When a romantic relationship ends—however long it lasted—you have a choice: to say goodbye and move on, never speaking again, or to try to build a new relationship together based on friendship. When one or both of you are hurting, which often happens at the end of a relationship, it can feel simplest to have a clean break. However, this may not be an option if you have children and need to co-parent. It can also be difficult if you have a lot of mutual friends.

The real question is how you can set about rebuilding a friendship at that stage. Indeed, perhaps it would be better to ask how you can build a new friendship at that point, because it is probably more sensible to think of it in those terms. This page provides some ideas.

At the End of a Relationship...

When a relationship ends, especially a long-term committed one, can you build a friendship instead? Would you ever want to do so?

You have spent time, energy and love on this person, and now that all feels like it was wasted. Either you have grown apart slowly over time, or one or other of you has moved on. There may be hurt, and there is almost certainly going to be grief.

Worse, perhaps, is that your ex is now absent from your life.

Over weeks, months or years, you have been together. You have probably spent a lot of time in each other’s company. You have learned each other’s quirks and qualities. You have been each other’s sounding boards and vents.

And now they are not there.

Put like that, it is natural that many people find themselves reaching out to their ex, and trying to maintain a friendship in the absence of a romantic relationship.

You are used to each other. Of course it will be difficult not to be around them.

Is it right to try to keep in touch? The answer is almost always ‘IT DEPENDS’.

When You Might Want a Friendship

Research suggests that there are four main reasons why people choose to try to stay friends with an ex:

• Security. They rely on each other for mutual support and help, and can’t imagine not doing so.

• Practicality. They have a child together, share a workplace, or have mutual friends, and it makes sense to be friends.

• Civility. They want to maintain a good relationship.

• Unresolved romantic desires. One or other did not want the relationship to end, and hopes that it could be restarted.

The same study suggests that friendships built on security or practicality are the most likely to work. These are good reasons for a friendship, even if there had not been any previous romantic relationship. They are also strong motivators for making a friendship work.

Those founded on civility or unresolved romantic desires are much less likely to be successful. Civility is not a good long-term basis for a friendship because you are unlikely to be motivated enough to work on it if things get difficult. Unresolved romantic desires generally lead to tension and often unhappiness.

This suggests that you both need not to have any romantic feelings for each other anymore. Your post-relationship friendship needs to be purely platonic to work well.

When Not To Be Friends

The next question to ask is when (beyond any lingering romantic feelings) might you NOT want a friendship with your ex?

The first answer is if there has been any abuse or violence in the relationship (or even just threats and fear of violence).

If so, don’t even think about a friendship.

Just move on, move away, and lose touch quickly. If you have mutual children and need to remain in contact, consider using a go-between or ensuring that someone is always with you when you hand over the children.

However, beyond that, there is one obvious answer to the question of when you would not want a friendship, and that is ‘immediately after a break-up’.

In the immediate aftermath of a break-up, you both need time to heal. You have to understand why the relationship failed, take time to grieve, and also stop depending on each other for comfort, validation and company. You need to rebuild yourself as an individual, instead of one-half of a couple, and learn to enjoy your own company again.

If you don’t take that time, you are likely to find that you end up sliding into an on-again-off-again relationship or some kind of ‘friends with benefits’ arrangement that makes both of you unhappy. Try to avoid leaping into a ‘rebound relationship’ too. It won’t help, and there will just be more unhappy people at the end of it.

There is a reason why you broke up. Probably several reasons. Take some time out to get perspective before you start to build any kind of friendship.

How much time will depend on you. However, the healing process is likely to take at least six months, and quite likely longer. A year is certainly not uncommon. During that time, it is best to remain out of contact with each other if possible. Obviously if you have children, you will have to communicate, but it’s best to keep communication purely practical and brief at this stage.

After that, you can then decide if you want to try being friends, or if you just want to continue the lack of contact.

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Going Forward: Your Ex and New Relationships

Before you decide that a friendship with your ex would be good, you need to consider how they will fit into any new relationship—and also how you will fit into their new relationships.

It is worth considering how you would feel introducing your ex to a new partner, or meeting their new partner. You might also think about how you think they will react to the news that you have a new partner, or how you will feel about them moving on.

These are situations that can change over time—but asking yourself these questions does give you a sense of your feelings about your ex.

Perhaps most importantly, ask yourself how you would feel if your ex said that they had met the love of their life, and planned to get married. Would you feel able to celebrate genuinely with them both?

This will help you to decide whether you can actually be mutually supportive and helpful friends, or if you may still have some unresolved feelings.

If you still have unresolved feelings, it is best NOT to try to be friends.

Building a Friendship

You can start to build a friendship if, and only if, you both agree that this is a good idea.

This really means that both of you have considered all these issues, and taken the time that you both need to heal. You must also both be clear that there are no unresolved romantic feelings.

However, even then it is not altogether ‘plain sailing’. You need to set some rules and boundaries for your friendship to avoid problems further down the line.

You might not do this formally together—but you need to be clear about what is acceptable to you, and what is not. Your friendship will not, and cannot, be the same as your romantic relationship. You need to find a new way that works for you both.

This probably means defining what it means to you to be friends.

For example, do you mean that you can meet civilly, and have a sensible conversation with each other without embarrassing either yourselves or those around you? Or do you mean that you can enjoy spending time in each other’s company, just for the pleasure of being together and without either of you wanting more?

If you are co-parenting, a more formal agreement about the boundaries and rules for your relationship may be helpful.

This will give you both confidence in how to behave with each other, and also ensure that you can be clear with your children about how the relationship works. This gives you a better foundation for building a friendship outside a romantic relationship.

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In Conclusion...

It is certainly not impossible to become friends with an ex.

However, it may be challenging to build a friendship that works. You need a very good reason to do it, and that does NOT mean unresolved romantic feelings.

You also need time to heal before you even think about a friendship—and the time required is likely to be at least six months to a year. Once that time is up, if you both want a friendship, it is worth trying—but even then, it may be too difficult. Not every friendship is meant to be...

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