Can I be friends with my ex?

Mission impossible?

If you have read my posts so far, you also can understand how important friendship is for me. I pretty much believe that unless someone does something terribly disgusting to someone else, there is no reason for which two people cannot engage into decent dialog and become friends. It is all just a matter of an open mind and of digging below our first impression of people.

Just as I believe in the friendship between men and women; I believe you can be friends with your ex once you leave some things behind and if no one did something terrible to the other person, like vanishing, and I certainly think there is a big chance that you will get a great friendship with someone that knows a different side of you from most people.

And so as many people cut their exs off and hide them somewhere where they never have to see them again, in general terms, I will try to reach that point as quickly as possible in which you can become good friends, but life is proofing me things are not always as easy as I wished they were, and as this topic is coming more and more often into my daily life I wonder: Can I be friends with my ex? What makes it possible for it to happen?

The Story

So I broke up with The Geek and broke his heart into a gazillion pieces. The reasons for me breaking up were terrible incompatibility of personality, interests, likes… you name it and it all started because as I got bored of the relationship I started realizing superficial things that would drive me insane like his accent, his nose, his teeth his clothes and his shoes. Anyone that knew us was constantly wondering how we had ended up together, and it took me only few months to wonder as well; But what for me made no sense, there was no feeling whatsoever, etc. For him it was two years of writing me and missing me. Those close to him by the time I broke up (with the best diplomacy I knew at the time) with him certify the man was devastated. So for a couple of years he sent me a love mail or two, every three or four months to which I would answer “How sweet of you but we don’t belong”. I even felt guilty.

Giving a try to “friends”

But as he stopped doing the mailing thing two years ago, I thought maybe we could have a conversation or two and be friends, after all he is a good person. And as conversations became if not regular, comfortable the past year, when last week he invited me to join him and some of his friends to a rock festival with a great line up close by I didn’t hesitate to join as many people we all knew would be there. The day with the group of people that were not really my type, but were good people went smoothly, and it finished by us having a conversation about holidays (what can be more innocent than that?). He was saying how much he likes nature, hiking and camping he started making plans to go hike all together in Slovakia… I had no trouble to say I am not a nature lover; I love a beach of white sand and cocktails and a good spa, massages and a marine or a city with tons of art, activities and lots of shopping… I love pubs drinking, smoking and eating good food. He tried to persuade me to like the nature thing, and I stated I am not a nature person. I hate mod, I hate bugs, sweating, other random animals and a hike more than 30 minutes is excessive as I prefer going to the gym for a class and sauna. Nature is the kind of thing I will only do if there is a dude I like and it is the only way to get him and it cannot be more than a day.

Failure and anger

So we went all to sleep. I thought he made a move but I couldn’t tell, but at 4 am as I was sleeping as much as possible as I would have to wake up extremely early to catch a train back to real life and work, my phone buzzed. A text arrived from a room upstairs saying the following:

“S. Though I disagree with half of your views and don’t understand your reluctance to try things that don’t match those views, there is still something I did and do feel very special about you.”

I closed the phone. I was pissed because he woke me up two hours before I had to wake up and I couldn’t fall asleep again. There is no way I can find this half sweet because I don’t think that I commit a crime for not subjugating to holidays in the forest or some random mountain when I know I hate it, nor I find nice that he cannot be over it after 4 years. I considered answering on the lines of:

“You may agree or not with what I think, that is personal freedom, but I have no reason to do something I don’t like or to be agreeable when I don’t agree and I don’t know if you realize I didn’t nor do I have any feelings for you.”

So as this is not a nice message from me I deleted the message and decided to speak to the man in male language by not replying. In the end it was 4am, I can pretend I didn’t read it or he sent it to my number in another country. I did have to break up with him three times before he understood it was over. At least I saw Lenny Kravitz.

I guess I will continue doing the analysis of these stories to determine what makes a friend of an ex? I guess I can make a series of posts with this question. Stay tunned.