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Originally Posted by ngdawg
Life goes on....holding onto pain is stifling. Once you're able to step back an appreciate the relationship for what it was, you can be friends.
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Certainly, I agree with that. And I used to say that to people when they asked this question... yes, *eventually* you can be friends, but you have to cut off contact for a good long chunk of time... until you pretty much had just forgotten about the person (so that you were no longer giving them any emotional power in your life), however long that takes. Which usually does work.
However, it takes a LOT longer than most people ever really want to know, when they ask a question like that. Most freshly-broken up people latch on to that "eventually" part and forget the rest. They say, "Well wait, you said that EVENTUALLY we could be friends... and it's been like 1 month since we talked, so we can be friends now, right?" and then they get right back into their own little emotional tar baby of a clusterfucked relationship, and it takes double the time to get out of it from that point.
So I've changed my advice about this kind of question. I've just made an unequivocal NO, that you CANNOT be friends, that you cannot ever EXPECT to become friends, ever. To want or hope for anything else is not truly letting go of the situation, or that person's power in your life. It is still "expecting" that someday, everything will be okay. Sure, of course it DOES happen, just as ng and some others have said. But to sit around waiting for that... no, that doesn't work.
I really think it's best to move on with 100% intention to completely and utterly break things off with that person, and to never, EVER interact with them again (even if a long ways down the road, you do end up becoming friends). But do not even entertain the idea of "friends." Only then can you truly get away from that power over you, and let come what may after all the dust has settled.
It's much more difficult than it sounds. Most people do not want to cut themselves off from someone who mattered so much to them, for such a long time. They'd rather cut off a limb than do that. Which is why so few people ever really follow this advice, unfortunately. We all have to learn the very hardest way... thanks to our own stubbornness and pride.
Obviously, this was my own lesson to learn, years back... which explains my novel-length post here.
