Is it okay to be friends with your ex? That's what we're going to be talking about in this
video. But first, my name is Clay with modernlove.life, where we help you get the great loving relationship
that you're looking for without having to play mind games, without having to be hard
to get, and without having to pretend to be someone or something that you are not because
you deserve to be loved for the unique, amazing, and wonderful person that you are. And if
you agree with me, do me a favor by giving this video a thumbs up and by subscribing
to the channel down below. It does help us out with YouTube and all that. So please,
if you haven't already, please go ahead and smash that thumbs up button.
Also in this video, we're going to be talking about your ex's emotional journey and their
emotional experience. If that is something that you want to learn more about, we do have
a course called The Ex Solution Program. You can find out more about that down below in
the link in the description for this video, but I'm not going to twist your arm or hard
sell you want it, so no worries. But anyway, so let's go ahead and get into this.
So there is a lot of information out there that will tell people, or even just kind of
a gut instinct that tells people that you shouldn't be friends with your ex, that you
need to kind of deliver this ultimatum that either we're getting back together or we're
nothing at all. I've seen a lot of people do this over the years. I've heard of people
having this experience and it doesn't really work out too well.
First of all, it's okay if you want to have that kind of polarizing either/or sort of
stance and if you don't think that you have the stomach to be friends with your ex. But
I'm going to explain to you why this actually might make sense if you want to get back together
and also why you don't need to worry about the friend zone. Okay?
So why this might actually make sense. Your ex is probably in a sort of confused state
right now. There's a part of them that likes the connection that you have, but there's
also a part in that remembers why the two of you broke up. And so there's this sort
of like back and forth that your ex is feeling as they're interacting with you. They feel
drawn towards the positive aspects, but they also feel like they need to keep some space
between the two of you because of the lingering memory of the negative aspects. And so your
ex may try to say like, "Hey, let's just be friends," or something like that.
And if you're forcing them to polarize into either we're getting back together or we're
nothing at all, when they're in this place of confusion, it can be a little bit too much
too soon, if you know what I mean. Your ex may not have the emotional connection with
you at this point in time to actually be able to choose to be together with you. And so
what they're likely to do is to stand still and to do nothing, which means to stay broken
up with you. So if you do put some sort of ultimatum out there, like, "Hey, either we're
getting back together or nothing at all," then that is very often what's going to happen,
is they're just going to say, "Okay, well, I guess we're nothing at all. We'll stay broken
up," and then you may have painted yourself into a corner and there's not a whole lot
you can do at that point. So you want to be careful about that.
But if, on the other hand, you agree to actually being friends with your ex, it does something
nice, which instead of having this sort of black or white duality, you have this gray
area in the middle where your ex now can give themselves permission to spend time with you,
to interact with you, to get closer with you, to bond with you, and actually build up that
emotional connection between the two of you. And this is actually important because as
that emotional connection builds up and becomes stronger and stronger, there's going to become
a time when you can leverage that connection through not an ultimatum, but through something
that we call the fork in the road strategy to actually allow them to choose to be together
with you. But that emotional connection has to be in place first. If you just sort of
polarize them at the point where there isn't that emotional connection in place, they will
choose to stay where they're at now, which is broken up with you.
If, on the other hand, you can leverage that emotional connection, they're very likely
to actually choose to get closer to you and to get back together with you. But we have
to create the context for building that emotional connection first, which is why it's okay to
live in that gray area of being friends. You don't want to be there forever, obviously,
but at least for a period of time, you want to explore what's possible between the two
of you. And giving your ex something that they can
tell themselves is a powerful way to do that because they're going to be asking themselves,
"Hey, why am I getting together with you? Why are we hanging out? Why are we talking?
Is it because we're getting back together? I don't know if I'm ready to get back together,"
and they're going to freak out. But if they have this answer in their mind, which is,
"Well, we're getting together because we're friends," then they have a reason to justify
why they're talking to you or spending time with you or interacting with you, and that
allows the two of you to actually build that emotional foundation, which can lead to a
stronger emotional connection, which we can leverage later on at a certain point in time
with a fork in the road strategy to get the two of you back together. So I hope that makes
sense. By the way, if you're kind of confused about
all of this emotional connection stuff, we do have an entire video series on what we
call advanced relational skills. These are skills that help you to connect better with
your ex. You can find them right up there in a video playlist that I'll put in the corner.
Check it out if you don't know what I'm talking about, if you're new to this channel, or maybe
you just need a refresher. But with that being said, I know that there's also a lot of people
that are concerned about the friend zone. Okay. Here's the thing. Most people out there,
99% of the people out there, do not need to worry about their ex putting them in the friend
zone, okay? Unless there's been some sort of truly dramatic physical change or personality
change or something like that, your ex is probably still attracted you. And I mean that,
really dramatic. I know that people tend to be really critical of themselves when it comes
to their bodies and stuff like that, and I'm not talking about like, "Oh my goodness, you've
gained five pounds," or something. I'm talking LIKE, "Oh, you gained 100 pounds or something
like that." It has to be something truly dramatic where it would make sense that okay, maybe
they just simply are legitimately not attracted any longer.
But other than that, your ex is probably still attracted to you. Other than some sort of
dramatic physical change or some sort of like major personality change where it's like,
"Whoa, I thought you were this kind of person, but instead you're that kind of person," your
ex is probably still going to be attracted to you. It's just a matter of the history
between the two of you that just is blocking that attraction. If it were possible to somehow
wipe their memory like one of those memory sticks from Men in Black or something, they
would probably still be able to look at you and say, "Yeah, that's an attractive person."
So it's not that there's no attraction there, it's just that the baggage and the history
and everything that's happened between the two of you is stopping that attraction and
changing the way that they perceive you. And so what we want to do is we want to start
to work through that emotional blockage so that we can start to allow the attraction
that's already there to start to flow. And so you really don't need to worry about attraction
with your ex. 99 times out of 100, it is still there. It's just we have to work through the
resentment, the hurt feelings, all of that stuff. And once that is cleared away, the
attraction that's already there will start to flow. So don't worry about the friend zone.
I've never actually had a client who was legitimately friendzoned, but just theoretically I could
see it happening if somebody had some sort of really dramatic physical personality change
or something like that, where their ex thought they were one way initially, and then it's
like, "Oh, well, you've been living some sort of like strange double life and actually you're
this," I don't know some something awful or something like that.
And so that potentially could be something that could irrevocably change someone's view
of you. But other than that, don't worry about it. It's okay. Your ex still feels attracted
to you. You don't have to worry about the friend zone. And because the friend zone isn't
really a real thing in this situation, absolutely, it's a real thing in a dating circumstance
when you've never actually been in a relationship with someone and somebody doesn't necessarily
have attraction for you right now, it is absolutely something that you can be concerned about,
but in a breakup sort of situation, you don't need to worry about it really. And so it's
okay to suggest being friends with your ex. It's okay for that to happen so that you can
create that context for you to build up that emotional connection that you can leverage
to actually get back together. Okay? So I hope this answers all of that.
So it's okay. It's okay. You're going to be fine. It's totally fine to be friends with
an ex if you want to get back together. In fact, it can actually help the two of you
get back together as well too because, like we said before, it creates that context for
the emotional connection. It's not going to hurt you. It's not going to put you in some
sort of platonic zone or anything like that. And while you're interacting with them, while
you are friends, don't think that you have to behave as like some sort of neutered, platonic
person or anything like that. You can absolutely flirt. You can absolutely get emotionally
close to them, all of that stuff, unless there's some sort of boundary in place that the two
of you agree on, or something like that, totally feel free to do all of those things.
But anyway, hope this helps you out. I hope this answers the question of whether or not
it is okay to be friends with your ex. Once again, my name is Clay with modernlove.life.
If you like what we're doing here, please do me a favor, give this video a thumbs up
and subscribe to the channel. It does help us out really. And if you do want to learn
more about that whole emotional world of your ex, you may want to check out The Ex Solution
Program. Again, the link for that is down in the description box below this video. But
if you do want to also want more about advanced relational skills, we do have a video playlist
right here on that subject. Or you might want to check out this auto-generated video here
that YouTube has selected that it thinks you might like as well too. Anyway, thank you
so much. Take care and I'll talk to you in the next video.