Staying Friends With an Ex: Smart or Risky?

I have a client in her 40s who has just finalized her divorce from her husband. They had met at the soccer field where they both played adult league recreational soccer, and their friendship grew into a marriage proposal and then a union that lasted almost 20 years. She shared that the divorce was a mutual decision that wasn’t based on hostility in the relationship, just the changes they’d experienced as they matured. In session, my client affirmed that the breakup of their marriage wasn’t an issue for her, but she didn’t want to lose the friendship she had with her ex. She wondered aloud if I thought this was a crazy notion, and I was quick to say that friendships with exes can work, and in fact, many couples explore friendships after divorce as a way to maintain meaningful connections while moving into a new post-divorce life stage.

Friendship After Divorce: Why It Matters for Well-Being

We hear a lot about the effects of loneliness on our health and well-being. An oft-quoted statement is that being lonely is as detrimental to your health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. It is true that the time we have for friends has diminished as distractions, time commitments, and work-related obligations in life have increased. The over-scheduling of children’s lives used to be “the” hot topic, but now it’s the over-scheduled adult lives that are drawing concern. Knowing the health risks of loneliness, we should be mindful of nurturing and maintaining existing relationships—including post-breakup or post-divorce relationships that have the potential to provide emotional support and stability. Sometimes, even maintaining relationships with an ex might be worth considering.

Is Staying Friends With an Ex Possible—or Worth Trying?

With so little time to make new friends, it raises the question: Can friendship after divorce or post-divorce relationships help reduce the health risks of loneliness and strengthen your social support network? In the 1970s, it was suggested that maintaining a friendship with an ex could represent “separation distress rather than realistic caring” (Kressel, Lopez-Morillas, Weinglass, & Deutsch, 1978), but this has shifted over time as the cultural expectation that all adults find a spouse to enjoy social acceptance and support has faded. In fact, Griffith et al. (2017) actually identified some of the benefits of befriending an ex. Marriage is no longer viewed as a status quo “requirement” for committed couples, and as fewer people choose to marry, friendships beyond a romantic breakup may bring more satisfaction over time than the romantic relationship did in the short term. Relationship breakups are intensely personal decisions that are influenced by many factors, which may differ between both members of the couple. It’s the same for the decision to maintain a friendship with an ex.

Post-Breakup Relationships: How Cultural Shifts Make Them Easier

Not everyone is going to be ready to befriend their ex, but as mediation in divorce has grown more common (Custody X Change, 2022) and no-fault divorces have allowed for couples to make the decision to divorce less of an accusatory or finger-pointing exercise, there is a greater likelihood that people who once felt that their relationship was worth formalizing may now find that their post-separation relationship may hold value in a way that the romantic relationship could not. In fact, a recent survey indicated that couples are as likely to experience an amicable divorce as one that is hostile (Irwin Mitchell, 2023).

Post-breakup friendship is not going to work for everyone, but if you’re interested in giving it a try, here are some strategies (and rules) that might help.

Friendship After Divorce: Nonstarters

If your romantic relationship ended with animosity, it’s best to forgo any attempts at friendship.

If you, or your ex, isn’t over the other, or if one of you is still imagining a “happily ever after” fantasy ending, friendship is not a viable option. Cut ties and look elsewhere for friendship.

If you’re thinking a “friends with benefits” type of situation is what you want, that’s not going to lead to a healthy friendship—only a messy relationship where someone almost always gets hurt. And that someone may be the person that you start seeing after your ex.

Reasons to Maintain a Friendship After a Divorce or Breakup

• You share kids—a bad marriage is not forever, but parenting kids is a lifetime commitment. It’s better to maintain healthy connections with an ex when school concerts, weekend sporting events, or presenting a unified front when kids get in trouble are part of your life.
• You liked the person you married, but just didn’t feel that marriage, in general, or marriage to that person, was the right choice for you.
• You share a support network, and neither one of you feels the need for either one of you to cut ties with people you like and who like you.
• You like the extended family that your ex brought into your network, and you value them enough to maintain a healthy uncoupled relationship with your ex.

Strategies for Staying Friends With an Ex Without Any Drama

• Know and clearly exhibit your boundaries to others. Especially if there’s a new partner in the frame, don’t give anyone any reason to believe that you’re not over your ex. Or that your ex isn’t over you.
• Know and clearly declare your boundaries with each other, especially if there are kids in the picture. Don’t give kids any false hope about a reunification that is not going to take place.
• If “old feelings” resurface, distance yourself from your ex—you’re not yet over them, and this limits any hope of a healthy friendship developing. Wanting what you can’t have, or shouldn’t have, doesn’t bring any real reward.
• Don’t make assumptions about the friendship. Expecting an ex to always be your “ride or die” is not realistic, no matter how much you depended on them as a partner. Expand your social support network and seek out new friends rather than over-depending on your ex for companionship or friendship.
• Focus on activities, not each other. Focus on activities that involve larger groups—organizations, hobby groups, shared activities. If you are co-parenting, focus on your kids and their activities or needs.

In the case of the client that I opened with, it was the shared interest in a sport, both from the side of participation and spectating, that initially brought my client and her ex into each other’s orbit. While a lot had happened since the earliest days of their pre-romance friendship, my client and her ex were both invested in trying to build an “older, but wiser” replica of their earlier laidback friendship.

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They set clear boundaries on their friendship, such as deciding that they would only meet up at sports-related events or in public places where they wouldn’t be alone. They also committed to being open with any new romantic interests about their friendship, and this eventually resulted in some unexpected, but surprisingly amusing, “double dates” for them as they both sought out partners who enjoyed sports and active hobbies.

Not every ex-partner is going to be a “future friend.” If a romantic relationship is built on a prior friendship, and the romance is fading, before assuming that a prior friendship will organically re-emerge, reflect on what is bringing the romantic relationship to an end, whether or not you like your ex enough to want to remain friends, and if you’ve cooled any remaining romantic feelings. If you answer “yes” to these items, a healthy friendship with your ex may be possible.