Keeping ex romantic partners as friends..

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Was discussing this tonight with an online male friend and he said he could not tolerate a potential girlfriend keeping ex romantic partners as friends and would be a deal breaker unless there were children involved.

I think for me I might feel uncomfortable about it at first but if there is trust no problem.

How do you feel about people keeping ex's as friends?

(online male friend is just a friend and nothing else)

I have no ex's as friends and none of my ex's had ex romantic partners as friends.

Please excuse my badly written post I'm very tired

I'm very good friends with an ex and dh knows that I'll always love him, but also that it's not in a romantic/lustful way anymore. He is still a very dear person to me and I don't see why you should exclude someone from your.life just because you're not romantically involved anymore. life is too short, and I.know dh isn't threatened by our.friendship

:) some people are just too good to let go of.

He feels it is weird. His ex had an ex romantic partner as a friend and left him for him. I think he judges women as the same and is scared history will repeat itself.

I think it depends on the people - if they're an ex and you're still friends because you can't let go then I suppose that could be a problem. If they're an ex because.the relationship changed and your friendship is deeper then I.don't see a problem (sorry if this.sounds a bit wanky but I've had a good day and some wine so feeling all 'la la la isn't life wonderful')

I dont keep ex partners as friends. That isnt to say I wouldnt say 'hi' if I came across them, there's no animosity but I cant think why Id want them in my friendship circle & have the possibility of my OH being friendly with a man Id been with before! Similarly, I dont feel I want his exes as friends. In the early years had a lot of trouble with OHs female friends. 2 I really like - theyre lovely and genuine. But others? subtly tried to involve themselves in our relationship including 'phoning OP on a far too regular basis for my liking. Always asking about how we were as if there were suddenly no other topic of conversation. Nosey about our relationship. One actualy invited him to dinner without me 'as theyd known each other for years and had a lot of catching up to do'. Nonsense.

Im not one to condone or encourage inappropriate situations at all. & I know how to move on. Not everyone needs to be a close friend. I already have lovely friends Ive known for years. A couple of them are male friends and theyre not my exes. That'll do for me. As for OH...he eventually realised how troublesome some of his female friends were (it took me ages to convince him and there were times I had to prevent myself going on about it, as it made him dig his heels in) and, now theyre gone. Good.

I tend to agree with MistressDee as I have gone through the whole, "she is my best friend" while with a new partner and it really can blight it, especially if said best friend is now jealous that she does not have full attention any more.

Bury the dead and move on I say, but that's just me.

I'd be uncomfortable with it for the same reason as the man in your story i.e. that my exH left me for an OW who also happened to be an old flame. I'm not a particularly jealous or insecure type but, whenever he mentioned her name, I knew he still had feelings for her. Don't think that makes either me or your online buddy peculiar. 'Once bitten, twice shy'.

I think it depends on the nature of the relationship with the ex. I have an ex from many years ago (split up nearly 20 years ago) who is now with a close friends of mine and has been for several years. There's tons of water under the bridge, the relationship was basically amicable and was tied up without unresolved issues, we get on well now but there's no attraction on either side, he's obviously spoken for by someone who I would never betray so he's clearly not a threat to any relationship I have now so I would feel totally comfortable about introducing him to a new partner.

There are some exes where there is either bad feeling or unresolved romantic feeling and in those cases I think it would be unfair to all parties to maintain the illusion that this was a no-baggage friendship.

There's also the separate question of how you manage a friendship with an ex. Any ex, however innocent the relationship is, could make a new partner feel threatened it its not handled properly. It is your responsibility make sure that that doesn't happen by including your new partner in the friendship and keeping the friendship to an appropriate level.

I'm friends with about five of my exes. Two of them I'm very close with, one of whom was ny first love from over ten years ago. My dp does struggle with it sometimes but I personally think it says something positive about someone if they can maintain a friendship with an ex, as opposed to someone who's exes all hate them with a vengeance.

Having said that, I've never been in a position where my partner has exes as friends, so I honestly don't know if I would be so comfortable with it. I know that makes me a huge hypocrite.

One of my exes is my best friend of fifteen years znd I wouldn't ditch him for any guy.

Most of my exes simply moved away (or I did) and we just went our separate ways and lost touch.

Others are exes for a reason and 'friendship' would either have a hidden agenda or would just be plain stupid!

Awkward. Beyond awkward. I am not friends with any exes. They are exes for a reason. And I wouldn't be comfortable knowing DH was friends with an ex. My XH was in the most awkward love triangle prior to meeting me and her name was the same as mine! It was actually really difficult.

For me I just can't look at someone and think, you were intimate with my partner before me. It just doesn't sit right.

If people can manage it thats great but I've seen it create more complications than it is worth, not just for me but friends as well.

Postscript:

My ex h wanted to invite ALL his ex girlfriends who he'd been in lurve with previously to our wedding. I put my foot down obviously but failed to take the extra step of seeing it as a red flag - he left me for one of them 3 years ago .

It's totally possible. There's plenty of posts in Relationships by people who have fallen out of love with their spouse years ago and are living as flatmates or brother and sister, but still love each and value each other. Hard to see how that could threaten a subsequent relationship.

But I'd be iffy about any friendship that used different terms of reference to the ones you'd apply to a good friend you'd never been romantic with. "Too good to let go of" for example is something I would never say about my dearest friends, it implies a sort of hungriness.

My best friend is an ex - we've known each other more than half our lives and he's more like a big brother to me than an ex. Yes we are very close, we hug (platonically!) when we meet & say goodbye, he has a key to my house, we occasionally go to gigs together depending on the band & who else is available. So near enough exactly the same relationship I had with my other (female) best friend who sadly died last year.

I think we dated at an age when it can be very easy to mistake platonic love and friendship for something more.

I'm good friends with one of my exes - I think because we had booked a holiday together and neither of us wanted to give it up, so we spent 2 and a half weeks together just a few months after we broke up. It made us realise that actually we enjoyed each other's company, and as both of us were dating and had moved on emotionally, there was no awkwardness.

I have never introduced him to DP though and probably never would. DP knows about him and knows I see him maybe once or twice a month, and is fine with it. But to have them both in the same room having a chat together - nope, too weird.

I'm good friends with my exH. Many years have passed. Myself, our adult dc and my youngest ds (not his) have Xmas dinner with him and his wife. I invite them to parties. They have offered to look after my youngest so the eldest and I can go on holiday together. I would help my exH (and his wife) out of a sticky situation if I possibly could. I'd never turn my back.

When my exP turned out to be my worst enemy my exH was the first person to show concern and offer help. Probably because there is absolutely no agenda. My exP on the other hand has an agenda that will take longer than his own lifetime to resolve and is simply not friendship material.

However, I do think that a lot of people say they are still friends when they actually mean that there is unfinished business. I would be wary of a partner who says they have an ex who is a best friend. I would expect to meet that friend just like any other friend. If there is an iota of sexual attraction then it would be game over for me. After all an ideal partner = best friend that you want sex with. For me anyway.

I don't get the need to stay friends with exes. They're exes for a reason so unless you split completely amicably, which must be rare, then I don't understand what you're clinging on to. Move on.

I couldn't care less about any of my exes. I'd say hi if I bumped into them, that's it.

I don't think amicable splits are particularly rare. Sometimes - often, even - people just drift apart.

I'm on good terms with most of my exes, though I don't see all of them that often. Sometimes I've lost touch with an ex because he's embarked on a relationship with a monagamist whinyarse who won't let him speak to anyone, but those sort of relationships don't last long and I usually get my friend back at some point. Sometimes people drift apart due to geographic reasons as well. One of the reasons I like Facebook is that it's so easy to catch up with people you haven't seen for ages.

Mind you, this might be partly because I'm middle-aged, and most of the people I used to have actual couple-relationships with are as well, and any hurt feelings over breakups would have been a decade or more ago, so we can just reminisce (about mutual friends, funny experiences, favourite bands or films or whatever), or chat about interests we still share.

Anyone who can't imagine a platonic and non-threatening friendship between two people who used to be in a relationship is rather narrow-minded.

I was in a relationship with a guy who was still in contact with his ex - they worked in the same field albeit in different places, she had a DC (from previous relationship) that he was fond of - they'd never lived together BTW, it was a LDR as was ours - and he was quite proud of the fact that they were still in touch - even had a name for it, 'frex' . I was always a bit uncomfortable about it, although I never met her, and this was highlighted when he commented, at least 3 years after they'd broken up & two years into our r'ship, that he'd looked at her recently and thought 'we would never have worked out as a couple'. Hunh? That implies that until that point he'd still been ambivalent about it - as he was ambivalent about 'us' and we eventually broke up. The worry for me - as mentioned by several PPs - is that people can be very dishonest about what they really feel, or maybe aren't even sure themselves - so it's cleaner if exes remain firmly ex!

I am still friendly with a couple of exes. The only other guy I've lived with is actually godfather to my son. Me, DH and ex were all part of a wider social circle and the relationship ended five years before I got together with my DH.

The other is an older guy who my DH isn't so keen on. He has no issues with me seeing him for a drink a few times a year but he chooses not to come as well.

I'm on good terms with all of my exs bar the one who was abusive. That's because I was friends with them before we got romantically involved and the qualities that made them attractive as friends remain once the emotional relationship is over.

DH has no problem with this because he is secure in his relationship with me. In fact, the photographer at our wedding was the guy I was going out with when I met DH. That relationship was on the point of fizzling out when DH's lovely arse first floated past my vision so there was no animosity when I ended it. I also regularly have dinner with another ex. Again our split was perfectly amicable and we now find ourselves in the same city, married to people we like and occasionally we meet in a professional context as well.

DH never says much about his exs, I suspect because there were actually very few before me, and any time one of his old friends mentions one of them I'm always intrigued.

Very interesting replies. Thank you all. :)

I'm friends with quite a few exes but I do think there needs to be a passage of time between the relationship and the friendship to allow the feelings to die down.

But most of the time these people were in your life for a reason, the fact that you weren't right for one another won't change why you liked them.