Is it Really Possible to Remain Friends with Your Ex?

Is it Really Possible to Remain Friends with Your Ex?

The age old question: Can you really maintain a successful, strictly platonic friendship with your ex? How does that friendship affect your current relationship and significant other?

For a few people, these questions do not ever really come into play; however, for many others, they often pose a great threat to new relationships. Some people are simply warm, kind and friendly by nature and see no issue in maintaining a friendship with someone they were previously romantically involved with. While the romance may have faded, the friendship did not. This is all well and good but how does it make your new partner feel?

It is all too common that those new partners not like or approve of these friendships. Some people are just not secure enough within themselves to be able to see their new guy or gal chatting up an old flame. For whatever reason, insecurities creep up and take over.

Healthy, long-term friendships are necessary and quite beneficial. People can gain tremendous satisfaction and guidance through friends. There is an old saying that one can never have too many friends and many people subscribe wholeheartedly to this theory.

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When you are working to maintain a friendship with your ex, though, you must always take into account how that friendship affects your current partner.

Of course, when there are shared children involved, it is imperative that ex-partners work to maintain some degree of friendship for the sake of the children. But there must also be boundaries to ensure success in any new or current romantic relationships.

For some individuals, maintaining a friendship with an ex is a way to simply keep that person in their lives because there are still unresolved romantic feelings. These connections can be dangerous and almost always pose a threat to any other romantic relationship. Then there are a few persons who desire to maintain a friendly connection as a way to always have some degree of control over their former partner. These situations never end well and must be avoided at all costs, even when there are children involved.

If you find yourself in this particular scenario, you may need to employ the efforts of a third party to facilitate the pick up/drop off of the children so as to limit the contact with your ex. But if you’re just an overly nice person who enjoys being surrounded by friends, make sure your new or current partner is secure enough and strong enough to stand by objectively while you laugh it up and interact with your ex. Maybe your new partner could form a friendly connection as well.