A friend of mine recently told me, "It's not fair. You got the good hair, and the good ex-husband."
I don't know about the hair: I think everybody just naturally admires whatever kind they didn't get. But the ex? That's the stone truth. Now, I admit that I take a weird kind of pride in never having had a really awful breakup, the kind where you never wish to speak of the ex again, or where you can't say enough bad shit about them. I've never had a breakup after which I didn't think of the ex as a friend, more or less. At least, there are none of them that wouldn't, say, give me a ride to the airport if I needed it, though it's hard to imagine circumstances in which I might ask, in most cases. So I guess I must be a good ex, too, giving me standing to dispense some advice.
Keep in mind that any of the pronouns could be inverted. I just hate that clumsy "he/she" device.
First, if you are pining - that is, if you are pining and you know it (not everybody does, funnily enough) - get out of Dodge. Don't try to be friends. Minimize your contact, put whatever space it takes between you two until you are not pining anymore. But, barring that, if you want to be friends with your ex, here are a few pointers.
Right after the breakup:
- Take no for an answer! It only takes one to break up. If she wants to break up, then it's done. No one ever nagged their way back to true love.
- No concern trolling. Don't call every week or two to "see how [you're] doing." Especially if you initiated the break up.
- Back way the fuck off, for a while. Nobody flows straight from lovers to friends. When you just broke up, why do you even want to hang out with your ex? All the hurty stuff is still right there. Do you also jab yourself with a fork, just for fun? There's "oh-we're-still-friends" which just means you don't despise each other, and then there's real, hang-out, talk-on-the-phone buddies. If you even want the latter in the immediate aftermath of a breakup, see the bit about pining again.
Relationships end, but ex-hood is forever. Most of our former lovers are as sands through the hourglass (or at least they were, prior to Facebook) but there are always one or two that my girlfriends and I refer to as Big Exes. The ones from the marriages and live-ins and LTRs. Those are the ones we still want contact with; except when we don't. To be a good ex in the long years that follow:
- Don't keep bringing shit up from your relationship. By shit I mean shit, the unpleasant things about your long-lost relationship. How he harped on your flaws or she belittled your achievements. You resolved all that, remember? You broke up.
- Don't make up nicknames for your ex's new loves. "So, how are things with 'ToyBoy?'" "Has 'Crumpet' met your family?" It's a subtle way of asking your ex to demonstrate, by tolerating the belittling moniker, that his loyalty lies with you. But probably, it doesn't (remember: you broke up); and that plays out as: Ex tells stories on you to New Love, who now wants nothing to do with you. Goodbye, friendship.
- Don't hide your new loves from your ex. Don't hide your ex from your new loves. Nothing good can come of either of those things.
- Don't be whiny and demanding. This goes for all friendships, but sometimes the ghost of intimacy causes people to act out shit with their exes that they would never do with their other friends. Don't flip out if she doesn't return your calls right away, or if he doesn't have as much time to talk as he once did. People's lives ebb and flow: new jobs, new relationships, family stuff, can all cause friendships to wane. It's usually temporary, but getting all pissy about it, sending well-I-guess-I-just-don't-matter-to-you emails, are a good way to make the distance permanent.
- When your ex tells you he's engaged, offer congratulations. Don't say, "You never proposed to me." Duh. But it happens.
