How to be friends

Do people actually stay friends with their ex's or is that just a myth. Like real friends,  the kind where you're happy to stay in touch, keep up with their lives and not vomit when you hear they have started dating someone new. I'm asking for a friend,  that friend is me.

I personally have never experienced it. That being said I've only really had three serious relationships . I suppose I have been involved with other guys in a more casual fashion. It could be said that we dated but I wouldn't have gone as far as introducing them to someone as a boyfriend. But my first serious relationship did a bit of emotional damage and it took me a while to allow someone close to me again .

My second serious relationship was worse. When it ended, there was more cause for a restraining order than there was the possibility of friendship. It was a dark and twisty one that didn't relinquish its hold on me until long after the break up.

So my last and longest relationship is the only serious one I've had that hasn't done lasting damage to my psyche. Which is actually a kind of sad and dark fact when you think about it.

That being said,  it wasn't without fault and the relationship ended for very real reasons. It was a sad but inevitable ending that left both of us with many feelings but there was no real animosity at time which would become apparent when we met months after the break up to have a mini fling.

Eventually for me the gloss wore off and I saw that while I was changing he wasn't and in the end the only feeling that was left was anger about so many different things unresolved in four years. I knew what was broken wouldn't be fixed so I left these feelings fester and just gradually saw less of him until it just kind of tailed off. The fact that we no longer lived in the same city made this not very adult approach appeal more than having an argument that would ultimately achieve nothing plus I'm allergic to confrontation.

Aside from the fact that Facebook is determined to share at least one memory involving my ex a week, he probably would have faded into my past to be only occasionally remembered soon enough.

In a few weeks actually I'll have been single a year. Now I'm pretty sure this isn't typically an event you mark but with this time in mind,  my ex reached out to see how I was doing and if I'd like to stay friends. What surprised me most wasn't so much that he had gotten in touch but how visceral my reaction was. It seems that we cannot be friends because all the things I had been angry about came back to me in a rush from where ever they had been left stewing somewhere in the back of my brain.

I mean this probably means I should sit down and deal with all these feelings because they aren't going anywhere and feeling angry is like drinking poison and expecting someone else to die. But for now it means we mostly can't be friends, not today anyway but maybe some time down the line, I might reconsider.