Should you be friends with your ex or should you stay friends with your ex?
It's a simple question without a simple answer, but today I'm giving you some
key questions you have to ask yourself before you make that decision.
Don't forget to download the text guide, the 12 Irresistible Texts To Make Him Yours
from link and link below. And I'll see you on the other side of this.
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Should you be friends with an ex and how to know if it's the right decision
to maintain a friendship with your ex? This is a fascinating question that
everyone has a different opinion on, so I want to give you what I advise to
clients today so that you can get some clarity on whether it's a good idea or
whether you might be hurting yourself by being friends with your ex.
So the first important thing to clarify here, very important is that friends is
not the same as friendly, friendly with your ex should virtually always be a goal.
That means you can pass him in the street and you guys can act normal
and polite to each other. That means you can be in the same room and at least be
tolerant of each other and not, you know, weird everybody out. If you have kids
together, if you have shared finances, if you have things that link you like work,
this is um especially important.
Unless a guy has totally disrespected you, friendly with an ex should always be a goal,
but that's not what we're talking about in this video. In this video, I'm talking about
friends with an ex. Should you maintain that specific friendship?
Now, being friends with your ex can demonstrate an enormous amount
of emotional maturity. It shows that the two of you genuinely want what's best
for each other. It shows that you can grow from it, put your feelings aside
and really want someone to go out and live their life without you.
That's spectacular and I have a ton of respect for that, but the reality is there's
not that many people that can do it successfully. And in this video, I'm going
to give you some questions you've got to ask yourself that will show why that is.
Take Katelyn for example, she was a woman who came to me and she said,
"Mark, I'm really struggling. I've had a breakup. It was his idea, but it was very
cordial. He was very respectful. It was mutual. As in I accepted his decision."
It wasn't her wanting to be in the decision, but she accepted it and she said,
"we've agreed to be friends. We're going to do what other couples haven't done.
We're going to transition to friends and this is going to be great. We're going to
prove the crowd wrong."
I'm sure you can imagine how that ended. There was a study done at the university
of Connecticut that actually examined the differences in friendships between
people who have never been together, so purely platonic friends and male-female
exes and the study found that there was a significant difference in the way the
contenders, the people in the relationships saw their friends. They were more likely
to associate positive qualities and positive experiences with the friends that they were
only platonic with and were more to have negative associations or described negative
traits of friends who were exes.
So there's a lot of people struggling with this, so how do you do it and if it's right
for you, what are the right questions to be asking yourself? Should you be friends with
your ex? Well, the very first question, this is the simple one that I go straight to to
ask a client is this, if your ex today put "In a relationship" as their Facebook status,
would you like the status and would you genuinely mean it? This is one of the best
ways to clear out the bullsh*t from your head and go, do I really want what's best
for my ex? Do I want to see them succeed as a friend? I'm going to talk about a few
more questions in just a moment, but this is the quickest, fastest way to get clarity
on your own intent. Would I be genuinely happy to see my ex in a relationship that
made them happy?
Here's a few other indicators you can use to know if being friends with an ex is a
good idea.
Number two, you've had 90 days or more, no contact with your ex. I've very, very rarely
seen as a dating and relationships expert, any couple go immediately from couple to
friends. The vast majority of successes are couples who have taken a break.
So if you haven't had at least 90 days, no contact, time to heal, time to get closure,
time to process the emotions, time to learn your lesson, it's very unlikely you'll be able
to transition to friends with your ex successfully.
Number three, did things end mutually and respectfully? Respect never gets forgotten.
And the reality is if there was a lot of disrespect, negativity in your breakup,
it's very unlikely you'll be able to get back and be friends with your
ex without those prior arguments and prior resentments showing up again.
If your relationship ended mutually and respectfully, that's an indicator you might
be a real shot at being friends with your ex.
Number four, you're not doing it for his emotional support.
So we come back to intent again. And one of the common themes I see with women
like Katelyn who want to be friends with their ex is if they're honest, they really want
to maintain that emotional support. They want to have him there as part of that
network. So if you're going to be friends with an ex, it's really important that you've gone
away, that you've had your own friends be there for your support, that you've used them
as your emotional backups and that you're honestly no longer leaning on him as any
of your emotional support. If you're going back or wanting to be friends with an ex
for emotional support, it's the wrong reason, the wrong intent to do it.
Number five, you're not doing it to hurt him. Now, you might say, "Well that's ridiculous,
Mark. Like why would I go and be friends with an ex just to hurt him?"
And this isn't something you do consciously, but we all kind of have this instinct to want
to get back at someone when they've rejected us. It's not an instinct where proud of but
it's an instinct we have to own. And so perhaps if you've just gotten a new boyfriend
or had a big recent success in your life, you might be feeling on top of the world and
you go, now I can see my ex again. Now I can do that friendship.
Is it coming from the best place? Maybe you're just really wanting to be friends with
your ex so you can say, "Hey, look, I succeeded without you. There you go. This is what you
rejected." It might feel good, but it's not a good reason to be friends with your ex.
Number six, you're not doing it to appease him. So sometimes when you've been the one
who rejected him, you already feel bad enough and you don't want to feel even more cruddy
by pushing him right out of your life and seeing him suffer so you let him accept
crumbs for himself and let him stay around in your life. Just in the hope that one day you'll
change your mind. You feel a bit better because you're not hurting him quite as much,
but in the longer term, you're actually hurting him a lot. Don't keep him around if it's just
for his sake, you're better off ripping off the bandaid and having him disconnect from
you so he can emotionally heal and maybe reform a friendship with you in the future.
Number seven, his positive qualities add to your life. In other words, you actually enjoy
having him as a friend for the energy he brings to your life. It doesn't have to be in the
relationship sense. His positivity, his laughter, the things that you can appreciate him for
on a friendship level still add to your life. If so, that's an indicator in the positive
that you could be friends with your ex. Friends with an ex is difficult and you probably came
to this video wanting me to tell you, "Hey, this will be fun. You can be friends with
your ex," and you might not have done so well with the indicators that I've talked about,
but there is one little silver lining to this cloud. The university of Kansas did a study
and they found that people who were friends with their ex for practical or civil reasons
overall reported positive experiences from it.
That means if you are friends with an ex and if you can manage it because you have kids
or money together or you just want to be respectful and on a friendly-ish friends level
who catch up every couple of months, the majority of people in this university of Kansas
study reported positive emotions and feelings from doing that.
Well, that's the video. Thank you so much for watching! I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Let me know your thoughts, comments, questions, et cetera. Put them all below.
Download the text message guide, the 12 Irresistible Texts To Make Him Yours.
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