Things are super fresh, so I don’t know what I ultimately want and I keep changing my mind every hour.
I care about this person and a part of me really wants to be able to continue caring about him to some capacity.
Another part of me has really big reservations:
1. What if I get over him only to start gaining feelings when we speak again?
2. Things definitely won’t be the same as friends, and we didn’t start out as friends. All I know is how to flirt with him. How can I even begin to talk to him platonically?
3. He made me feel really pretty. Right now, it’s hard to wrap my head around the fact that he’s eventually going to lose all attraction to me, and with that, the validation goes away.
4. The thought of him being with someone else brings a lot of pain. But what hurts more is that he won’t care the same way if he sees me with someone else.
5. There are so many things we can’t do as friends. Is the occasional conversation worth it for keeping in contact?
I am just a mess right now, and not having plans freak me out, so even if I know I won’t get my answers now, I feel like I have to do my “research.”
4 comments
It’s not a fixed rule, but you should *really* be 2 relationships separated from your ex before you even consider a platonic friendship. You’re way way way too close to this right now. Find a guy, have sex, make him your BF. When that runs its course in 6-12 months, repeat with another guy. Maybe move in with this one. When that’s run its course in 2-3 years, THEN you can hit up your ex for platonic friendship. See you in at least 2.5 years.
Nothing good ever comes from being friends with your ex. Except for *The White Stripes.*
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If you broke up, it happened for a reason. What is best for you both is to make a clean break and go your separate ways. If time has passed and you two meet again later, then you can be friends, but if you haven’t even been given the time to mourn the loss of that possible future where you two were together, it becomes much harder to move on.
The benefits are completely subjective and dependent on context and the individuals involved.
With me I have seen it go two ways. I was still attached to one ex and intimacy continued until she finally called it off. That ex more or less pretends that I don’t exist.
Another ex and I started up a friendship more than a year later via text. We still chat about a lot of the same stuff we did during our short relationship