Why It’s Hard to Be “Friends” When the Relationship Ends

“We can still be friends.”

Maybe said by you

Maybe said by them

To salvage the good standing or to cushion the blow of the breakup.

However, let us stand in the realm of good faith. Perhaps both sides genuinely want to be in a platonic arrangement. It’s understandable why.

You both enjoyed each other’s energy at some point.

You both enjoyed each other’s company at some point.

You both shared your vulnerabilities and the chinks in your armor at some point.

So it would be rather a shame for both of you to stain your brains and hearts with the hues of the other, only to remain ghosts of the past, which brings us to that statement above.

You try it out, but things seem off. Steps are missed, communication feels more arduous, like you’re shouting a message across the ocean. All of a sudden, this new title that feels so familiar seems impossible to truly grasp.

Before you know it, you ponder if “that” statement was even right to make in the first place. Funny videos go unreacted to. You find yourself withholding conversations and creating boundaries that shouldn’t be. Until you reach that point, it’s the holidays, and you stare at your phone wondering if it’s even worth it to send the message. (Too transparent?)

Regardless, as you can assume, I have been in this predicament before. I have tasted all of the things that I am describing to you in this piece. And perhaps if you are honest, maybe you have too.

It wasn’t until recently, in a conversation with a good friend of mine, and my own examination of my own struggles in this endeavor, that gave me confidence to even write about it.

These are the reasons I have come to accept as to why, in my case, and so many cases, we fail to “still be friends.”

The Unresolved Tension

Break-ups can be messy. Very often, we settle for the idea that it is a mutual decision, but more likely, one party was feeling the heat more than the other.

When both sides do come to the realization Love’s Angel won’t save them, when they accept it is time to call it quits and transition to another dynamic; those resentments don’t innately go away. They don’t fade just because we want them to, or have moved to another terrain. They stain our hearts and minds, leaving us to always view those arguments, those discomforts, when we see that person. When we feel their presence.

This is why the importance, of course, barring abuse or legal situations, of gaining closure is vital for both parties to access. A conversation that spells out all of the grievances, leaving them on the table, for those who are still hurt to take the reins of.

A conversation.

A sit-down.

A phone call.

Without it, very often when we seek to morph the dynamic into a platonic setting, yet we continue to carry that pain and hurt, because we were never able to shed it and work on our own like snake skin.

The Lover’s Gaze

When you meet, when you first encounter your love or encounter your soon-to-be former love, you perhaps never had the intention to end up as friends.

We are all adults here, let’s be honest. That moment you laid eyes on the person you were with, you never put a timestamp on that. And all your actions matched and followed suit this dogma.

You learned about their traumas to best know how to aid them as a partner.

You learned about their family, not to get accustomed to their worldview. Instead, to learn how to navigate the politics of a community you may be joining.

You learned their favorite foods, dances, songs, this that and the third, because you wanted them to feel at home in your company.

All of these efforts and others were done in an attempt to nurture a fruitful romantic relationship.

I call this the “Lover’s Gaze”. This form of sight, where you view your partner as your romantic future, not as an individual who is worthy of your company in any other format. And this Lover’s Gaze leaves us totally dedicated to the process of getting to someone in a romantic sense. But we struggle to take off the glasses and see when the relationship changes.

The strange terrain of camaraderie leaves you feeling as though you are wearing a scarlet letter. You can be open, but how open?

This individual has been framed in your mind as your boyfriend/girlfriend/partner/spouse/lover for months at a time. No one teaches you how to navigate that scenario where you are so attached that you opt to remain friends.

The Lover’s Gaze leaves both parties in limbo, not exactly feeling camaraderie and platonic. Not after you kissed, not after you have slept together, not after you have both been so much more intimate than just in physical body. The Gaze feels rather uncomfortable and forces this queezy uneasy feeling within one or both people.

So, in the spirit of ease, access, bad communication habits, and convenient circumstances, the two parties who promised to be there for each other found the rising waters too arduous to cross. So they turn back and return to their corners of the world, hoping the other gets the hint.

Mistaking Friendship For Hibernating Love

Often, in the case of the party, which wasn’t inherently prepared for the demise of their union. They, to some’s surprise, will accept “friendship status”.

The reason is simple. They believe that love is dormant and hibernating and will return in a moment in the future.

However, this stops the platonic love from ever blossoming. When you are this crouching tiger waiting for that moment to pounce back into the folds of a romantic union, your new friend is in a difficult predicament. They must wade through the treacherous waters of an uneasy and unstable river. They can’t come to you as a friend, as they feel the tension; they don’t know if you are listening to get back in their good graces or if you are just being supportive.

Again, I must emphasize that all of these challenges can be addressed with communication. That is a tool in your belt, understand? However, you are already navigating a rather new dynamic to begin with. What words do you use to explain and express what can’t be tangibly seen?

When one is under the impression that love is hibernating, and this friendship is just a phase, the romantic calculus comes into view. It is felt in every question, statement, attempt at a hangout, etc. The side that feels this feels strangled and just inevitably pulls away.

The Conversation

The other day, I was speaking to a friend of mine, whom I have known for a while.

I knew about her past relationships.

She knew about mine.

The topic came up, as we have always dabbled in doses of transparency to make sure neither side was uncomfortable. In our discussions of relationships and our past failures, we both came to mutual beneficial conclusion.

“The best thing for our friendship was that we never dated.”

Things were easier.

The judgment wasn’t there. The performance and those experiences we could have had wouldn’t hang over our heads as we had a conversation if things hadn’t worked out.

We were able to build something beautiful and even mutually beneficial, rather than trying to construct a utopia from the wreckage of our expectations.

In those moments, hearing her speak and hearing my voice clothe the words of my perspective, I saw why I was failing. I found that those friendships after the break-up never materialize.

Sure, a little while after, things would be on the right path, but then the dialogue would feel more stale. The conversations would be fewer and fewer. And God forbid that moment arises where one of you has to say the cautionary statement.

“I’m kinda seeing someone.”

You know things will be over at that moment.

The conversation between our friend and me helped show me the hurdles and pitfalls that leave friendships post-break-up feeling impossible. In her description of the years we’ve known each other, I saw the unresolved tensions flash before me as she spoke.

As I reminisced, I saw that Love Gaze come over me with different people I had known, which caused me to second-guess and confuse myself.

As we agreed, I saw that the love I had in my youth, and maybe my partner did as well, that hibernated kind. The one that causes you to test the waters and see if something is still there.

I remember I saw a meme, an illustration. It was a picture of a woman at the sink brushing her teeth. Her man was on the toilet as he smiled, and she smiled through the bubbles of toothpaste. The caption read something like this.

“It’s crazy how people can go from this to acting like they don’t know each other in a week.”

I laughed when I saw it, then I became self-reflective. Because as we carry those memories to every restaurant, every bar, every place where the staff might know you as their favorite couple, and now they see you alone, that can be a hard load to bear on one’s shoulders.

But, for so many of us, it’s easier to carry that load, to act as though we have forgotten, and to terminate our total contact with the one we were intimately acquainted with, than to erase the Love Gaze, resolve those tensions, and seek closure, and be honest about why we want “friendship” in the first place. That is a walk with burning coals beneath our barefeet. And with minimal urgency, given our new status, it is easier to believe it will tend to itself.

If all of that emotional labor is necessary, with no cutting of corners, then it is understandable why friendship after relationships is so hard. Not impossible but irrestrickably hard.

Perhaps the better question we should be asking is, why wouldn’t friendship after relationships be hard?