The lovely Amy from Wandering Everywhere wrote this post about how you shouldn’t stay friends with your ex and it really resounded with me.
“One of the healthiest things you can do in your situation is probably to just stay friends with him.” I’m sorry. Can we just back this up real quick?
The self-proclaimed “love of my life” had just ended our – albeit relatively short-lived – relationship, and everything I had learnt about love had inevitably gone down in flames. To follow was one of the hardest break-ups of my entire existence, consisting of the weird combination of both being unable to eat for three days and impulse buying expensive moisturisers. At the end of it, I came to understand our incompatibility, and felt a lot better about the whole utterly disastrous situation. However, I wasn’t quite feeling quite good enough to let this person back into my life.
Apparently, after a hard break-up, a relatively “healthy” way to combat the side effects is to simply stay in contact with your ex-lover, and prolong the pain until it just kind of subsides. Now I’m not sure about y’all, but I don’t actually think that this is the most therapeutic thing you could do. As our queen Dua Lipa states, “one – don’t pick up the phone, you know he’s only calling ‘cause he’s drunk and alone.” The other four rules should go like this:
Do NOT prolong contact with toxic people
Regardless of who someone may be to you, if they make you feel sad more than they make you feel happy, or you find that they cause you to react in a self-destructive manner, or just don’t make you feel on top of the offing world, then why the heck would ya wanna keep in contact with that? I’m not going to lie, I did try (kind of) to stay friends with the aforementioned love of my life – alas, the sassy little comments and digs I would receive were 100% NOT worth the effort. Believe me, you’ll thank me when you’ve saved yourself the time.
You’re probably doing it for the wrong reasons anyway
Now of course I do trust your judgement – but, I feel like at the beginning of a break-up we all tend to feel rather raw. Can you just try to establish for me why you would actually want to stay in contact with a neat lil heartbreaker? For me, I wanted to keep mine in my life until he fell inevitably back in love with me, and then I could turn around and do the exact same thing thing to him (so that he goes on a spontaneous stress diet also). On reflection, I see this is perhaps not the most productive way of dealing with this situation. Try and find the core behind your want, and you’ll probably find the reasons as to why you shouldn’t ring them back up pretty self-explanatory.
It can go one of two ways
I’m not going to lie to you, this whole thing can go one of two ways. One – you become relatively “okay” friends, and then get offended when they don’t invite you to their future wedding. Or two – you become MORTAL ENEMIES and end up passive aggressively blocking each other on Instagram. In regards to my own personal story, I tried to stay friends with my ex – before he invited me out on a drive which ended with us kissing, me realising how utterly loveless kissing him felt, and then him asking if I wanted to go back to his because “his parents weren’t in.” Like I’m sorry, what? Remind me again why I wanted to be “friends?” It’s a trap, I tell you.
It will bring up sad times
The hardest part of a break-up, for me at least, is that I would have prior spent time imagining myself becoming an irreplaceable part of their family. Their mums tend to love me (and I’ve even gone on trips with just my boyfriend’s mother before), and their grannies teach me their secret recipes. I do not like the idea of suddenly being removed from said family, and especially having the chance to see them again afterwards isn’t one I relish. For now, things are awkward. The family knows I have been rejected by the alpha male, and thus I am no longer a member of the pack. I’m not quite sure where these strange Animal Planet channel vibes are coming from – but the short story is that it’ll make you think of what could have been. And whilst you’re still talking, you will always feel the niggle of potential in the back of your head. And that bit hurts the most.
So, my dears! I think today we have all learnt a valuable lesson. First up, just don’t date scumbags. You’re worth a lot more than them, so don’t worry. Live life. Eventually find a lovely mate to build your own pack with. Ignoring the strange references, I would simply h-i-g-h-l-y recommend you don’t stay friends with your exes, because literally what is the point? It’s like trying to shove a bit of poop back up your ass. Not worth the effort at all. However, as a side tip – you should always ask them to take down the photo of your bum on a hill from their Facebook before you block them. You’re welcome.
Thank you a million to Codie for hosting me on her blog for this little guest post. I write at my own blog (Wandering Everywhere) although I do rarely do LIFE-SAVING ADVICE piece like this. It’s been fun, and I have enjoyed my time here. I hope you guys have liked this post also.