3 Ways To Tell If You And Your Ex Have A Chance At Friendship
Staying friends with an ex-partner can be messy if not fully thought out. Here's how to know if it's possible for you.
By Mark Travers, Ph.D. | Ju;y 17, 2024
Imagine a scenario in which Jane decides to end her year-long relationship with Patrick. They met at a work function a year ago when Patrick took a job at Jane's longtime employer. They hit it off immediately, bonding over various things such as a shared love of travel, exercise and a healthy dose of career ambition. Recently, Jane started to feel the relationship stagnate, causing her to pull back. Patrick, sensing Jane's growing ambivalence, pressed her to increase her level of commitment. This frightened Jane, which led her to pull the plug on the relationship entirely.
Now Jane is grappling with the fallout from the dissolved relationship. Top on her mind is the question of whether it will be possible to stay friends with Patrick. Here are questions that can help Jane—or anyone in a similar situation—know whether friendship with an ex is possible.
1. Were You Friends Before The Romance Started?
A classic study conducted by researchers at Illinois State University found that ex-partners were significantly more likely to remain friends after their breakup if they were friends before beginning their romantic relationship.
The authors suspect this to be the case for a few reasons. First, because the precedent of a healthy platonic friendship has already been set, the ex-partners are more likely to invest time into restoring the initial friendship. Second, in some cases, it may feel natural—even inevitable—for two people to slip back into a friendship after realizing that a romantic partnership is not the right fit. This may be especially true when two people enter a relationship as a way to avoid the complexities of maintaining a cross-sex friendship, which are sometimes stigmatized.
In the case of Jane and Patrick, because their relationship began shortly after the two met, research would suggest they are less likely to remain friends after breaking up—although post-romantic friendship is always a possibility.
2. What Do You Think Your Ex-Partner's Motivations Are For Wanting To Remain Friends?
Recent research published in Personal Relationships suggests there are four main motivations for staying friends with an ex-romantic partner:
- Security
- Practicality
- Civility
- Unresolved romantic desires
Not surprisingly, the research suggests that post-breakup friendships are least likely to last when unresolved romantic desires form the basis of the friendship. On the other hand, post-breakup friendships are most likely to thrive when security—i.e., not wanting to lose the friendship they had or wanting to maintain a sense of connectedness—guides the decision to remain friends.
Again, in the case of Jane and Patrick, knowing that they weren't friends before the relationship started and also knowing that Patrick wanted to escalate the relationship before the breakup suggests that a post-breakup friendship would be unlikely.
3. Why Do You Want To Remain Friends?
Research also shows that partners who initiate a breakup are more likely to want to remain friends. However, this desire for friendship is sometimes short-lived and self-serving—it makes the initiator of the relationship feel better about hurting their ex-partner's feelings.
In Jane's case, she might opt for friendship with Patrick as a way to assuage his emotional pain. This instinct, while valid, is not typically the basis of a lasting friendship. Jane might also want to remain friends with Patrick for civility's sake, as they work in the same office. Again, however, research suggests that civility is less likely to result in a lasting friendship due to it being a "surface-level" emotional need.
The bottom line is that friendships with exes, while not impossible, are less common than you might think. A recent YouGov poll found that only 35% of U.S.-based respondents said they'd like to stay friends with an ex-partner in the event that their relationship ended. And, when asked to think about their previous relationships, only 17% reported remaining friends with all of their exes while 44% said they weren't friends with any of their exes.
Do you have what it takes to sustain a friendship after a breakup? Take the Breakup Distress Scale to get a science-backed answer.
A similar version of this article can also be found on Forbes.com, here.