I was curious to know if anyone here is still friends with the ex-boyfriends or ex-girlfriends? I am friends with only one of my ex's. My ex-fiancee'. I think it's because we were really good friends before we were together and we just realized we were better as friends than we were as a couple.

I'm not. I only ever dated one guy, and he was a complete jerk.  Even if he hadn't been, I'm fairly certain I still would have cut off all contact.  To me, it just seems weird to date someone for 3.5 years, then break up with them and be friends.  I know that's strange for modern society, but I just couldn't do it (go on being friends, I mean).  I'd rather just start over completely new.

I wasn't really in a relationship with anybody, although kind of close. They just vanished one day though with no contact or even any trace. Kind of hurt on the inside...

I don't think I really have exes... I've had close friends that I went places with who maybe in their mind thought we were going out... but I didn't consider it such. I'm still friends with those people. The only person I feel I've dated, I'm still with, though.

I often wonder why it's hard for people to remain friends after breaking up. And most often than not,breaking up with someone never ends well. Even if you're the one being dumped. I guess I'm searching for answers to various questions about why people tend top react the way they do. Heck, I even wonder why I react certain ways with various situations.

Sorry, didn't mean to get a little off topic there. Maybe it's because people feel hurt or don't want to continue to hurt the person they are no longer dating. Do you think it's harder to break up with someone, or is it harder when they break up with you?

Does anyone have any advice on how to remain friends with someone after no longer being in a relationship with them?

I am still pretty good friends with only one of my ex-girlfriends, although I haven't talked or hung out with her in quite some time. I often worry about my currently girlfriend thinking things and such, but I think she trusts me. There was this one ex I have that I honestly wish that nothing ever happened between us, I have never had a bigger hate towards anyone before ever in my life. But I hate this girl, I'm really quite happy to be away from her! I am sorry I didn't mean to blabber on about my hatred toward one of my ex's, I have tried to be friends with other ex's though (except her I knew it just wouldn't work). Although all of them seemed to have just been for nothing.

SunflowerGaming : In most cases yes but not so much in regard to my last real ex. I am civil with her though whenever I end up hearing from her but it’s nothing like it use to be between her and I but that’s the consequences of her actions during the relationship. It may sound cold but that’s how I feel about it. As I said I’m still civil with her whenever we cross paths but I think that is due in large part to my responsibilities as a writer and per those responsibilities I pretty much have to be accessible to everyone regardless of personal feelings toward certain people. It’s a responsibility that I have really taken to over the years. When I was younger I didn’t really think too much about having a responsibility to make sure that I kept my conduct to the upmost professional standard even when I wasn’t doing anything work related. It was just part of being young and dumb and eventually maturing and growing from being young and dumb.

I certainly hope that no one would hold or is holding any grudges against me for my mistakes and errors in judgment from many years ago. I can only hope that if there is anyone who has heat toward me that they will see the person I have become and realize that I wasn’t myself during that rough period of my life. Least I hope so. In regard to wishing no one holds a grudge, I realize that my ex probably feels the same way about not wanting people to hold a grudge against her but in my case although there is no hatred it’s just real hard to not remember what I was put through and the subsequent mistakes I made due in large part to that. The thing that I can say in my defense is that when I have heard from her I have been honest about my feelings and the anger I have because of what I was put through so it’s not as if I’m putting on the professional face with all smiles and holding this all inside. She knows how I feel.

bvd1022 : I can understand where you're coming from. It's not easy to try and forget what people have done, especially if they really hurt you or affected certain parts of your life and caused a lot of negativity at the time they were a big part of your life. At least you're honest with her about how you feel and you are decent enough to at least be civil with her. That's really hard for some people. I'm surprised I'm even friends with my ex. I mean, of course it's not the same like it was when we were just friends, but it's a lot more healthier than my other relationships with my other ex's. I don't even talk to them anymore.

I just couldn't be around them after everything that went down. So I just cut them completely off from being any part of my life.

SunflowerGaming : Well it definitely isn’t the easiest thing for me to do but I’m at a point in life where I need to show I’m a bigger person and if what I’ve chosen to do for my vocation in a way forces me to deal with things I’d rather not deal with otherwise then I can only do it with as much humility as possible. As I’ve said many times no one’s perfect and I am certainly not perfect.

In her case she did a job on my reputation and lied to me about serious matters that no one should be lied to about. After the relationship was over she spread stuff around about me which has made it difficult to move on since even all these years later I still deal with it to a degree.

Where I am to blame for it is simply because I allowed it. It was at a stage in my life where I wasn’t thinking clearly and I know that if I was the person that I am now back then there’d be no way I’d allow it. She knows this.

It’s not an easy thing to do but for me it’s necessary. I just hope that by the time I hit my 40’s all of it will be a distant memory for me. I do appreciate that she apologized though.

My ex is my absolute best friend. Our relationship wound up twisting itself into a nasty thing that hurt both of us, and we stopped talking for about a year. After that... we were A-OK. We talked, and talked, and talked, catching up on everything. And me being my goofy, totally-blind-to-hints, self missed the dead obvious fact that this particular friend is the best, truest relationship that I could ever have.

And I still love him, but that's okay because I know we can't be together right now. Maybe sometime in the future - but not right now.

And until the day when that changes - I'll treasure him as my best friend.

i am still good friends with my ex, we chat regularly on the phone and hang out with our friend group. he has got another boyfriend since we broke up, ive met him and i'm happy for them both. although i think his new boy friend found it a bit awkward, im perfectly comfortable to be around him, and we get along well.

I used to be for a while I would say about 6 months or so but then we ended up just drifting apart. Once youve broken up I think that chapter of your life is over and you can't stand still in that place... You have to move on and meet new people. You have to remember there is always a reason why they are your ex partner!

bvd1022 : That's completely understandable. If someone did those kinds of things to me, even if it was just a friend, I would have a really hard time trusting them. I would be completely civil, but I would also let them know that I felt I couldn't really trust them and I would be leery around them for a very long time.

Ktanaqui : That's really good. Not too many people can have a healthy friendship after dating one another. So that's very commendable.

iSPY! : That's really good advice. I don't know what else to say, other than that. You're right, there are reasons why you're no longer dating them.

SunflowerGaming : I hope it is understandable for most people. Because of the mistakes I made in my past and because of what I went through due to her it has really made me a reclusive person and very neurotic to a degree. I pretty much keep to myself and even though I am on social media I pretty much stay an island unto myself for the most part. Don’t send out request to people from the past mostly because I don’t know who I’m on good terms with and am frankly reluctant to find out even all these years later and I wait for whomever wants to talk to me to come to me first.

I know it probably sounds like paranoia to most people but that’s how I live. I have turned down invites from friends that have reached out to me to get together and hang out or, to go to lunch or what have you because of my reclusive nature. I don’t know if it’s necessarily a trait or a stereotype but I have been told before that many writers are reclusive. There is also a reluctance from the standpoint of I haven’t seen, heard from or talked to many of these people in double digit years. In that time so much has happened including a health scare for me about seven years ago. Although I hold no resentment toward anyone at the same time there is a feeling of if these people were such good friends then where were they when I needed friends? I’m not talking about when I was sick but I’m talking about after I left school. I pretty much have accepted that I was more or less forgotten by many of these people but at the same time there’s a feeling of a bit of sarcasm of “Well, what do you know? They know me…” I will also freely admit that some of this neuroticism comes from the fact that I am a writer now and because I am more or less a public figure I am always leery of people from the past coming out of the wood worth to try and make things difficult for me either because of mistakes I made in the past, which frankly I can’t remember a lot of that period of my life or, because they assume that because I’m a writer that I’m making a lot of money.

Nothing could be further from the truth and in fact I don’t make anywhere near a consistent income to where I can make a living off of my writing. At minimum I at least try to hear every one who reaches out to me out in part because I feel guilty about how bad I allowed myself to screw up because looking back on everything I clearly wasn’t myself back then and I just hope that I didn’t hurt anyone to the point where they have anger toward me. Obviously I don’t blame my ex for everything because frankly doing so would be avoiding my own errors and over time I’ve learned that I need to be honest not only with myself but in general. At the same time it has obviously made me very leery and not so quick to trust anyone I may come in contact with. I admit that back then I was a BS’er to a degree and clearly didn’t have my head on straight, but my life is different now even though I’ve more or less spent much of my life in the same place I’m living now. I just hope that when all’s said and done I will not be defined by that period of my life.

As far as ,my ex well, the unexpected (Least from my point of view) face to face meeting we had almost two years ago was frankly a very uncomfortable conversation for me. It didn’t help matters that I was up for forty-eight hours straight and was working on material at the time she popped up at my door. Despite that I was working and despite how tired I was, I went outside and gave her forty-five minutes of my time and was as civil, well-mannered and professional as one who was extremely overtired could be. She not only apologized again for what I was put through as she had online but also told me of all the struggles and nonsense that she had been through since the last time she saw me. With the exception of me saying in a subtle way “Gee, I’m not so bad now am I?” I more or less let her talk.

I can certainly understand to a degree someone needing to talk and vent things out because things certainly haven’t been easy and milk and honey for me over the years so I was as polite as I could be toward her. I wished her well… I think however that by the conversation ending with me saying you take care of yourself and simply going back in my house, with no hug or even a hand shake tells her how I feel about everything.

It certainly hasn’t been easy for me over the years and it has been very trying at times especially being alone but like I said before I hope that eventually all of what I went through either self-inflicted or because of her will be merely a distant memory for me and eventually I’ll be able to settle down and hopefully at minimum make a steady living off of my work. If I can get that I’ll be a happy man.

I'm still great friends with my first girlfriend, and we love to chat whenever we get the chance. Part of it is that we only broke up because we were pushing things too fast and she then moved to North Carolina, so there was never really a huge falling out. My last girlfriend and I, on the other hand, ended in a fairly rough fight and I haven't spoken to her in the 4 1/2 months since. I've seen her at school a couple times since and she's not cold, she smiles and waves and all that, but it's more of a "I know you, and a mutual friend is standing there, so I'm not going to make things awkward" reaction than friendly.

I use to be friends with some of my Ex-s. But we eventually grew apart, or they began causing drama in my life. They would say "Why did you leave me? I thought you loved me" And other things like that. Most of the time I dumped my Ex-s because they were being complete jerks to me, and I just couldn't handle it. One of them actually threatened to hurt themselves if I didn't go back to them, which is quite ridiculous. 

I never went back to being friends after breaking up with someone. Well, except for one temporarily, but that did not last at all. Probably because I was cheated on or lied to which caused some of the break ups that I would never want to be friends with them. In fact out of all my exes, only one I could consider being friends with again, mainly because that one broke off on better terms (both of us fell out of love with each other). The rest could just go bite it.