Should you stay friends with your exes?

“I argue YES, you should stay friends with your exes. The brutal truth: romantic compatibility and friendship compatibility are completely different skills. You dated someone you genuinely liked as a person, right? That person didn't evaporate when the romance died. Keeping them around means keeping access to someone who already knows you deeply, without the performance cost of new friendships.”

“You've identified a real risk, but you're confusing *likelihood* with *inevitability*. Yes, exes are familiar comfort sources, but that's exactly why some people successfully remain friends—they've already survived the hardest test: choosing the relationship over romance and *choosing it consciously*. Your isolation argument actually cuts the opposite way.”

“You're ignoring the elephant in the room: the reason you broke up. That person didn't just stop being romantically compatible with you, they proved they were incompatible with what you needed. Staying friends means constantly managing the ghost of what failed between you, pretending the hurt doesn't exist. You're not gaining a "deep friendship"—you're settling for a hollow version of what you thought you had.”

“You should not stay friends with your exes as it creates opportunities to cross boundaries. There are specific hallmarks of breakups: tears, severe self-reflection, and more often than not, a void where one used to achive comfort and security. I would like to frame the debate by first characterizing the relationships which you may consider staying freinds with your ex.”

“I believe if they were a bad person who mistreated you, you should not be friends with them.”