Recovering From Divorce And Your Post-Divorce Relationship With Your Ex: Why Can’t We Just Be Friends?

This was not on the Starbucks menu

Shortly after getting divorced, a client of mine told a story about her ex wanting to remain friends. She asked to meet him at a local Starbucks. He was hesitant to meet because she was very upset that he wanted a divorce. But he agreed to the meeting mainly because he didn’t want his ex to tell his two adult sons that he was being a jerk. After ten or fifteen minutes of civilized talk, she turned to him, looked him straight in the eye, and yelled at the top of her lungs for everyone in the establishment to hear, “Does your whore girlfriend like your penis?” “

Needless to say, a post-divorce friendship was not in the cards for both of them. But it dramatizes the difficulty of trying to return to the low-emotion friendship relationship after losing the high-emotion relationship of a 20-year marriage.

What we are told about “staying friends” after divorce is at odds with what we see

Everywhere you look, you can find therapists and self-help authors extolling the virtues of remaining friends after divorce. Also, wherever you look, it’s hard to find ex-spouses who have really remained friends after their divorce.

Terry Gaspard offers some insights in his January 7, 2020 article at DivorceMagazine.com, “7 Reasons Why Being Friends With Your Ex Usually Doesn’t Work”, in which he identifies seven problems with friends left after your divorce:

• Most of the time, a post-breakup friendship is a setup for further heartbreak.

• It does not give you or your ex time to mourn the loss of the relationship or marriage.

• You need to forge a new identity.

• It can cause confusion for your children.

• They may not have been true friends and it is troublesome to start now.

• You need energy to “take care of yourself.”

• Acceptance is the final stage of grieving the loss of a loved one..

OK, so there are problems with that. We do not know it yet why it’s so weird. The answer may lie in how friendships develop.

Friendship by addition – Friendship based on hope

When we speak of friendship, we usually refer to a relationship that grows step by step over time by two people who hope to establish a non-intimate connection that will enrich their lives.

The way we normally “cultivate” a friendship is by meeting people with whom we have something in common, and then continuing to spend time together as we find more things in common, we find more ways to validate who we are and find more ways to develop. an agreement about the social situations we share. The process takes place over time as we add and solidify our common ground and our shared interpretations of the social environment we share. It is a process of adding piece by piece over time with the result that the friendship deepens as we add each piece to the growing ensemble.

Summing up the benefits of friendship, friends can:

1. SHARE COMMON INTERESTS with his friend,

2. VALIDATE COMMON BELIEFS AND LIFE PERSPECTIVES with his friend,

3. Help each other to reach a consensus on the MEANING OF THE SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT that they share, and

4. Help each other develop a “SENSE OF ITSELF“with his friend.

Friendship by Subtraction – Friendship based on loss

Most marriages begin as normal friendships, and the initial foundation of your relationship is the same as that of regular friends.

Like normal friendships, they share common interests, validate each other’s beliefs and views on life. They reach a consensus between the two of them on the meaning of their shared social environment and provide interpersonal feedback that helps each other to integrate their identity within their common social context.

When a divorced couple wants to remain friends, their initial friendship remains intact. They share the same benefits of a typical friendship that include:

1. They can keep your right to SHARE COMMON INTERESTS with his ex,

2. They can keep your right to VALIDATE COMMON BELIEFS AND LIFE PERSPECTIVES with his ex,

3. They maintain their right to help each other reach a consensus on the MEANING OF THE SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT they share with their ex, and

4. They help each other develop a “SENSE OF ITSELF“with his ex.

However, this is where things get tricky. Regular friendships start from scratch and add positive brick by brick to the foundation of friendship. However, for exes to “remain friends” after their divorce, they must give up, gold subtractThey appreciated many aspects of their marriage until they got divorced. These losses are a painful reminder of what they used to have when they were married. Becoming friends with your ex becomes an exercise in acknowledging one loss after another. These losses include:

5. Spouses lose the right to have SEX with his ex.

6. The spouses lose the right to affirm the SEXUAL ATTRACTIVITY from your ex.

7. Spouses lose the right to have INTIMATE PHYSICAL BEHAVIOR with his ex.

8. Spouses lose the right to have INTIMATE EMOTIONAL BEHAVIOR with his ex.

9. Spouses lose the right to have INTIMATE CONVERSATIONS with his ex

10. Spouses lose the right to have PHYSICAL ACCESS with his ex.

11. Spouses lose the right to have EMOTIONAL ACCESS with his ex.

12. Spouses lose the right to REVEAL PRIVATE BELIEFS AND THOUGHTS your ex.

13. The spouses lose the right to REVEAL YOUR DEEPEST HOPES AND FEARS your ex.

14. Spouses lose the expectation of TOTAL CONFIDENCE Your ex.

15. Spouses lose the right to enjoy very few PERSONAL LIMITS with his ex.

16. Spouses lose the right to EXPRESS YOUR LOVE in an intimate way.

17. Spouses lose the right to have a RANGE OF EMOTIONAL EXPRESSION with your ex, both positive and negative.

Normal friendship versus friendship after divorce

While a normal friendship involves adding one positive experience after another as the friendship grows, remaining friends after divorce requires acknowledging that major surgery was performed to cut the heart of the marital relationship, leaving only the friendship to survive.

In terms of the list of relationship benefits listed above, wanting to remain friends with your ex means that you keep the first four items on the list (items 1 through 4) while acknowledging the loss of the other thirteen benefits (items 5 through 17). .

Forcing your ex, as well as yourself, to regularly live with the memory of the heartbreaking losses suffered in divorce simply to maintain a “normal” friendship seems difficult at best and self-indulgent and selfish at worst. It’s no wonder it happens so infrequently.

So what is the point?

The harsh reality is that the relationship is dead and gone. Divorce is final, or soon will be. Now is the time to invest your energy in recovering from the traumatic event you just experienced and in preparing for the next chapter in your life.

Your ex can go on without your friendship and you can go on without your ex’s friendship. Simply put, staying friends with your ex is too much, too soon, and too difficult. Let your goodwill be enough and let your friendship fantasies rest.