Can You Be Friends With Your Ex?

Lisa Marie Bobby: This is Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby, and you’re listening to the Love, Happiness, and Success podcast.

We are listening to the legendary Lord Huron together. This is the coolest song. It’s from their new album. The album is called Long Lost. The song is Mine Forever, which is very appropriate for our subject today. 

Today we are going to be talking about one of the most difficult aspects of a breakup or divorce for many people, which is the conundrum of being friends with your ex. Is it possible? Is it a good idea? If so, how does one achieve it and maintain their sanity? All will be revealed over the course of today’s podcast. 

Last note about Lord Huron. I feel obligated to mention: this amazing band is currently on tour as I’m recording this. For my friends in Colorado, they’re coming to Red Rocks, so get your tickets now. You can learn more about Lord Huron and their travel plans on their website, lordhuron.com. 

Okay, now on with our show. If you’ve listened to this podcast before, you have probably heard me mention the various things that I do, right? I’m a licensed marriage and family therapist; I’m a licensed psychologist; I’m a board-certified coach. I’m the founder and clinical director of Growing Self Counseling & Coaching. But in my heart of hearts, I have a very special warm place for people struggling in the aftermath of breakups and divorces. 

It’s really like, if I do have a specialty, I mean, I do a lot of couples counseling and therapy and all the things, but I love working with people around this issue in particular. I always feel a little funny to tell people what I do. I’m a marriage counselor, but I really specialize in breakups and divorces because they’re like, “What? Are you like the worst marriage counselor in the history of the world?” Like, no. 

Just to be clear, I first and foremost love helping people repair their relationships—often work with people coming in the door who are sometimes feeling legitimately hopeless about their relationship. Like, “How can we ever fix this?” It is the joy of my life to be able to help people find their way back together again, and do a lot of deep important work, and come out the other side of that stronger, happier, and healthier than ever before.

Both their marriages, their relationships, but also, like, personal growth. A lot of personal growth happens in that process, and it’s wonderful. I love it. Particularly when it works well, which it often does. It’s just so cool to be a part of. It is also true that not all relationships can be repaired. Not all relationships should be repaired.

Sometimes when people come in to the best marriage counselor in the world, if one of them even has gotten sort of past this point of no return emotionally, it’s just there’s nothing left to put back together. Like, the motivation to be in a relationship just isn’t there anymore. Certainly, I’ve also worked with people that—it is the right thing for everybody involved, it is, like, slow to stop. So, in these situations, what I have then been left with is one person, usually sitting on my couch who is often devastated—they didn’t want the relationship to end.

Then, how do they work through it? I think personally, I have such a soft place in my heart for this is because I went through the most horrible breakup experience, as so many of us have, right? When it happened to me, I was in high school. I was still very young. But even, like, I’ve had a fairly long and interesting life, and I’ve had a lot of things happen to me, and to this day, that is still one of the worst life experiences I’ve ever had because of how devastating it was emotionally.

Also, I think combined with this is that there is this mythology in our culture that you should just be able to get over it and move on and, “What’s wrong with you?” if you’re still crying six months later. What I have learned since is that human beings do not work that way. We cannot flip our attachment to somebody else off like a switch, even if we really, really want to. Like, we just don’t work like that. 

Also, to be going through a period of intense devastation, it really is all you can think about. It’s awful. That is actually the normal experience, it is not abnormal. But especially at the time when I was younger, that was not discussed at all in our culture. In addition to going through this terrible rejection and the pain and everything that went along with it, there’s also this awful feeling of like, “What is wrong with me for failing the way that I do?”, right? 

Anyway, it has been a real pleasure for me to be able to connect some of those dots and figure out some of the reasons why those things are true for everyone. It turned into a lot of research that I did because prior to that, even as a therapist, and as a marriage counselor, and as a psychologist, and all the things, none of that is taught in counseling school at all. There was nothing around the psychology of a breakup or broken attachment.

I had to go figure that out—did a lot of research. It turned into a book, Exaholics: Breaking Your Addiction to an Ex Love, but also really turned into a passion of mine. I love using the podcast to talk about all kinds of things and love and happiness and success and helping people repair their relationships, but also dealing with the real stuff like how to cope with a relationship that ended. Anyway, that is why we are here today. 

I wanted to talk about a particular facet of this experience that really is difficult and messes people up routinely, which is around how to maintain a friendship with your ex. The reason why this is so complex and worth discussing is that it really has a lot of different variables. I wanted to give you truly helpful and meaningful information about all of this so that you can make informed decisions about what you want to do. 

There are many compelling reasons to want to maintain a relationship or a friendship with your ex, right? I mean, one of them could be that you have a reason to. If you have children together, for example, it is really in everybody’s best interest to try to have a positive, functional relationship. On the other side of that, if you’re running a business together, I mean, if you have other kind of practical things that require you to maintain a relationship on the other side, that’s possible. Sometimes it’s really necessary. 

I’ll be providing information about how to achieve that. But the thing that is really tricky about this is that there are a lot of other situations where people really want to maintain a relationship with their ex. They want to be friends with their ex. Sometimes this is possible and healthy and good. People do it, and everybody’s happy. But there can be a lot of complex stuff inside of this that can be like, even subconscious or non-conscious, and that’s really worthy of discussion, too.

Let’s just start by talking about that last piece first, right? That many people, when a relationship ends, even if they don’t have a good “reason to”, really want to maintain that attachment. The reason why is relating back to the science of attachment, and I’ve talked about this on previous episodes of the podcast. Human beings are built to bond to each other. It is part of our survival drive system.

It is vital to our survival as a species to have very strong and powerful attachment bonds to other people. When these bonds form, they are biologically based as well as emotional and psychological. Like, there are mechanisms in your brain that exist for the purpose of bonding to other humans. They are operating at a level of your brain that is like pre-human, so they’re in a part of your brain that our human minds, our neocortex, like, that newest layer of the brain.

The one that allows for language through rational thought, creativity, envisioning things. It is so far down underneath that that language can’t touch it. Reason can’t touch it. It is nonverbal. It is non-conscious in many ways. This is why so many weird things happen to humans in the context of attachment stuff, and particularly lost relationships. Because there are—you can’t think your way through it.

You’re like, “Why am I doing this? Why am I feeling this way? What is wrong with me? You’re trying to, like, figure your way out of it. It just exists at a totally different level of our brains. I just wanted to throw that out there to help you understand why this is such a uniquely weird experience for many people because, it’s like, neurologically, it’s happening at a different level than most other things that impact us to the same degree emotionally. Anyway, there’s that.

Because of this phenomenon, we develop these attachment bonds, and the desire to remain friends with your ex can be an artifact of that. That attachment does not turn off like a faucet. Somebody says, “I think we should probably see other people. I don’t want to do this anymore.” The attachment doesn’t cease to be just because that gauntlet has been thrown down or whatever, right?

You don’t work that way. It’s not a cut off. It is like a fading kind of thing. If it existed at all, I mean, people can be in relationships and not have that depth of attachment. Frequently, what can happen is that somebody who is initiating the breakup did not impulsively decide to do that. They have been on the off-ramp for a while. Their partner didn’t know about it, but they have kind of worked their way through it, and largely released that attachment, if they had it at all.

That might be one of the reasons why they don’t want to be in a relationship anymore is because they didn’t feel that bond, and that’s okay, too. That is not a judgment or a statement of anything about you. If that’s the case, it’s just—you can’t force this to happen. If it wasn’t there, it is a good idea to end a relationship because you deserve to have somebody who is really bonded to you. 

For somebody to have the wisdom to say, “I’m not feeling it.” They’re doing the right thing. Even if it is hurtful to hear that because you wanted it to be different, you are bonded to them. Understanding that these attachment bonds can be unilateral, I think, is really important. But when this happens, our desire to remain attached persists after the relationship is technically over, after the papers have been signed, after we’re not seeing each other anymore, right?

This is important to know because it can be exceptionally hard to sort through whether or not your desire to maintain a friendship with someone is due to reasons that are actually healthy, and that make sense for you and that would be a positive thing, or are you essentially in the grips of something that is very analogous to, like, a withdrawal process from a substance?

The thing that I’ve found through the research I mentioned to be so interesting about attachment and love is that the parts of our brain that exist for the purpose of attaching to other humans are the exact same parts of our brain that can get addicted to, actually, addictive substances. So, heroin, cocaine, those kinds of things.

There are receptors in your brain that when you take those drugs become stimulated, right? That through that repeated process, you get addicted to those drugs. Those exact same parts of your brain are the parts of your brain that get stimulated by romantic love, which uses the same receptors and neurotransmitters that cocaine likes to flare up inside people.

Then, the attachment process uses the same parts of your brain—receptors, neurotransmitters—as an opiate addiction, so it’s quiet. It’s calm, but man when it gets threatened or broken, it flares up into, like, really intense, intense cravings, obsessive feelings. It’s like every part of your being wants to reconnect in order to feel better again. It is very real and is biologically based. 

Again, because the stuff is happening in such deep areas of your brain, that your non-conscious, this emotional part of your brain can be sending signals to you that is like, “I need this. I need this. I need this. Where’s my person? Where’s my person? Where’s my person?” Essentially, kind of freaking out.

Your conscious mind, which has only a very loose relationship to this more powerful brain structure, right, is very helpfully sort of interpreting this as, “Yeah. I probably should go pick up my toothbrush from their house and start a conversation.” They begin—your conscious brain can begin rationalizing all the reasons why this makes sense and can be kind of twisting itself into pretzels to bargain, right?

There’s stages of loss, stages of withdrawal, and for both people who are going through grieving and other losses and people in recovery from substances, often visit this bargaining stage, right? Where they’re like, “Well, if I only have a beer after 5 p.m., and it’s only three, then I’m not an alcoholic,” right? It’s trying to, like, thread this needle, figuring out some intellectually plausible way to maintain their attachment to something that they really don’t want to release.

Consciously, they know it does not have a benefit that should, so your brain can do very interesting things in these moments. When you’re having lots of ideas about maintaining friendships with people that you’re no longer with, it can be an artifact of that kind of process. It’s important to be suspicious of your own thoughts in moments like these, first of all.

Also, I mean, we need to acknowledge the fact that it is more difficult, I think, to actually not be in contact with somebody than it used to be. I mean, you used to have to, like, go to somebody’s house, or go through the trouble of writing a letter right to, like, maintain contact. But these days, I mean, with social media, you can see all kinds of things or know all sorts of information about an ex that you didn’t ask for, right, but it’s just sort of in your face.

That can be very difficult. We can also, I think, feel obligated to maintain friendships with people. Like, again, going back to that mythology, well, we’re mature. We’re like Gwyneth and Chris, we should be able to be friends on the other side, right? Kind of, sort of self-judgments about what you should do that may or may not be in alignment with what’s really helpful or appropriate to you—for you, rather.

Again, that maintaining of connection through social media, and maybe, too, if you work together, if you have a social circle that you’re both part of, there can be other potential losses or weird things to have to mitigate if you decide to end friendship altogether, right, and avoid seeing somebody—avoid any contact. Well, in some ways, that can be much healthier for you emotionally as you’re going through this—the process of releasing an attachment. 

It can create other issues, social awkwardness, particularly if you work together. I mean, that can create an objectively difficult situation. Again, there are a lot of reasons why you might try to figure out a way to do this, but my first piece of advice is to really try to get honest with yourself around whether or not this is actually a good idea, or, if this is—what you’re experiencing is what it feels like to have an attachment breaking and feeling something very much like withdrawal—a very intense desire to maintain a connection.

Your attachment part of your brain is telling you that, “You’re in danger. It’s a terrible idea to let go of this person, so you have to stay connected to them no matter what,” and your intellectual brain is trying to rationalize all the reasons why. If that is what is happening, it is probably in your best interest to understand that and to just go cold turkey, and here’s why.

Even though, in the short-term, you will be essentially protecting yourself from the pain of withdrawal, because as soon as you say, “Okay. That’s it. I’m actually never talking to this person again. They’re no longer part of my life.” Once you decide that for yourself, you’re going to feel really bad. You’re going to have this intense emotion. You’re probably going to be crying. You’re like, “No!”

If you go to, like, block them from your social app, or block their number, if you feel this, like, huge surge of anxiety and pain, it might even feel like terror, right? That is a good indication that your desire to maintain a friendship with this person is actually your—it’s an avoidance mechanism. It’s like methadone, basically. You’re not feeling the fullness of the withdrawal experience, if you’re still kind of in contact with them.

The problem is that if you do that, you will essentially maintain this attachment that is no longer a positive thing for you. I mean, objectively, right? If somebody doesn’t want to be in a relationship with you anymore, or if you know intellectually that you should not be in a relationship with this person, if you try to maintain that attachment, you can stay in this weird purgatory place for a long, long time.

I know people. I have worked with people, and I mean, it’s been a decade or more that they’re still hurting about this past relationship. Because they just could not bring themselves to rip off this Band-Aid, and just decide for themselves that it was over. They’re protecting themselves, but they’re also harming themselves in the long run. 

This can get even more difficult, and I think toxic for you to do, because it’s also very commonly true that some people are like, “Why? I still want to be friends.” When you really start to get honest and crack into it and unpack all that, there’s still this fantasy that you could get back together again. 

That if you maintain this attachment, they’ll decide—they’ll realize what a terrible mistake they made and come running back to you, or if you—they’ll remember or realize how great you are, if you can remind them through your friendship. So, what it can turn into is a lot of pursuing a lot of fantasy.

It’s easy to even get into these situationships with people where one person still really kind of wants to get back together. Maybe you’re still having sex sometimes. You’re kind of in this “friends with benefits” situation that is very convenient for your ex, by the way, but it’s really torturing you. It can be hard to work through all this and try to sort through what is good for you and what’s, also, you sort of playing games with yourself intellectually in order to maintain this attachment bond.

If you suspect that this is going on in you, my advice would be to connect with a good therapist who understands the biology of attachment. Most don’t. I mean, to be complete, like, nobody taught me this stuff, I had to figure it out. I had to do all this research, right? I think that there has been more done since. I think it’s more in the consciousness of psychologists and therapists now than it was 10 or 20 years ago.

Ask questions for a prospective therapist before you get involved with one, because if you get connected to a therapist who doesn’t understand the things that you and I are talking about today, it can very easily turn into, essentially, your psychopathology. “You have attachment issues. You never got over your parents’ divorce.” It kind of turns into being about you. It is not just not helpful and a waste of time and a waste of your money.

I mean, I don’t know, maybe there are old attachment issues that are worth talking about. But, if your therapist doesn’t understand the biological basis for this stuff, they’re going to try to come up with reasons why it makes sense to them. Psychodynamics, other things that may have nothing to do with the actual path of healing from these kinds of things, which is much more analogous to a recovery process than it is to other things that psychotherapy is very useful for. 

Just know that. Anyway, but try to get connected to a good therapist who knows about this stuff, who can help you really get clear around what is going on. “Is it actually helpful, positive in my best interest to try to maintain a relationship with this person, or am I just telling myself stuff to avoid pain?” Anyway, that’s kind of option one. Please explore that. 

Another situation that does come up related to being friends with one’s ex is kind of like on the other side of this equation. Because another thing that is true is that if you are the one that has initiated the breakup, it may be that you would like to maintain a friendship with your ex, right? It’s important to know that your ex may be feeling very, very differently than you are. 

Like, if you broke up with this person, you released all this attachment stuff before you did that, or, at least, big, big parts of it. Cognitively, you got clarity that you didn’t want to do this anymore, and you might feel guilty about that. It’s very common to break up with people that you really like—you enjoy. You don’t hate them. They’re not bad people. You don’t want anything bad for them. You would totally be friends with them. They just weren’t the right, like, life partner for you, right?

In that case, you might love the idea of being friends with them. You’d feel less guilty. You’d be able to keep the good parts of your relationship but also be free to develop a romantic attachment with somebody else, right? This might be a positive thing for you. But it is important to understand that this may be incredibly toxic and damaging for your ex. I hope that wasn’t too blunt. That’s okay. It’s like we need to be talking about this stuff.

Because if you are wanting to be friends with your ex, and you’re reaching out, like, “Hi. How’s work? What are you doing?” and they are still in that terribly painful withdrawal place. Like, they’re interpreting your efforts to reach out and and maintain contact probably as your interest in still having a relationship with them, which it is. Just not the kind of relationship that they want to have with you, right? 

It’s really not fair for them. They need boundaries. They need time to heal. They need clarity. Like, if you’re sort of sending mixed signals to them, even if you’re saying, “I think we can just be friends,” like, somebody who is in that brokenhearted place does not hear that. They’re hearing you say, “Well, yeah. I mean, I still love you, maybe,” right?, which it isn’t good for them to be in that space.

Leave them alone, and help them achieve clarity around, “This is over. This is over. This is over.” Work through that withdrawal. Work through all those feelings. Kind of mentally wrap their minds around that. If they’re still in contact with you, it will be much, much, much harder for them to do that. So, please have respect for their process. Understand that this idea of being friends is very, very difficult to do for the biological reasons that I have explained to you.

Now, it may also be true that, well, on the other side of this, like once that healing has thoroughly been achieved on both sides. That takes time, like this is often measured in years for people, but at the very least, many, many months, right? We’re talking about a much longer timeline than you might realize, so give people room. 

Then, sometimes on the other side of it, you can legitimately reconnect on a different level in a different way. The signal that that would be possible is if there aren’t feelings anymore. Like, if you can imagine your ex being with somebody else and then think, “Oh, that’s awesome for them. I’m so happy for them, like such a great—yeah, that’s wonderful.” Right? That if that feels either happy for you, or at the very least neutral, that’s a good sign that you may be able to cultivate a friendship with an ex that is fully platonic and and also that has boundaries. 

The other thing that is important to understand is that being friends with an ex, cognitively, we can have boundaries, right? We’re just friends. We are not sleeping together. We are not XYZ. I can’t tell you how many times I have had a front row seat to people getting into affairs many years later with an old flame that they reconnected with on social media, or they’re still friends with, right?

Because those attachment bonds are so old and so powerful that they can sort of be like subterranean and then flare back up again, whether or not you want them to. If you have decided to maintain a friendship with an ex, and now one or both of you are securely partnered in different relationships, just keep an eye on that. It’s like something simmering on the stove, like don’t walk away from it. Don’t leave the house.

Just notice that if you start to have feelings again that come up, that is a good indication that you need to really stop that altogether. Because if you don’t, it can be a waterslide. Like, whoosh back into the pool of these romantic attachment kinds of feelings that are very powerful, and that have just been the death of many a marriage.

You can check out a podcast called Married With a Crush? for more on this subject. If any of what I’m saying right now feels familiar to you, please, please check it out, so that you don’t have the terrible experience of arriving in the office of a therapist like me, a couple years later, like, “I ruined my life. What did I do?” It sneaks up on you, people. Anyway, check that out. Those are all reasons, cautionary tales about being friends with an ex—do’s and don’ts.

I also promised you some information on situations where you might—it might be a good idea to attempt to cultivate a friendship with an ex, even if you don’t really want to. I mean, we’ve been talking about people who have been going through breakups or situations where there were still positive feelings. For many people, and not all, but a lot of people going through a divorce, one or both of them is well past that, right?

I mean, there are many regrettable things that happen between two people before they get divorced, right? It is not uncommon if people are divorced or divorcing for one of them to have come to the conclusion over the course of many years that their ex is actually the worst human being that has ever lived. They actually feel trapped by the bonds of children, of business—working together. 

They despise their ex—don’t want anything to do with them, right? They’re just so angry. They’re so hurt. They have an emotional scroll that when unfurled is about 1000 feet long, and on it is written all of the terrible, horrible, stupid, insensitive, disgusting, maddening things their ex has ever done. It’s like, “Why would I possibly want to be friends with somebody like that?” Right? It’s a heavy lift.

If you are in a situation where you hate your ex more than anything in the universe, and you have children together, and you have to have an at least civil, functional relationship, just to make it as easy as possible, but also for your kids, it can be incredibly valuable to figure out a way to find your way back to some kind of positive feelings. Some shred of compassion, gratitude, appreciation, to hold on to and, also, quite frankly, to let go of some other stuff.

We think of hate as being the opposite of love, right? It is actually not true. Love and hate are two sides of the same coin. Again, going back to our neurological meaning-making here. The deep regions of your brain from which feelings of intense love emanate are pretty much exactly the same feelings of your brain that radiate feelings of hatred. It’s the same thing. It’s like two sides of the same thing. 

If you have very intense negative feelings towards your ex, that is also an indication, to me at least, that you have not processed nearly all the things that you need to in order to arrive at true healing, which is not hatred, which can be protective in some ways, but it’s not hatred. It is, honestly, the absence of any feeling at all, right? I know it’s hard to think about, but the opposite of love is not hate. It is neutrality. 

In order to get to this space, it is well worth your time to invest in working through this stuff. Again, usually with the help of a very competent therapist, because it’s difficult to crack into on your own. It’s very easy to stay in hatred and anger. Finding forgiveness is very difficult. Forgiveness for your acts, maybe even forgiveness for yourself. There can be a lot of grief underneath that.

The first layer might feel like anger, but when people start to work into it, you can discover that there’s actually quite a bit of sadness, hurt, fear—that anger has actually been protecting you from. It’s weird to think of anger as being protective, but it really is. But, being able to kind of dig into that other stuff in a safe place, process it, do the work will help you cultivate that true neutrality. 

That will allow you to then begin to rebuild positive aspects of your relationship with this person because they’re there. They are. Even if the person that you are with wound up being very different than what you hoped, I don’t think I’ve ever met a single human that was completely irredeemable. I’m sure they’re out there, and it may be the case that is true with your ex, but might be like one thing, okay?

Now, other situations here. In the absence of intense hatred, you may be in a situation where you have an ex that you work with, you co-parent with, you have a business with, and you do not have the luxury of time and space to really process all this stuff, resolve the attachment, and you keep getting, like, triggered by your interactions with them in the here and now. That is just to acknowledge it’s incredibly difficult. 

I think, when I was—what I understand now, like, I had such a terrible experience with my own breakup in high school, and largely, I think, now I know, that was due to the fact that I had to see these people every day at school, right? Friends in common lived in the neighborhood; it’s like, when you can’t get away, it’s very difficult to heal.

A couple of pieces of advice: if this is a divorce situation that you’re heading into, do everything in your power to not burn it all down in the process of getting divorced. What I mean by that is to avoid divorce lawyers if you can. I’ve met a few and very nice people, well-meaning, and just the way that the legal system works and the way that lawyers kind of work, it so quickly descends into an adversarial, very like yucky, angry—it’s like a war and it is also harrowingly expensive.

If there’s any way that you can get through this with a mediator to help you create agreements together throughout this process, and that is focused on, “How can we collaborate? How can we build a bridge to the center? How can we each give a little bit and to go into this whole process with as much—as collaborative intentions as you can?”, will truly be in the best interests of you, them, and your shared children, or your shared business for the next several decades.

If there’s any way to do that, try to do that if you’re able to, or barring that, if you do have to get lawyers involved, do a lot of careful vetting around which one you choose and make a conscious decision to find one that has a collaborative stance, and that understands some of the psychology involved in all of this, and who is committed to helping you not create a mortal enemy through the divorce process.

Let’s not do “scorched earth”, unless you absolutely have to. So, there’s one thing. But the other piece of this is that it can be really, really helpful to have conversations with your ex about creating a different kind of relationship together. In order for these to be productive, you will both probably have had to do at least some personal growth work on each side to just kind of work through some of the big feelings that get triggered otherwise during these conversations. 

Because when people are getting all flared up and activated, it’s really hard to have a productive conversation. You can do this individually. We also even have people coming into our practice who have decided to get divorced or separate, and who now are working with a marriage counselor, essentially, but in a different role, which is, “Please help us figure out how to create a different kind of relationship together.”

It is talking not—it’s no longer appropriate to be, like, processing feelings, or, “You did this,” and all that stuff. We’re going to set that aside. You have to do that with individual therapists, but then together, you can come into these meetings with new intentions.

To have mediated conversations with somebody who can be like, “Okay, what is your vision for your relationship 15 years from now on your daughter’s wedding day? You’re both there. You’re both so happy for her. What would you like that to look like for yourselves, and for each other, and for your children?” Coming in it with different sets of goals.

Also, having somebody to help you talk through, like, “What should the boundaries be?” I think accountability can be really important, and also clarity. Even when people are trying really hard to be friends with each other, there are conflicts around visitation or something changed. How do we resolve problems?

The issue here is that if you had been able to resolve conflict together well as a couple, you would probably not have gotten divorced in the first place in most circumstances. This is not a strength of this relationship to begin with. In kind of post-divorce counseling or growth work, it is actually an opportunity to learn how to do this together in a constructive way, not just for your friendship, or co-parenting relationship, or business partnership now.

It will certainly make that easier to do, but it will also probably be to each of your benefit. I mean, to figure out some of these conflict management or emotional intelligence skills that maybe you didn’t have the opportunity to do when you were together as a couple, you can still do it on the other side. It’s still really valuable work that you can take with you. Apply it to another relationship that you might be in.

There’s a lot of growth that can happen—really, really positive things when people can sit down and be like, “Okay. What happened? Why was that so hard? Why did—let’s kind of talk about this. What do we need to do now in order to have better experiences with each other?” It’s very, very positive and constructive. Certainly, that’s also an investment, right?

If it is a more casual situation, and somebody that you just work with or see around where it would be weird to, like, have an official sit down and get a mediator to figure out like, “Okay, how do we be friends?” It can be helpful to get very just clear for yourself around, “What would me being friendly, appropriately friendly with this person, actually look like in a work context? What would be healthy for me?”

Then, really, almost like through a coaching process, figure out, “What are the behaviors that I need to do in order to create that? What are the things I need to tell myself in order to create that? How will I know if it’s working or not? What are the obstacles in my path?” and really kind of going through a coaching process in that regard. 

There’s a lot here, and if nothing else, if you’ve gotten nothing else from this conversation today, I hope I have imparted some degree of understanding of the very real complexity involved with maintaining a friendship with an ex. In any of the circumstances that I’ve described, it takes a lot of self-awareness and a high degree of intentionality in order to create a friendship with an ex that is genuinely healthy and positive.

If you are wanting to maintain an attachment and it’s like, “Well, we can be friends,” got to get real honest about that. Make sure that it’s healthy. If it is, do a lot of very strategic work around making sure, like, damn sure that it is healthy. If it is a need to have a friendship with an ex that you would rather not have, there’s also a lot of emotional processing work.

Then lastly, if it’s—you have to sort of build a new kind of friendship with somebody in the absence of a lot of hatred, it’s still very complex, and it has to be an intentional process. The thing to avoid in any of these cases is maintaining a relationship or “friendship” with an ex without being very, very deliberate about why you’re doing it, how you’re going to do it.

What a positive outcome, a healthy outcome looks like, if you just sort of like, stay connected and like text with each other, and like their stuff on social media, and get together once in a while, you’re not doing what we talked about today. That’s also the easiest thing to do. Then, that is just to validate it. That is what most people do, is just kind of maintain an attachment without reflecting on it too much. It is to their detriment because it creates a different set of problems long-term.

Anyway, so much to share. I hope that this discussion was helpful for you. Thank you so much for spending this time with me today. I always like talking about breakup and divorce recovery, so thanks for giving me the opportunity to share some of the things I have learned along the way. That’s all for today, but if you would like more on the subject of breakup and divorce recovery, because it is such an interest of mine, there is so much stuff that I have for you.

You can scroll back through this podcast feed. I’ve done so many episodes. In particular, Why You Can’t Stop Thinking About Your Ex is always a good one. Let’s see, what are some other of my favorites? Why Your Breakup Was a Good Thing is always a positive one to revisit.

If you’re feeling like that stuckness, like, can’t release an attachment to somebody that you really should, I have a number of podcast episodes around releasing your addiction to a toxic relationship that you might check out.

Of those, I think the one episode, How to Leave a Toxic Relationship with Dignity, is probably one of my favorites, and not least because it gave me an excuse to play The Gun Club on this podcast, but has a lot more information about the nature of attachment there for you, and in particular, why it can be so hard to release an attachment to a toxic relationship.

Interestingly, the worse a relationship actually is, the harder it can be to get out of. If that sounds interesting to you, I hope you check out that episode, How to Leave a Toxic Relationship With Dignity. 

Then, of course, on the blog at growingself.com, there is so much more. In addition to these podcasts, we have all kinds of articles that I have written. You can learn about my own horrible breakup story. I’ll be sure to link to it in the post for this podcast.

Then, of course, are tons of articles that the therapists that I work with here at Growing Self have written, who are excellent therapists, who are in the trenches of this breakup recovery work every day, divorce recovery work, and they have so much great advice. Parenting after divorce, dealing with divorce after affairs, I mean, there’s so much good stuff.

Also, you might want to check out a podcast episode that I did with a really great divorce lawyer, Stephanie Randall. It’s called amicable divorce. If you are looking down the barrel of that particular gun, you’ll want to check that out for sure.

Then, of course, the book, Exaholics: Breaking Your Addiction to an Ex Love. Although I should add, because this came up recently, I wrote this book years ago from my research but also, at the time, did it in a partnership with another organization that goes by the name Exaholics. I do not have any business relationship with that organization. That is not my practice. It is not my website. I do growingself.com, and somebody actually reached out to me the other day asking about that, and I was like, “Oh, no. That is not my thing. I just wrote the book.”

Anyway, so there’s that. But anyway, so much for you on this subject. It is all for you—lots of good stuff. Check it out, growingself.com. Thanks for spending this time with me today, and thank you for giving me the opportunity to share this amazing Lord Huron song with you. 

Again, you can learn more about Lord Huron on their website, lordhuron.com. You can get albums, concert tickets. They have t-shirts that are super cool to have. All kinds of great stuff, so check that out. Otherwise, I will be back here next week with more love, happiness, and success for you.