Why Staying Friends With An Ex Is The Worst Thing We Can Do To Ourselves

Breakups are painful enough but they’re even worse when the reason they happened wasn’t that either one of you was a bad person or made a huge mistake. Sometimes love is just not enough no matter how hard it is to accept.

After experiencing such a high level of intimacy, it can be detrimental to try to be friends with an ex before the time is right. Even if you think you can handle it and be the exception, here’s why.

Feelings Don’t Go Away With A Switch

Candice Picard / Unsplash

Candice Picard / Unsplash

We tend to want to stay friends with our exes so that losing them doesn’t feel too abrupt. It allows us to keep them in our life still somehow, even if it’s not at the extent that we had hoped for. We think it’ll make the transition easier when in fact it makes it much harder.

Feelings for someone we shared so much intimacy with don’t just go away with the flick of a switch, or by slapping on a new label on your relationship. Staying friends makes it almost impossible for these feelings to go away.