How to be Friends With an Ex: The First Hang Out.

When a cou­ple breaks up on ami­ca­ble terms the most com­mon phrase uttered at the end of the awk­ward break up con­ver­sa­tion is “I hope we can still be friends.” Excuse me while I choke on irony. Really friends? Friends don’t say things that break my heart, cause me to cry uncon­trol­lably and make me want to punch them in the throat, but I digress. In my expe­ri­ence friend­ship with an ex is only pos­si­ble if A) there are absolutely NO resid­ual feel­ings for one another other than pla­tonic feel­ings. B) enough time has passed that the hurt caused by the break up has become a dis­tant mem­ory. C) both par­ties are mature, actu­ally want a pla­tonic friend­ship with one another and have no plans to rekin­dle the flame. Once both exes have reached this point they can begin to start a friend­ship. And D) how could I for­get, the most impor­tant part, there is no more sex­ual ten­sion. This is by far the most dif­fi­cult part to accom­plish. It’s hard to go from see­ing this per­son naked to ask­ing how things are going with their new sig­nif­i­cant other. As long as you have A, B and C you can suc­ceed at meet­ing up with your ex with min­i­mal ten­sion. If D is not pos­si­ble avoid alcohol.

When ini­ti­at­ing plans to spend time with an ex as a friend there are some ground rules that should be fol­lowed for the first few times you spend time together. The first, do not make plans to hang out in the evening. It will feel like a date and a date with an ex turned friend is not the feel­ing you want to go for. Sec­ond, make sure you meet at the loca­tion. Do not meet at your place or theirs. It will no doubt bring back mem­o­ries of the rela­tion­ship. Third, set spe­cific time para­me­ters for hang­ing out and make plans with some­one else after. That way if it gets too awk­ward you have a way to escape. Fourth, don’t wear any­thing that has sen­ti­men­tal value to your past rela­tion­ship with said ex. I once had cof­fee with an ex and made the mis­take of wear­ing a neck­lace he had given me and the next thing you know it’s “You wore that cause you still love me didn’t you?”

The ideal sit­u­a­tion would be cof­fee or lunch in a fairly pub­lic place that holds no sen­ti­men­tal value to your you or your ex. Alco­hol is a slip­pery slope when it comes to spend­ing time with your ex. Yes it can calm your nerves if you are feel­ing uneasy about the sit­u­a­tion but it can also bring back feel­ings of nos­tal­gia or attrac­tion for your ex. One drink becomes two and then three and before you know it you and your ex are talk­ing about old times and mak­ing drunk poor choices and every­thing gets more com­pli­cated than it was before. I’m just saying…

If you or your ex are dat­ing some­one new when you hang out for the first time, try to keep the details at a min­i­mum or avoid the sub­ject. Even if you are both over one another and have moved on, it’s still a bit of an awk­ward thing to dis­cuss. In time you will be able to talk about your new rela­tion­ships with your ex. My ex even com­forted me when I broke up with the man I dated after him. But it took time for us to get to that point. If he had told me he was dat­ing some­one new the first time I saw him post break up, I’d prob­a­bly burst into tears in the mid­dle of the restau­rant. When hang­ing out with an ex for the first time no doubt the con­ver­sa­tion will turn to another sticky sub­ject; the break up. Try to avoid the sub­ject at all costs. What’s done is done, it’s in the past there is no use dis­cussing some­thing that was obvi­ously painful for one or both par­ties. Blame doesn’t need to be assigned, just let it go.

When part­ing ways with an ex after the first hang out a quick hug is all you need. There is a mal­adroit way to han­dle the sit­u­a­tion and there is a tact­ful way. Be brief and com­mit this to mem­ory: “It was great to see you, (insert name of your ex). I’m so glad we can remain friends. Let’s do this again some­time soon.” That’s it. Unless you don’t want to see them any­time soon and hang­ing out with them reminded you that the only rea­son you could spend time with them before was cause at least there was the poten­tial for sex, well then com­mit this to mem­ory. “It was good to see you, (insert name of ex). I’m glad there are no hard feel­ings. Take care.”

Start­ing a friend­ship with an ex is the begin­ning of the new rela­tion­ship. It’s not a down­grade from your past rela­tion­ship or a con­tin­u­a­tion. In some cases a cou­ple wasn’t friends before they dated so begin­ning a friend­ship is com­pletely new ter­ri­tory. My most recent ex and I were not friends before we dated and now we are good friends. It a com­pletely dif­fer­ent ball game. Bound­aries have to be estab­lished, pet names have to be erased from your ver­nac­u­lar, cer­tain activ­i­ties are out of the ques­tion, etc. A new kind of trust has to be estab­lished as the friend­ship devel­ops. If you and your ex were friends before the roman­tic rela­tion­ship then it is a lot eas­ier to return to a state of normalcy.

The most impor­tant thing in start­ing a friend­ship with an ex is patience. A real friend­ship like the one you have with your pla­tonic friends is not going to hap­pen over night with an ex. In fact you may hang out a few times and find that it’s too dif­fi­cult to see them. Time has to pass and wounds have to heal. I have stood in my exes liv­ing room and sud­denly begun to cry while attempt­ing to watch a foot­ball game with him on TV over pizza and beer. Now I could watch a foot­ball game with him with his new girl­friend and not bat an eye­lash. Time, matu­rity and patience are the most vital ingre­di­ents when befriend­ing an ex.

In the end, see­ing your ex for the first time after a break up is a tricky sit­u­a­tion and equally uncom­fort­able for both par­ties involved. But when han­dled with matu­rity and mutual respect it can be the start of a beau­ti­ful friend­ship. Or it can be a won­der­ful reminder of why that per­son is your ex.

Related posts:

1. Intro­duc­ing Your New Spark to Your Friends.
2. Can Men and Women be Friends? A Female Perspective.
3. Can Men & Women Be Friends? A Male Point of View.