Stay Friends After A Breakup-Increase Your Odds
Is it even possible to stay friends after a breakup? Yes, it is but whether or not you will depends on many things. In this article I will provide you with some ideas of tactics you can use that may increase the odds that the two of you can have some sort of easy going relationship after you break up.
In order to stay friends after a breakup there are a few things that you can, and should, do to make sure that it works out the way you hope.
Here are some things to keep in mind:
1. First of all, make sure that you want to stay friends just for friendship sake and not just as a way of keeping tabs on your ex. Or, worse, as a way of getting them back. Neither one of these things are a good reason to stay friends.
If you want to get back with your ex your best bet, after you give them some time on their own, is to tell them you want them back. Then if they say they’re not interested you must be willing to walk away. And if you just want to keep tabs on them you must be very careful because this is getting dangerously close to restraining order territory.
2. If you want to stay friends for the right reasons: you genuinely like and respect them and want them in your life, then you should be willing to give them some time first. Each of you need plenty of time to get used to the new relationship type you have.
If you try to go directly from a breakup to friendship it is unlikely to work out. You are both too fresh off of your breakup, the wounds are too raw and the emotion is too intense. It is always best to allow a "cooling down" period before you try to become friends again.
How long you allow for this period will depend on many factors, not the least of which is how long you were together, how intense the relationship was and whether or not the break up was truly a mutual decision.
While most of us would like to think that the decision to end the relationship is mutual, it rarely is. You have to acknowledge that if you want to be able to ever move on. So, the person who was "dumped" will probably need more time to recover before the friendship stage can begin.
3. If you find that the friendship isn’t working out, even after all this, you must be wiling to walk away. No matter how hard you try, or how honest you think you are, you may find that you truly do have an ulterior motive and it is about just staying friends.
If that is the case you are going to have a really hard time dealing with the ups and downs of a friendship with your ex. For example, what happens when your ex starts to date again? This is where most friendships run into trouble.
It will be especially hard if you aren’t really over your ex and have been using the friendship as a way to stay close.
Yes, you can stay friends after a breakup if you are both mature and honest with yourself. Just be aware that it isn’t always that easy to go from friend to lover and back to friend again; things may not work out the way you hoped.