# Do you think people can remain friends with ex'es?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-think-people-can-remain-friends-with-exes/614606>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [March 3, 2012, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-think-people-can-remain-friends-with-exes/614606 "2012-03-03T01:11:22Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 3

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**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\
**Post date:** [March 4, 2012, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-think-people-can-remain-friends-with-exes/614606/41 "2012-03-04T18:20:02Z")

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> [@WhyNot](#):
>
> The reason I’m not friends with more exes doesn’t have anything to do with sex. It generally has to do with whatever reason they’re my ex, and not my current. Most of the time, if someone is an ex, it’s because he treated me poorly, or because I was embarrassingly insane at him at some point. In neither case is there reason to maintain a friendship.

The exes that are like that are, for me, no longer friends, and I kick myself for ever being with them. But I have other exes where we broke up for completely different reasons - we just grew apart or were at different stages in our lives - too different to be together, not so different that we can’t be friends.

And they’re definitely real friends. My most recent ex (that a lot of Dopers have met) is still one of my best friends. We were together for six years and I thought we’d need a cooling-off stage, but that ended up not happening and it’s been fine. We still see each other about once a week.

For a few months before we broke up, we’d essentially been friends anyway. Friends who had sex occasionally, but something indefinable had changed so that it was more of a platonic affection than romantic. That seems to be pretty common IME of my own break-ups and my friends’.

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**Author:** ![Filbert](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/filbert/32/3433_2.png) [@Filbert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Filbert)\
**Post date:** [March 4, 2012, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-think-people-can-remain-friends-with-exes/614606/42 "2012-03-04T18:42:31Z")

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I have only one ‘real’ ex- we lived together for 2.5 years. I don’t see very much of him, but only because I moved about 6 hours drive away. We never fell out- at all, we just both stopped wanting the relationship, at the same time. I told him I thought I’d move out on the wednesday, but we’d bought tickets to an event on the sunday, so I stayed living there 'til then. Was a really fun day, we both enjoyed it.  
I was back round to pick up a few things I forgot a week later, bought his sister’s birthday present the week after that, and (admittedly accidently) introduced him to his next girlfriend a month or so later. That was a little awkward, but only because I worked with the guy she dumped for him. I’m on reasonably terms with his current girlfriend, though as I say, I rarely actually see them, and I don’t talk much online with her. It’s been about 8 years since we broke up now, so I doubt she cares.

No cooling off period, no drama- I like him as a person, just have no desire to sleep with him any more. I that supposed to be weird?

That reminds me- it’s his turn in Facebook scrabble. 🙂

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