Can you still be friends with your ex?
Kane Show on Z104.3
Awesome and I were half-listening to the Kane Show on Z104.3 while driving to work last week and the DJ brought up a survey he had read somewhere that said that men are twice as likely to want to “hook up” with their female friends than woman are with their male friends. He then went on to say that 52 percent of men say that men and women can stay friends after hooking up, while only 38 percent of women agreed.
While listening to the DJs compare stats and swap stories, Awesome asked me if I had any male friends who I was secretly attracted to or who I wanted to hook up with. I responded that if I wanted to hook up with any of my current male friends that I would probably have already done so and they probably wouldn’t still be my friends.
In my opinion, once you are on the friend shelf, there’s pretty much no getting off. All these romantic movies where the woman chases after the wrong guy only to realize it was her nerdy best friend who she really wanted are bullshit to me. I’m not saying it can’t happen, I’m just saying that it would never happen to me.
Being friends with your ex is a different story. To this day, I am friendly with some of my exes, but I only speak to them every couple of months or when I pass them on the street. There really isn’t any “hanging out” between us. Currently I know of a couple of exes who Awesome is friends with, but he only talks to one occasionally and the other was a super casual relationship. Plus she is way cool so I can’t bring myself to dislike her.
It’s when people are super close with their exes that I think it’s weird. I would hate it if my boyfriend constantly hung out with his ex and I know he would feel the same way.
Not that we want to control each other or that we don’t have any trust –it’s just a mutual respect. If your no-no place has at one point in time touched my current boyfriend’s no-no place, I’m sorry but I just don’t want you hanging out alone with him on the regular.
And I am one of those people who believes that most people, given the opportunity, will be as shady as possible. Maybe it’s because I’ve been screwed over so many times. Maybe I just have severe mental issues, who knows? But whenever I hear that someone is super close with their ex, I always assume there is something else going on. Not that they are actually physically involved. But I definitely believe there are still unresolved feelings that could threaten any potential relationship with someone new.
Bottom line is, how you handle your relationship is up to each individual person. I’m not trying to tell anyone how to deal with their shit, or trying to say that if your S.O. is close with their ex that they are cheating on you. I just think that the most important thing to have in a relationship is trust. And the knowledge that all exes know I will kick their sorry asses if they try to manhandle my man.
Emily Little (nee Campbell) was a perpetually single girl who recently met and married her Mr. Right. Her blog, Dating Emily, has been a two-year diary of her adventures in relationships. Her life of bar-hopping and casual dating has turned into one of dog-walking, craft-making and budgeting for eventual home ownership. But just because she can make a mean casserole doesn’t mean her adventures are over. As she prepares to become a first-time homeowner and eventually, a mom, she is discovering that the adventure may just be beginning.