Friends with Exes, Not Benefits

It surprises me to realize that I have remained friends with all but one of my exes. The singularity in question was my first husband, and if you want to know the lurid details of that lack of friendship, you can read about them here. Every other man that I've dated, lived with, been engaged to, or been married to, has invariably become a friend after the romance was over. In some cases I wasn't friends with them until it was over, but we became friends nevertheless.

How did I accomplish this miraculous feat, you ask? Damned if I know. Maybe it's because I've historically had more male friends than female. I tend to get along with masculine types rather than feminine ones. Over the years, though, I've found female friends who were similar to me in that respect, and I've become friends with them because of the commonality. It takes a certain type of heterosexual female to end up with a lot of heterosexual male friends. Our interests are more in line with the stereotypically male interests. Sure there is always the question of whether or not you might one day be sexually interested in one of those friends, or they in you, but that doesn't mean you can't rise above that and still be friends.

Another possible reason I've remained friends with exes is because I don't tend to do unforgivable things. So, when the relationship is over there's the standard level of anger, rather than towering rage. Hurt feelings ease over time, and you have fond memories left behind. If one partner has cheated, it's pretty tough to be friends with someone like that after the fact. They're not trustworthy, and friendships require trust. I don't cheat. Not in any way, shape or form. If it's something I couldn't do directly in front of a partner, I wouldn't do it. I'm not saying I haven't done things that hurt a partner, but I did so under the assumption they would not be hurt, because I didn't feel I was doing anything dishonourable.

I also don't hold grudges. Not in the personal realm anyway. If it's a business thing I will hold a grudge in the sense that I will make sure a business suffers loss for its poor actions. Such as boycotting companies that do animal testing, or putting a company out of business for trying to frame a friend of mine for theft. Those are the only grudges I hold, and let's face it, it's a very satisfying form of revenge. I have fun with it.

One other thing I don't do is the sex-with-the-ex thing. Not unless I was actually trying to get back together with them at the time, and it's no longer about being exes then, or about being friends. If you confuse the issue with sex, one person is going to mistake the reasons for it. If there's enough left between you that you want to bang them, chances are good there's enough emotion there, too, on the part of at least one of you. You might be okay with a quick boot-knock, but your ex might be looking to get back together with you. You can pretty much kiss any chance of friendship goodbye after that little misunderstanding.

Sex-with-the-ex's-friend is something I did once, and it was just a mean thing to do. That particular ex was pretty casual, and was content to remain friends when maybe he shouldn't have been, but I still regret that I did it. It's not something I recommend doing, because most men are simply not that casual about their ex doing the hunka chunka with a friend of theirs. This is not a situation where they relish the idea of comparing notes.

Other obstacles to remaining friends have a lot to do with the grudge factor, as well as a safety factor. If you're keying someone's car, the friendship isn't not going to take root. If one of you is a stalker, there's no friendship there, and one of you thinks they own the other person (again not conducive to friendship and potentially deadly). If one person is angry and jealous, and is unwilling to see the other person move on to something new, there isn't going to be a friendship either. It's tough to start dating someone new when your ex is making snarky remarks about it all the time, and you invariably have to choose between the new love and the old one.

My last ex couldn't understand why I was still friends with my previous ex. It completely baffled him. Not to mention the fact that it made him feel insecure about his status in my life. It wasn't until we broke up and actually became friends that he understood how it was okay to do that. He had an affair at one point, and a girlfriend at another point, (both of them after we'd split up) and I was content to let him go on his merry way. I was sad that the girlfriend wasn't any good for him, knowing that he wouldn't be happy, but we all make our own choices there. I know that if I move on to become more than friends with someone else, he's not going to freak out. When someone actually cares about you, they really do want you to be happy. They might not have been able to show that when you were together, which may have caused them some regrets about losing you, but it's nice that they can show you those feelings now.

Now don't get me wrong here. I don't spend a lot of time hanging out with ex-boyfriends and ex-husbands. I'm closest to my most recent ex, or at least I was before he dropped off the face of the earth, and we didn't spend much time in each other's company. My other exes are scattered far and wide. We might share a joke on Facebook, or I'm in touch with their wives or something. It's nice to hear how they're doing, and to be able to wish them well, but there are limits to how much a new man should be expected to tolerate there.

The fact is, if you have to spend that much time with an ex, there's usually a damn good reason for it, and usually the reason is that you haven't quite let them go yet - no matter how much you might protest to the contrary. That much togetherness with an ex you haven't let go of is a recipe for disaster. We all know exactly what's going to happen. Some choose to pretend they don't and then act all shocked about it when they cheat on their new boyfriend with their old one.  Oh, you were just going to have a couple of beers together, were you? Right. It was an accident? Right. Now, who among us is really dumb enough to believe bullshit like that? Right.