Can You Be Friends With an Ex? Yes — but the Motive Matters More Than the Word "Friendship"
Author: The Narcis editorial team · updated: August 2026
Clinical review: a practising psychotherapist
Friendship with an ex is not automatic proof of maturity, just as no contact is not proof of immaturity. In a study of more than five hundred people, roughly two thirds reported remaining friends with an ex-partner. Researchers identified different motives: security and emotional support, practical reasons, civility, and unresolved romantic desire. The motive often tells us more than the word friendship itself.
Why simple advice often fails
If ex-partners share children, a business, a dog, a social circle, or twenty years of history, friendly contact can be both practical and genuine. A different situation occurs when someone accepts “friendship” in order to remain close until the ex changes their mind. Each coffee then maintains a hidden contract the other person may not even know exists.
A useful test is whether the friendship can tolerate the reality of new relationships. You do not need to celebrate your ex’s dating life. But if news of a date triggers intense jealousy, despair, or an urgent need to remind them of your importance, romantic attachment may still be active. Temporary distance may then be more honest than the attractive identity of “we stayed close.”
New partners matter too. “You must accept my friendship with my ex because that is my boundary” is weak reasoning. A new couple has the right to negotiate contact, transparency, and comfort. At the same time, a new partner’s jealousy does not automatically grant them the right to erase every meaningful person from your past.
How it shows up day to day
Ex-partners can remain genuine friends for years without hidden hope. Another “friendship” consists of late-night messages, jealousy about new partners, and readiness to reunite after one signal. The label is the same; the function differs. The useful question is what this contact does to each person’s recovery.
What is easy to confuse here
Not every popular relationship term is a diagnosis. Here, words such as attachment, ghosting, rebound, or gaslighting can be useful descriptions but easily become labels. Naming concrete behavior and consequences is usually more useful than winning a terminology argument.
What the work can look like in therapy
Psychotherapy does not decide whether a client should stay in a relationship. Here, its task is greater clarity: where there is love, fear, actual danger, habit, incompatibility, or a pattern that can change. Decisions improve when they are not made solely to reduce anxiety immediately.
A practical frame without self-diagnosis
Before deciding what this topic means, separate four levels. Facts: what actually happened without mind-reading. Need: are you seeking closeness, clarity, safety, or closure? Pattern: is this a single episode or a cycle that repeats after conflict? Boundary: what remains negotiable and what has become unacceptable? If there is fear of the partner, coercion, stalking, or violence, the frame changes. The task is not to communicate more skillfully but to increase safety and involve outside support.
Books and sources
• Griffith et al., 2017 — Staying friends with an ex: motives and outcomes
If this topic resonated — you do not have to sit with it alone.
Find a therapist for this topic →This article is for information only and is not a substitute for an individual consultation with a specialist.