The Open Matt Project

Ex Tending in Life

As per request:

About being friends with exes:

Almost everything I could say about this topic revolve around the definition of its two elements and the relationship between them. What constitutes a friend? What makes an ex? How are the two different? These questions are good places to start, when you're trying to figure out how to tackle the possibility of friendship with an ex.

I've proposed a number of times my four point system of relationships, but never on openmatt. As it is a useful tool in addressing this question, here it is:

communication ---> trust ---> intimacy ---> sex

Communication is your baseline for all human interaction. Focused on one or more people, it can build trust.

Trust is the absolute foundation and lifesblood of every good relationship. Built to a sufficient degree, it allows intimacy.

Intimacy is what separates friends from best friends, or "intimates". It's the final zone of identity one can share, aside from physical identity. Sharing this can often lead to, and make difficult to avoid, sex.

Sex is the ultimate positive communication between people. It is a sharing of oneself with another, temporarily blurring or possibly eliminating the boundaries of each person's identity. This merging can be synergistic, creating a soul for "the Relationship". (possibly more on this later.)

When you break up with someone, you are forced to ratchet backwards through these stages. Sometimes that means you've discovered you're not sexually compatible with someone, and so you return to being intimates with a minimum of discomfort. More often, some discord wrecks the level you are currently at, and forces you to backtrack to the safest possible level.

Often this means a loss of intimacy, trust, and communication. You are strangers to each other - again.

One of the most important key points I have made when talking to people about relationships is this: you cannot have a good relationship with someone if you cannot communicate clearly with them. You cannot have trust without communication, and without trust there is not even a friendship possible, much less a Relationship.

In any breakup, intimacy and trust suffer the most. Striving to re-assert an individual identity after sharing it with someone else (for so long, so deeply, like never before... and so on) is a grueling process. It is compounded by the feelings of abandonment or rejection or failure or cruelty which would normally be mitigated by the other person but now are doubled back on themselves. This process makes it near impossible to trust oneself, less anyone else, much less the absent lover.

So at best there is communication. You talk with the other person as you can. It was in clear communication that the relationship was born, and so it would be with any further relationship, friendly or otherwise. The trick after a breakup is knowing when you are ready to communicate clearly again. When can you be honest and forthright about expressing yourself? When can you have the comfort within yourself to withstand the many insignificant slights that every friendship endures? How can you be honest with yourself or someone else if you are not stable within?

If you can find that equilibrium and integrity in yourself, you stand a good chance of re-acquainting yourself with your ex, or perhaps repairing the friendship you had before it progressed. If you cannot, then face your inability to communicate with clarity and accept that confusing and perhaps even false communication is damaging unto deadly poison for any relationship, especially one so weakened to begin with.

Personally, I have kept in mind the Latin phrase "Primum non nocere" - First, do no harm. Although it may be excruciating, I suggest that when pressed to extremity, bearing pain is superior to delivering it.

This is my view on friendship with exes; do it if you can, avoid it if you cannot.

Posted by Matt at April 13, 2005 02:35 PM