you re-formulate your sense of self away from your ex.
References:
Griffith R. L., Gillath O., Zhao X., Martinez R. (2017). Staying friends with ex-romantic partners: Predictors, reasons, and outcomes. Personal Relationships, 24(3), 550–584
Bullock, M., Hackathorn, J.M., Clark, E.M., & Mattingly, B.A. (2011). Can We Be (and Stay) Friends? Remaining Friends After Dissolution of a Romantic Relationship. The Journal of Social Psychology, 151, 662 - 666.
Mogilski, J. K., & Welling, L. L.M. (2017). Staying friends with an ex: Sex and dark personality traits predict motivations for post-relationship friendship. Personality and Individual Differences, 115, 114–119. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2016.04.016
Mason, A. E., Sbarra, D. A., Bryan, A. E., & Lee, L. A. (2012). Staying connected when coming apart: The psychological correlates of contact and sex with an ex-partner. Journal of social and clinical psychology, 31(5), 488–507. https://doi.org/10.1521/jscp.2012.31.5.488
