I just read Mandy’s latest post, and I thought I should offer my own thoughts about this matter. I have 2 ex-boyfriends, or two I would really call just that because I do not count 2 months relationships into this account. I have 2 ex-boyfriends, and I manage to stay friends with one of them, and friendly with the other.
Reasons: E#1, broke my heart. Completely. I was young, in love, naïve and unexperienced. I had just moved away from home and felt that on my psychological state as well. I did not see it coming, and I have never felt so lost in my entire life. I lost 20 pounds in two months, didn’t eat, didn’t sleep at all og slept all day, did bad at school and had little contact with other human beings in general. Now, my ex, let’s call him C, dumped me, and a week after, he found himself a girlfriend from an online dating-site. Keep in mind I had been depressed for two months, but suddenly it all dawned on me. His freaking loss. In many ways, I felt bad for him, and I still do. Some background facts tells me that his behaviour has a lot to do with the behaviour of the people around him when he grew up. He’s got a few siblings, none with a shared father. His mother has had several unstable relationships and men coming and going through the years and I believe that this has made him who he is, and not able to cope with attachment very good. (It shall also be mentioned that he has had countless of girlfriends both before and after me, and all seem to last around 1 to 1,5 years!)
I stay friends with him, both because he once used to be a very good friend of mine which guided me through my ups and downs, but also because I see that he deep down is a good person, not to defend his actions, I still think what he did to me, and the other girls make him an idiot (cheating bastard, that is!), but I feel like one should be able to forgive, forget and live in ‘harmony’ with each other.
Ex #2: Is a very resent ex. I broke it off because I was going abroad and did not want to be attached back home while away. I wanted to be free. While visiting for x-mas, he persumed we were still in a ‘pseudo-relationship’ and sort of thought that everything would be like before I left for a couple of weeks. My feelings for him were gone. Yet I felt guilty for not feeling the same way he did. I might have been the ‘bad-guy’ in this situation, but I had not done anything wrong, just simply lost my feelings for him. And that’s allowed, now isn’t it?
I stay sporadically in touch with him because he used to be a very good friend. We started out as friends, and were friends for nearly 4 years before anything happened between us. My friendship with him was what it all started out as, how can I discard that? I know he still has feelings for me, but I would love to be friends with him. Am I weird? I also feel kinda bad for dumping him, even though we both agreed on it, I felt like I dumped him all over again over x-mas. He cried, several times, and I couldn’t stop feeling sorry for him.
That’s all folks!
Betty!