This week, I've heard negative sentiment about exes all round. "My ex-wife makes my life a living hell!" someone exclaimed. "I'm still in love with her and the bitch dumped me!" claimed another. "How can we ever remain friends after I caught him in bed with another woman?" chimed in a third. Ah, the ex conundrum. For some, break-ups are smoother than a glass of vino at the end of the day. He or she decides it's over, they shut the other person out of their life, and they never look back. For others it's a painful game of back and forth as they vacillate between trying to move on, yet not wanting to let go of the past. Why? Just in case that person was "the one" and they've stuffed it up royally by letting that person go. Or just in case they can't meet someone else and they don't want to be single forever.
But in all honesty, can romantic relationships ever end well? Can things go from hot and steamy to placid and platonic? I'm not so sure. Hence I decided to answer this week's question from Anna ...
She says that, after dating someone for a couple of months, having mind-blowing sex, meeting the family and becoming the best of friends, things have had to come to a screeching halt. She had long-term plans to go traveling; he's moving interstate for work. And neither is prepared to budge for the other.
"We are clearly in different places in our lives," she tells me. While she says they've ended their relationship in the best possible way - "especially since our last relationships have always ended disastrously" - she's not so sure where their "friendship" status lies.
"I am just wondering if you can really say that the relationship was a great experience and ended on a high? Does it ever really work?" she wants to know. "And does ending amicably mean more heartbreak, or less?"
Personally, I'm not sure. It was English writer and cleric Charles Caleb Colton who famously said: "Friendship often ends in love; but love in friendship - never." And it seems he might have had a point.
While most of the time exes have the best intentions when they tell each other, "let's just be friends", the fact is that being friends with an ex conjures up all those past feelings of lust, hurt, anger and pain. So why put yourself through it? Why hang around the one person who might not exactly have your best interests at heart when it comes to you moving forward and onwards in your love life?
"I was fortunate to have the relationship end in a positive way. It saddens me when people stay in relationships that are negative for their self worth. People need to know when to move on."
I agree that it's imperative for people stuck in toxic relationships to know when it's time to move on, but how do you really know when to give up, or when to continue to fight for it?
Another mate is trying to decipher just that. While he's still in love with his ex-girlfriend, even after she callously dumped him, he thinks remaining friends will only set him back.
"She wasn't ready for a relationship but still wanted to be close friends," he told me. "But I told her, 'I've got enough friends.'"
He reckons his ex doesn't want a friendship at all - just comfort, and for him to help her get over him! Now how selfish is that? Especially since he still has feelings for her. Hence he's since rationalised that there is no way a friendship between them could ever work out. "Sometimes you just have to know when to cut them out of your life," he says.
Unless of course, you have kids together. Like Mel Gibson and his ex-girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva, who have no choice but to remain in each other's lives since they've just had a daughter together (she's six months old), but we'll just have to see how that one plans out. Or Demi Moore and Bruce Willis, who seem to pose for happy family-style portraits with all their kids and their new partners hanging on their arms.
Or my friend Joni, who has recently married her much older boyfriend, only to discover that she's not only inherited two step-kids, but a psychotic ex-wife, who is now in the picture too.
I agree with the great French author Francois Mauriac when he said: "No love, no friendship, can cross the path of our destiny without leaving some mark on it forever."
And, personally, there's nothing that pains me more than to have to let go of a person who has made an incredible mark on my life. But when your ex is someone who is making your life more of a misery than adding value to it, or you happened to find them in bed doing the horizontal mumbo with someone else, it's pretty darn difficult to contemplate ever speaking to them again. Let's just hope they stop stalking your Facebook profile ...
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