Over the past few days (and many times before), there has been a lot of talk in the comments about staying friends with your ex, and more importantly, whether you can stay friends with a Mr Unavailable or assclown after you’ve broken up.

I have written on several occasions about being friends with your ex, for example in can’t we just be friends, and for me it’s like this:

If you are no longer emotionally attached to your ex and have gotten over him and moved on, let’s say 6 months or a year down the line, go ahead and knock yourself out. That is, of course, if he actually has qualities that make him worthy of actually being your friend.

If you want, need, or expect anything from your ex, even if you don’t express it or acknowledge it, you have ulterior motives for wanting to be his friend.

If you want to be his friend in spite of the fact that 1) you were never friends in the first place and/or 2) he treated you poorly in the relationship, I have to ask:

Why the hell do you want to be friends with this man?

Now, when it comes to Mr Unavailables and assclowns, there are a number of factors at play:

The relationship is likely to be based on illusions with much betting on potential involved.

There is a lack of commitment and emotional connection.

There is a lack of empathy.

There is a lack of care, concern, and respect.

There has been much managing down of your expectations.

The relationships are on their terms even when they ‘let’ you ‘think that you’re getting your own way.

There’s a whole load of negativity and lack of positivity.

Your needs were not being met.

You have been trained to accept crumbs.

In essence, the relationship is lacking.

And yet, many a woman, many a Fallback Girl or assclown lover, is eager to be friends with their ex. Why?

Well the way you’ll tell it is:

You don’t believe in being mean/horrible/cold/nasty [insert your word of choice].

You don’t want to waste what you had between you both.

You don’t want to seem like you’re not being ‘mature’ about things.

You still care about him.

You would like to have him in your life.

You think that just because you can’t be lovers, it doesn’t mean you can’t be friends.

You project how you would feel in the situation and you wouldn’t want him to not be friends with you.

Now, hard as this may be for many of you to hear, these are all codewords and phrases for:

I don’t want to let go.

I want to stay emotionally invested.

I’m hoping he’ll change.

I’m hoping that he’ll regret letting me go.

I don’t love me enough.

In reality, if you want to stay friends with your Mr Unavailable or assclown, you are inadvertently establishing a new fallback position.

You’ll still be that woman that he thinks he can rely on for an ego stroke, a shag, or a shoulder to lean on…, it’s just that now he’ll believe he can do it under the guise of ‘friendship’.

If you’re still emotionally attached and you end up providing him with either an ego stroke, shoulder to lean on, or sex, or all of them, he gets the fringe benefits without the hassle of you wanting, needing, and expecting from him as if you were in a relationship.

You’re yet again marginalising yourself because you’ve decided to exchange the situation where you were not getting your needs met for ‘friendship’.

This isn’t because you actually want friendship; it’s more that you want to stay in his life in the hope that he will regret letting go of you, finally recognise your value, and validate you and the emotional expenditure that you’ve thrown at him.

Trust me, you’re not staying friends with him because he’s such a great person and again, you are caught up in illusions and betting on potential, because instead of magicking him into a wonderful boyfriend, you have now conjured up a replacement illusion where he will be a good friend that treats you decently. You have no basis for deciding this – you have more of a basis for telling him to take a run and jump!

Assclowns, in particular, make lousy boyfriends, lovers, husbands, …and also friends.

All he will see is that you still want to be there and offer the hand of friendship in spite of the fact that he has treated you with low regard.

These guys won’t do the friendship on your terms and the litmus test of this is when you refuse to allow them to talk to you in a sexual manner, or to use you as a booty call, give them an ego stroke, call you or turn up at will, or to poke around in your business. When they can’t get these things, suddenly ‘friendship’ is not so interesting.

At the end of the day, if you still want to be friends with someone who is an assclown (or Mr Unavailables) when it’s patently clear that you’re not over them and that you haven’t built up your self-esteem, it’s like playing with fire, and we all know that if you play with fire you get burned.

You have to ask yourself this: Are you actually planning to get over your ex and move on?

If you are, you need to rethink your fallback plan and opt out of the friendship, because what you want is at odds with your actions, and you want to have the best of both worlds, even though he couldn’t even give you the best of one…

Part Two and part three.

Your thoughts?

 

FavoriteLoadingAdd to favorites
Ready to make way for the loving relationship you want? Sign up for RELATIONSHIP FUNDAMENTALS classes.
This is default text for notification bar