“This just isn’t working out…but we can still be friends!”… a phrase that everyone has heard and almost everyone has used. “We can still be friends” is like the little bandage hastily and half-heartedly placed over the gaping wound that has just been created.
We may have every good intention in the world, but today I am going to argue why the answer to “Can we still be friends?” has to be (for a time anyway), no.
So why do we feel the need to cap off our breakup with the dreaded “let’s be friends”?
We live in a society that really emphasizes and promotes romance and happy endings.
We hang on to the belief that if everything isn’t blissful and perfect then it’s not truly the end.
After all, in the movies the guy will always run after the girl and catch her right before she gets in the car and leaves forever right?
But in real life unfortunately, most of the time that car drives off and people go their separate ways.
We find ourselves confused and desperate when our former partner does not come running after us.
It’s hard for us to grasp that some things really do just end, and there’s no guidelines or examples that show us what to do with that loss and rejection we feel.
Breakups are unsettling and our way resolving that uneasiness and pain is to leave that door open just a crack with a simple “let’s be friends.”
In doing this, trying to maintain that relationship in some form and keep that person in our life, we avoid that feeling of failure, rejection and loss or at least we think that’s what we’re doing.
In reality, all we’re doing is prolonging that feeling, building it up and making it more intense when it catches up with us later on.
As explained by Michael Vincent Miller in an article for oprah.com, “Trying to be friends immediately following a breakup tends to prevent the rejected partner (and maybe both partners) from mourning the death of romantic love—from accepting its finality by suffering it all the way through.”
And after all, a breakup is just that, mourning and most of the time it is final.
You may think to yourself “This isn’t mourning, that person’s not dead. I see them every day!”
On the contrary, a breakup is the loss of a relationship, of love, of someone’s companionship.
And just like every other type of mourning, grief and loss, it takes time (which no one likes to hear).
But there certainly is a light at the end of the breakup tunnel.
If we allow ourselves the time we need to grieve, however long it may take, we can turn that pain and loss into wisdom.
And you’re right in thinking you will never be the same.
But from that loss, you actually have the potential to become more than you were, a better, wiser, more mature, more realistic or confident version of yourself.
You know more about what you’re want in a relationship and what you don’t want, you may even know more about yourself and at the very least, you are better prepared to deal with these types of emotions and situations in the future, which is a gift you may not have asked for but it is valuable nonetheless.
This is not to say that two former romantic partners can never be friends, after all, that person must have enhanced your life in some way and they may be able to do that again for you in a different way down the road.
But consider that sometimes (most of the time) its better not to be friends or not to strive for that friendship right away.
As difficult as it may be, it really is healthy and beneficial to close that breakup door all the way.
Bridget Goedke
Viewpoints Editor
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