On Being Friends with Your Ex
February 16, 2006 by Pocahantas
Have you ever reached the point when you’re fed up with talking? When you’ve said all you have to say? Talked until you’re blue in the face…this is possible, I’ve done it, and all to no avail. I’ve found that some things can be hashed, rehashed, eaten, regurgitated, and, well you get the point…no resolution will ever be reached. Such is the case with every relationship I’ve ever had. I have always felt that I shouldn’t be in a relationship with someone with whom I can’t see myself spending the rest of my life. As a result of this, I’ve dated dozens of decent, desirable, and in some case delectable specimens in the course of my young life, and have managed to produce only two substantive relationships.
My most recent relationship is with a guy I met in college through my ex-best friend (I know it’s weird, but it’s the only way to describe her). He’s a decent sort of guy, very eccentric—perfect for me—with one slight problem; we’re just not at the same place in our lives. Not only that, but I just don’t see where the relationship has the potential to go anymore.
My ex has at least dozens of issues—and I can say this with no exaggeration. Although the fact that I’m only the second girl that he’s even dated being the least of them, it has complicated the issue. He had practically no dating experience before me, and since he and I broke up two years ago, he’s been beating down doors with his enthusiasm. On the one hand, as we are friends, I guess I’m happy that he’s experiencing life and enjoying himself, and, on the other hand, I am a little jealous that I—who used to be the best thing that ever happened to him—may soon be replaced by some nineteen year old ninny who doesn’t know her head from her arse and just happens to be everything I’m not. It’s not that I’m insecure (lol), not that I’m in love with him, I guess I feel that I invested WAAAY too much into that relationship to get no return. I kind of went for broke, and I’m coming out-you guessed it, yep, broke.
In the past, I have kept very lax restrictions—and by lax I mean none—on my relationships with my exes, leading to years of concentric circles during which horrible, nay, dastardly sequences of events have occurred that have further devastated our chances for a promising future relationship. In the second year of this seventh level of hell that was my pseudo-relationship I did something that I can only describe as inexplicably stupid and simultaneously quite enlightening, I went through his phone. I read all of his text messages, checked his voicemail (I still know his password), and looked at all of his pictures. He has a “friend” whom he’s known for a while, who I know and have “hung out” with while with him, and she’s pushing up on him hard. She sends him texts asking him if he could see himself married to her, and asking him to sleep with her and other things.
The truth is, I could see that, because the moment I spoke to her on the phone I knew she had feelings, but he was calling me from HER phone (don’t ask) and she was acting all fake friendly with me. My issue was not her. I went through the outbox because I just want to know what he’s saying to her to encourage this, because I know him. She just doesn’t seem like a psycho type of girl who would initiate all of this on her own. Afterwards I felt so disgusting, so vile, so low, and the fact that I’d even stooped to this level petrified me. Me. The girl who looks down on her friends for reading over their man’s shoulder and answering his phone even when they know who’s calling…I was so ashamed. What had I become that I was so insecure that I needed to know what was going on that badly?
And I discovered, as I had suspected that he was encouraging the madness and had sent her a message telling her to sleep well and signed it 143. For anyone who is in the dark, 143 looks like I love you on a pager and it’s a code for the same in computer and text speak. What I found just compounded my problems because now I have hard proof of something that I’d suspected, but even if I went to him with it I would look like the crazy one, not him, as we are not in a relationship.
I guess then it finally hit me. We’re not friends. We’re sick and twisted people and I’m a liar. I’ve been lying to myself and to him and I’m the only one believing it. When I read his message my heart sunk, my face dropped, my heart pounded wildly in my head. I tried to play it cool, and we had another one of our long talks in which nothing is resolved, but he tries to manage to convince me that we really are friends and that neither of us want to be in a relationship right now and that he can’t possibly be using me because he “doesn’t think about things like that” and that he “loves” me, really, and that he just “can’t tell me the truth because I don’t take it well.” Then I realised the truth. I don’t take it well. At all. I take it like crap because I’m not his friend at all. Nope. I’m just another stupid girl who’s in love with another stupid boy who’s too selfish to know or care that he’s breaking her heart.
So when is it time to burn the bridges? You guessed it, a year ago last month i.e., when we broke up. Friendship with exes is something that only works on TV and anyone in their right mind will tell you that in every relationship there’s someone who’s in it for the other person and the other person’s in it for what they can get or because there’s nothing better in the picture at the moment. Allowing yourself to be ‘friends’ with an ex when you aren’t being honest with yourself about how you feel is only setting yourself up to be used, abused, and have your heart wrenched out of your chest with a flaming lasso otra vez.
So girlies if there’s one thing I can say is that when love takes its course and dies, as it will, once it’s gone, enjoy the memories of what you had, but don’t attempt to transfer the relationship immediately onto another realm in a desperate, last-ditch attempt to keep the one you love in your life—let him go. Because while you are busy fishing around to see if there are any feelings left, he’s trying to figure out how to say as little as possible to keep his steady source for sex in the picture until he finds his next. If he has nothing to say at all that just means he doesn’t want to hurt your feelings—or make you cut and run.
Because the truth about men is, as I’ve said and will keep saying, is that they say what they mean and mean what they say—and the honest ones will say nothing at all! If he really loves, respects, and wants to be with you he’ll come back to you ready to work at the relationship, fix the issues that caused the fissure, and commit to building whatever it is you can both decide that you want—with you and you alone. There won’t be any confusion, any indecision, and definitely no other people in the picture. Cause if he loves you, I mean truly loves you, there won’t be anyone else in his life that can take the place of you, there won’t be anyone else in his life that can come between you, and there will definitely be no one to whom he feels the need to say 143 besides you.
Pocahantas is a 23 year old fiesty female with loads of common sense and yet an unstintingly healthy dose of cynicism when it comes to men and relationships. She’s currently single and living in the great metropolis of Atlanta, where half the men have lots of drama and the other half are gay. Tune in weekly for her reality check on single living in the great US of A.
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That is very honest and true. Although I am friends with my 2 ex husbands and really like their wives. I am the exception though and probably did not really love them so if you really love someone, as they say let them go!!