Staying Friends with your Ex

So you want to remain friends with your ex after the breakup? You’ve thought about it a lot and you feel that you are strong enough to see them without having a mini breakdown. After all, you were together for so long and you shared so many wonderful moments together, so why shouldn’t you be just friends?

Your friends are telling you not to do it, so what do you do?
You lie to them.
And you meet your ex.
And all of a sudden your feelings of love and hate and desperation and vulnerability all rise up and mix together and suddenly you realize that if those feelings were a cocktail, you’d be passed out and lying in some dark alleyway somewhere with homeless people going through your pockets.

And that would be better than meeting your ex again.
So let’s say it does work out—well good for you! So now you can live happily ever after.

But for some people it becomes complicated. A friendship with an ex partner might come with some prerequisites, or in plain English–with strings attached, and after getting rid of those strings after the breakup, should you really be adding more?

This is the tale of Alice, who got herself knotted up in those strings when Keith, her ex, asked for a little extra to go along with that friendship. No, it’s not what you think, it’s more complicated than that...

So was Alice ready to take that extra step to stay friends with Keith? Click on the tab at the top of the page called “Friends with Your Ex??” to read Alice’s story, and after you have finished laughing, consider this – could that be you?

Friends with your Ex is a tale from the book Breakup Cocktail: 5 Parts Humor, 1 Part Healing and a Twist of Revenge from Barbara Kingsley Singer
Breakup Cocktail book contains about 60 Tales including this one, but without illustrations
Copyright© 2012 Barbara Kingsley Singer