Can you be friends with your ex?

Laura and Marco have been together for 15 years. They have two children together and they met when both had already had other relationships without cohabitation and were professionally established. They fell madly in love and, after a time without children, they felt that their relationship was stable enough to start a family.

Now, after these months that have passed without being able to leave home, it has become more apparent that they were acting more like parents and roommates than as a couple. Their sexual relations were practically non-existent and these days the discussions and the tension have revealed that their relationship as a couple comes to an end.

How to turn your marriage into a friendship relationship? What do they need to achieve it?

Laura and Marco are a couple model which we could call modern. They created a passion based nuclear family planning children that they were going to have

Currently, the nuclear couple coexists with a new model: the postmodern couple, who accepts that separation is always an option at any time and a way out from the very beginning of the relationship. Is about reconstructed families in which new forms of paternity and maternity occur.

Before this panorama, it is increasingly necessary to have tools to navigate change after a breakup and that the one who is already an ex-partner begins a friendship relationship, so that she can integrate into that new life. This is even more important when there are children involved.

After the breakup: the duel

So what could Laura and Marco do? The first thing to keep in mind is that every breakup entails pain for both members of the couple and therefore also a time of mourning that must be faced.

According to neuroscience, mourning is all the effort our brain makes to reorganize itself again in the absence of that loved person who will no longer be part of our daily life and as a couple.

In the shock phase, emotions can be very overwhelming (denial, anger…) and, even, the need to take revenge may appear as an antidote to the unbearable pain that arises in this first phase of mourning. Another symptom that can appear at this stage is a idealization of the person we have lost.

Hence be friends at this stage –where emotions are of great intensity– can be difficult and make it difficult to grieve itself.

Laura and Marco could do well to keep a time apart in which the bond is limited to everything related to the children to individually elaborate the break.

After the duel, a longing or seeking phase in which they appear abruptly memories of the lived with that person. It is a way of reviewing our path alongside that loved one who is no longer sharing life with us and of seek his presence in our mind with fantasies.

In the third phase already we connect with the reality of the loss. It’s the moment that we face sadness more clearly of the breakup of the relationship and we enter a time of deeper despair.

Finally comes the reorganization phase, in which we begin to rebuild our lives without that person, who over time we will have placed elsewhere. Also sometimes, for some people, it is customary move from one partner to another quickly avoiding feeling alone when going through a duel.

Like most couples, Laura and Marco They can only begin to transform their relationship as a couple into a friendship relationship when they have overcome these stages of mourning. What does your divorce mean?

What does it take to maintain a friendship with an ex?

If the couple has been built from equality, like Laura and Marco’s, it is easier to make the transition from love as a couple to friendship. If one of the members depends on the other –economically, emotionally…–, the relationship, even if cordial, It will cost a lot to be true friendship.

Neither Laura nor Marco have maintained an extramarital affair that triggered the rupture –something that still It can make the relationship more difficultsince one of them feels hurt or abandoned – or that prevented mourning.

The bases for a new healthy friendship relationship are based on equality, reciprocity and sincerity in communication in order to share an intimacy about what each one feels or worries about.

According to the psychologist’s theory robert sternbergthere is three vertices that define a relationship: intimacy, desire and commitment.

The intimacy It is defined as a form of love that involves open communication, mutual trust and understanding. That is, it is, neither more nor less, than a form of friendship

The great difficulty in a long relationship is to maintain the desire, since this is activated when there is a space to conquer, explains the psychotherapist Esther Perel. Passion is what Laura and Marco lacked the most, and commitment as the only pillar was not enough to sustain the couple. Lack of space and routines kill passion.

Instead, love awakens with coexistence, sharing and doing things together. It remains to be seen if Laura and Marco, over time, will be able to create a space where they can recover their privacy and improve their communication in order to transform their relationship in a friendly relationship.

Expressing your desires clearly helps to release wounds and clean up the relationship.

In order to perform this transformation it is necessary that each one possesses a degree of self-awareness that allows you admit how you have contributed to this breakup and what responsibility he has in it, either by action or omission.

If they want to make the relationship last in the form of friendship, Laura and Marco have to talk very honestly about what they have felt during the relationshipwhat has been your part, in addition to expressing what each one is feeling before the breakup and what is happening in your new day to day. If they are not capable of it, especially when there are children, it is advisable go to a third party to help them improve communication to make a healthy break.

Everyone should be able to say what they want from this new friendship to redefine the relationship by setting limits and expressing wishes clearly, since confusion can lead to conflict. Whether through a conversation, a letter or a therapy session, it is necessary that each one can express their pain derived from the relationship and thus all pending issues are well closed.

This expression should be carried out, not to blame or judge the other, but to release the wounds that have occurred over the years. If we judge and blame, we will continue to cause pain without having cleaned the relationship well. Create a new base clean of reproaches It can be the beginning of a good friendship.

The 9 steps between breaking up and friendship

1. Take time to grieve.

mourning is necessary to recover from the pain of the breakup, reconnect with yourself and realize the expectations, broken hopes, the project and illusions truncated with the separation.

Without this period of give yourself permission to work through loss and disappointment, to close what was, it is very difficult to start a new relationship, a new clean life from the past. It is important that there is a physical separation for a whilewhenever possible.

2. Being friends with your ex isn’t always necessary.

Not all couples can remain friends after the breakup. What’s more, in cases where there has been violence, abuse or dependency, the fact of wanting to be friends can be a way of perpetuating the problem.

Sometimes the idea of ​​staying friends can be a self-delusion. so as not to face or delay the breakup.

3. Appreciate what that relationship has given us.

After expressing the pain, anger and sadness that have arisen with the breakup, in order to close the relationship and transform it into a healthy friendship, it is important to be grateful for what you have given us and Make a list of the positive things that have happened. The more specific this list is, the better.

Recover those first sensations that aroused love for that person and keep in mind that Often when you have loved someone, you love them in part forever.

4. Anger binds us to each other as much as love.

If you find it difficult to manage anger, keep in mind that this becomes an emotion as dependent as love itself. In order for a friendship relationship to take place, there must be an acceptance of the other with their defects and shortcomings. Ask yourself if this anger doesn’t say more about you than about him or her.

5. Recognize that we did not know how to do better.

It is convenient to accept that what was, and that we probably did not know how to do it better, since if we had known, we would surely have acted differently. And all this is good to do with great care, without blaming ourselves. If we blame ourselves, we will prevent a healthy grieving process.

At the same time it is necessary avoid criticizing, blaming or judging the other so as not to get hooked on this endless loop of reproaches.

6. Set him free to set yourself free.

Friendship is a relationship in which freedom reigns. If we do not let the other be who he is, a relationship of friends is not possible.

Make a ritual in which we set our ex-partner free from any commitment to us –children apart-, and at the same time we free ourselves from any ties with him or her, it will help us clean up old ways of doing things.

Getting to do this from the heart may take time. Giving yourself that time, respecting your own internal rhythms, is key to get the process right.

7. Truly put the well-being of your children first.

Contemplating children as the fruit and continuation of the project that you started together can help not to use them as a thrown weapon against the other and to thank what has given us that time together.

It’s good to be aware that children cannot become an excuse to perpetuate the way we relate and communicate with our ex-partner the same as we did before the separation. When we insist on keeping the “bad vibes”, all we do is lengthen the pain for the children and for us.

8. Loving yourself despite everything.

If you have been abandoned, if you have done damage, if you feel lost or lost… Whatever it is, seek love for you above all else. Without it it will cost you a lot recover your self-esteem, strength and ability to rebuild your new life from a good base.

We can’t always keep our promises and others can’t always keep theirs. But that does not mean that we are worth less.

9. Seek one’s own well-being.

In a friendship relationship there must be freedom, equality and reciprocity, that is, it must be given as much as it is received. Respect for each other reigns and the basis of the relationship is the well-being and pleasure it provides.

It is not always easy to find all these ingredients in an ex-partner. It may not be easy to see him free after he has been, to some extent, “ours.”