Dear Nikol,
Considering all things equal, when can people become friends again after a break-up? What are the best conditions for it to happen? With the few relationships I’ve had, I can’t figure it out. Losing contact with people who I was once friends with is sad. And with social networks such as Twitter and Facebook it becomes easier for that fact to be rubbed in your face often – especially during the holidays when people feel like reconnecting with each other. Any thoughts on this?
– Ex-Friendly
Dear Ex-Friendly,
All things are rarely equal in the case of breaking up, and in the situations where all things are equal you can usually start being friends right away, unless that equality is an equal hatred on both sides.
Most people I know are friends with the majority of their exes, largely due to the social networks you mentioned. Because of Facebook, we can easily reconnect with people once we’ve had time to let our tragic emotions stop making us feel like we’ll never be able to listen to the works of Phil Collins ever again.
The process for reconnection is fairly easy. You send a friendship request and either they accept or they don’t. Sometimes you add a message to your request letting them know you’d like to be their friend again.
When you talk about Twitter and Facebook “rubbing it in your face,” that’s an indication of a situation where it’s not yet time to become friends again. Maybe you miss that friendship, but until there comes a day where you feel okay with their updates about their lives, even if those include how in love they are with someone else, you are not ready to take that step. I feel like people often jump into that too quickly, and then it becomes an obsession with time spent lingering over the details of what went wrong.
So, for each ex you have to weigh the pros and cons. Would your re-entry into his life hurt him? Would it hurt you? Would it make your life better? Would the reunion only be to fulfill your curiosity over if his life fell apart when you left? While it’s nice to think that everyone can be good, happy friends, it’s alright to accept that sometimes, we can’t.
– Nikol
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