Yeah, lemme guess who dumped whom, and why. "I'll wait for you" sounds sweet and all, but it's the Hallmark greeting of a doormat.

Leave her alone. She made it clear that is what she wants. Respect it.

This guy isn't going to get the hint until he gets the restraining order, and maybe not even then. LW, not only should you leave your Ex alone, you should invest in some good old fashioned "alone time" before you even think of getting another one. You need to figure out what the hangup is, and deal, before you put yourself, and another girl, thru this again.

One of my rules of dating is to try to only date people where if it doesn't work out, we can avoid each other for a while. When it doesn't work out, a lot of the time the friendship doesn't work, either.

Yeah, being friends after the breakup is one of those good-in-theory things. In reality, it's either really awkward, or you wind up falling back in bed again, then remembering why you broke up in the first place.

That's not just my experience, it's also what I've observed of other people. Even if the former couple are "friends" at first, they will eventually drift apart. Really, how many people do you know who are good friends with their exes?

LW, you obviously want to stay close to your ex. That's not going to happen here. Instead, you need to get back in the saddle and ask our some girls. Just be sure that your date conversation doesn't center around how much you miss your ex.

I'm something of an expert in this field. So far the score is: one very good friend (in the "would help me hide a body" sense), a couple of casual friends I see every now and then but with carefully guarded limits, and one that is still playing out - we are both trying very hard and want it to work because we still care very much about each other and rely on each other for support but there is the occasional trauma and tears.

Bottom line, LW, you're relying on a promise she made years ago to try to blackmail her back into your life. It won't happen unless you both want it. Time to give up. Bear in mind that even friends who have never dated can break up too when one person decides they don't want to be in the friendship anymore. Whatever she promised, that's what's happened here. Nothing is guaranteed forever.

"Leave her alone. She made it clear that is what she wants. Respect it."

Dude, respect yourself. Fuck her—move on.

you're relying on a promise she made years ago to try to blackmail her back into your life.

Well put, Ltw. Forcing her back into his life on breach of contract won't do either of them any good.

I have to wonder why LW needs her in his life. I definitely suspect that haakondahl is right and LW was the dumpee, but I think his doormat-osity goes well beyond wanting to keep her as a friend. He's that kind of "nice guy" passive-aggressive/regular aggressive doormat. He was laying groundwork for his current emotional blackmail by even asking her to promise they'd stay friends. I know it says they promised each other, but I'm laying money on him bringing it up and her agreeing because it was in the abstract.

LW's persistence is the kind we usually see on this site with men who are just starting relationships (and scaring the women into running the other direction). That LW is keeping it up after the breakup with the romantic overture of "But you said..." is really quite amazing. LW, why do you want to be friends with someone who's refused to talk to you for a year? Oh, right, you don't really want to be her friend, you want to be her "friend" that eventually becomes a boyfriend again through persistence and proximity.

Kelly,

"Yeah, being friends after the breakup is one of those good-in-theory things. In reality, it's either really awkward, or you wind up falling back in bed again, then remembering why you broke up in the first place."

I agree with your statement in the vast, vast majority of circumstances. But, it can work. My ex-wife and I are very good friends.

(By the way, LW, this post is not meant to egg you on in any way. For God's sake, leave this girl alone.)

It was a slightly difficult friendship to cultivate after the breakup of a volatile seventeen year marriage, but we were motivated by having children together.

And yes, we do sleep together pretty often, but somehow that isn't weird for us and doesn't dredge up unwanted feelings. We both love each other deeply, but have a good enough memory of how miserable the marriage became to not want to go back to that sort of relationship.

Oddly, we also have managed to not have feelings of jealousy when hearing about the other's dating life.

So, while not at all probable, it is possible. Yes, everyone who knows us thinks it is the weirdest relationship they've ever seen. I agree that it's unconventional as hell, but I sure wouldn't trade it.

Again, Letter Writer, this does not describe your situation. Leave the young lady alone and move on. You don't need these complications and neither does she. Because of the children my ex-wife and I have together, we'll always be in one another's lives and we'll always have over twenty years of important memories together. You're talking about someone you dated for a while.

LW, you need to back off and leave her alone. Unlike whistleDick here, I cannot abide my ex, but I do so for the sake of our children. I can only handle him in (very) small doses. He doesn't resect that, but since he's the poster boy for Cognitive Dissonance, I've learned to deal with it. You and your ex don't have children, so please try not to be obtuse about it all, and just leave her alone. Find someone else to fixate on. Please.

LW, you need to back off and leave her alone. Unlike whistleDick here, I cannot abide my ex, but I do so for the sake of our children. I can only handle him in (very) small doses. He doesn't resect that, but since he's the poster boy for Cognitive Dissonance, I've learned to deal with it. You and your ex don't have children, so please try not to be obtuse about it all, and just leave her alone. Find someone else to fixate on. Please.

Sorry for the double post! o.O

But, it can work. My ex-wife and I are very good friends.

Interesting whistleDick. It was 8 years living together for us, and it's not kids but cats keeping us together I think. It all comes down to how *both* parties feel about it. Like I said, I've done it a few times - sometimes it can work, sometimes it doesn't.

I can only handle him in (very) small doses.

Now you sound exactly like my most recent ex Flynne :) I'm only joking, she is very caring about me, but I cause her a lot of pain unintentionally sometimes, and she needs her strength for other things. Your advice to the LW is good.

LW needs to get over this and move on today. It's killing his/her self esteem and wasting precious time that coudl be spent with people that do want to be in LW's life. I'm speaking from experience here - I've been in that situation before. I was that guy once upon a time. So yeah, LW needs to get it through their skull that it's over, she wants nothing to do with them and every day spent pining over what was and raging over how she broke her promise to be friends is a day wasted that could've been spent living life instead.

We are broken up, but 'I need you in my life??'

Dude. Eat a bag of dicks.

I'm friendly with my ex because we have kids and still own property together, so I have to interact with him, like it or not. But I wouldn't have sex with him, and I stopped having sex with him long before the papers were signed.

Whistledick, I hope you and your ex are planning on cutting that out when one of you finds a promising romantic partner. Even then, it could be quite awkward to explain how you stayed involved sexually after the relationship officially "ended." I can't speak for most women, but that would make me uncomfortable with the friendship.

My husband is very understanding about my relationship with the ex, but that's because he knows that there is absolutely no underlying sexual tension there, at least on MY part. If he thought we still found each other sexually attractive, even despite the divorce, he probably wouldn't be as comfortable.

What would these people do if they had a real problem?

Yeah... He needs to leave her alone.

"Promising to remain friends", from her standpoint, could've easily meant, "I'll be polite when I run into you and I won't say nasty things about you to our mutual friends," not "We'll have lunch or drinks on a regular basis and reminisce about the good old days..."

I'm "friends" with some of my old boyfriends on Facebook, but other than an occasional "How's Life?" message, I don't communicate with them. I had a particular ex resurface- several times- to try to reconnect with me, and I had NO interest. Not because it was painful for me, but because he's a sorry piece of sh*t and I f*cking hate him. I don't want this individual involved in my life, at all, including having any knowledge of what I've got going on. This seems to be the case here- she wants nothing to do with you, you're not going to change her mind, so get over it and leave her alone.

Exactly, ahw. "Staying friends" is almost always code for one person trying to change the other person's mind. I've done it myself, but it hardly ever works, even when the other person is willing to maintain contact. She isn't. She sees through it and is politely telling him to respect her wishes and move on.

He's acting like she's terrible for breaking a promise, but it's one that never should've been made in the first place. No one can promise to be friends before a breakup since there's no way to know how bad the relationship or the breakup might ultimately be.

"Whistledick, I hope you and your ex are planning on cutting that out when one of you finds a promising romantic partner."

Absolutely, Lovelysoul. But meanwhile, we all have needs :)

"Staying friends" is almost always code for one person trying to change the other person's mind.

LS, I'm willing to stipulate that it's rare that it's genuine. I've managed it three times, which must be some sort of record (and I'm only counting long term relationships here, not brief encounters that didn't work out, which is much easier to turn into a friendship). One of them was my very first gf, we went out for six years and woke up one day realising we were both over it. A brief conversation and that was it. That was 14 years ago and we're good friends to this day (I MC'ed her wedding, for instance, and her first child has my name - picked by her husband).

Another one is a bit more fraught - I behaved pretty badly after we broke up. She wanted to still see me and we hung out a couple of times a week (her choice), but I kept trying to talk her into changing her mind. In the end *I* told her I couldn't see her anymore (on my doorstep, slamming the door in her face when she dropped in unexpectedly. Ten years ago I was more emotional) and we were out of contact for a few years. We have mutual friends so we ran into each other a bit. Now we've built an amicable relationship - she lives nearby so she'll invite me for dinner or lunch or vice versa every so often. But she's quite guarded with me which is reasonable, and won't discuss anything too serious - I wouldn't regard her as someone I could turn to for support. I wouldn't accept that from some other friends, but as far as I'm concerned, she's earned the right to limit it to that, and we genuinely enjoy each others company. Good enough. But the key of course was me being over her, or at least enough that it's only a mild pang rather than a broken heart, which took years. I also, when we started seeing each other again, apologised sincerely for my behaviour, then never mentioned it again. She had forgiven me long before, so there was no problem.

It's rare, and there has to be something in it for both parties, but it can happen. Having said all that - probably not in this case. LW, if you genuinely want a friend rather than trying to get back into her pants, read the above and get on with your life in the meantime. She might turn up one day, she might not. Probably not.

Ltw, I agree. It can happen, but as your situation demonstrates, usually after you're both well past having any romantic feelings, and often, by then, you find you don't really want to be friends anymore.

Facebook is probably changing that to some extent. I have two or three ex boyfriends who have "friended" me. One I know, for sure, still harbors feelings for me, and his "how are you?" messages have seemed more like scouting missions to guage whether I'm happy in my current relationship or not.

I just got married, and posted a lot of photos of my wedding on Facebook, which can't be easy for him to see, and, in fact, none of my ex's have written to congratulate me or anything, so the reality is that they aren't really "friends" because a true friend would. My guess is that the "friendships" will die off completely now, as any hopes of reconciliation are gone.

LW needs to consider that. It's one thing to grab a cup of coffee once or twice a year to catch up, and entirely another to try to stay intimately involved in each other's lives. If he still loves her, it would be extremely difficult to be her close friend at this point and see her moving on with other relationships.

In time, if there was ever genuine friendship and compatibility on other levels there, they might become friends, but right now, he's too emotionally connected and needy. It's selfish to ask her deal with that while she's trying to put the romance behind her.

I agree completely LS. This is when you find out whether the "he's not just my lover he's my best friend as well" line that people say during relationships is really true or not. All I can say is, I've been very lucky. Not to say that it hasn't been difficult and painful at times. But worth it.

Dude, she's gone. Let her go.

Life's too short for moping around, wanting her in your life. Keep the good memories -- they're yours. Take to heart any lessons you can learn from this. Then, move on.

Ltw, absolutely. I have also been very lucky. If you were to ask me who I could count on as a real friend whom I could lean on in tough times and rely on for advice and support, I would say that only two people on the entire vast planet fit that description. My brother and my ex-wife.

The, very few, truly deep relationships that we are lucky enough to forge as we go through our lives are not ones to be cast aside.

Yes, if they actually forged a friendship, that's true. Sometimes, people cling to the idea that they're "best friends" just because they've slept together.

I actually manage a lot of my ex husband's money and property. He trusts me that much. And, truth be told, when he calls me up, he makes me laugh. We get each other. I would still want to stay in touch with him even if I didn't *have* to.

Somehow, our friendship always existed outside of us being a couple...or maybe despite it. Sounds like what you have whistledick. Others don't usually understand it, but I do.

Good for both of you. It sounds like you have what I have. I wouldn't give it up for anything or anyone.

Lovelysoul,

"We get each other"

Bingo.

It does look weird to others, doesn't it? Screw them. Based on the percentage of posters here that have had similar relationships, maybe it's not so weird. Three out of a dozen or so? That's pretty good.

Just to reiterate, letter writer -- we are talking amongst ourselves and you should definitely not keep bothering this girl.

I think the best scenario is where you can honestly look at the relationship and conclude that you probably should've JUST been friends all along.

If not for my kids, that's how I would view it. My ex just had no business getting married. He's not that type, yet I am, so it was a constant conflict. He felt repressed and I felt depressed. lol Now, we're both much happier and able to enjoy each other's good qualities.

I wouldn't have sex with him though. We did for awhile - going back and forth, during the separation. It was hard to completely let go, but eventually, I cut that off because I couldn't really move on...and, actually, neither could he (though I think he considered it an ideal perk of the situation).

Anyway, LW, whistledick is right. We're talking long-term relationships with a lot of ties, history, and even kids. It doesn't sound like you and your ex have much to still connect you as friends. Let her go.

There is a great quotation on this..."Saying 'We can still be friends' after breaking up is like having your dog die and your mom saying you can still keep it."

It does look weird to others, doesn't it? Screw them.

My attitude exactly whistleDick. I know my ex-gfs care about me, and they know I care about them. I'm not sleeping with any of them. They all have their own lives separate to mine. I and they are happy with it, no one else's opinion is relevant.

Your relying on a promise she made years ago to try to blackmail her back into your life.

Well put, Ltw. Forcing her back into his life on breach of contract won't do either of them any good.

I have to wonder why LW needs her in his life. I definitely suspect that haakondahl is right and LW was the dumpee, but I think his doormat-osity goes well beyond wanting to keep her as a friend. He's that kind of "nice guy" passive-aggressive/regular aggressive doormat. He was laying groundwork for his current emotional blackmail by even asking her to promise they'd stay friends. I know it says they promised each other, but I'm laying money on him bringing it up and her agreeing because it was in the abstract.

LW's persistence is the kind we usually see on this site with men who are just starting relationships (and scaring the women into running the other direction). That LW is keeping it up after the breakup with the romantic overture of "But you said..." is really quite amazing. LW, why do you want to be friends with someone who's refused to talk to you for a year? Oh, right, you don't really want to be her friend, you want to be her "friend" that eventually becomes a boyfriend again through persistence and proximity.

Maybe a look at Robert Heinlein's definition of love will be useful. It is, roughly, "Love is the condition in which another's happiness is essential to your own."

If you're doing something serious which is making her unhappy, you're doing it for you, not for her or both of you.

Maybe you only get a sense of sacrifice and nobility to keep you warm at night, but if you act otherwise, you will simply not be rewarded in the long run.

Especially when the next person in your life finds out.

Amy, I'm noticing another repeat post of mine (without the html tags I used the first time). You may still be having some server problems.

I've hacked into Amy's server and set it to randomly re-post compliments to me NumberSix :)

Amy, that was a nice if sad story. You (and your ex-boyfriend) get it too.

Haiku for the Dumped

Let her go, you creep
None of them are coming back
Like keys in lava

I've hacked into Amy's server and set it to randomly re-post compliments to me NumberSix :)

I did have you figured for an evil genius.

I'm more like an idiot savant :P

Dear LW. When a woman says "Let's definitely definitely definitely definitely definitely REALLY definitely stay friends", in 95% of cases this actually means, "I don't want you in my life at all anymore the moment this conversation is over". Live and learn, deal with it, get over it, and move on to more interesting women and other fun times ahead, and stop wasting valuable time on dead ends. Is it hypocritical and annoying and dishonest? Yes, but that's life, what can you do, you can't change it. Trust me, find some new entertaining distractions and you'll forget about her. Life is just too short, gather rosebuds while you can, there really are plenty of fish in the sea, even though it doesn't always seem like it.

Most of my ex-gf's I'm 'cordial' with but don't generally talk to them, nor do I have much desire to really, even though I may have in the past. One I really don't want to speak to. One I did 'stay friends with' for about a year, but it turned into one of those weird F-buddies / pseudo-relationship-y 'what is this' things and then after a while went south.

'"Staying friends" is almost always code for one person trying to change the other person's mind'

I thought women usually say this to try make a break-up seem less 'harsh' at the time. Admittedly I don't have that much experience with this, I've only had, IIRC, 5 serious GFs before my wife. My 1st GF used that line, then the first time I contacted her (a couple weeks after the breakup), totally innocently and not interested in rekindling anything, she acted like 'what the hell are you contacting me for'. I was like 'WTF, OK then' and didn't talk to her again for .. hmm .. 15 years, but now we're 'cordial' and once in a blue moon exchange friendly messages on facebook (we're both now married). GF2 I broke up with, and we remained on friendly terms for a short while but then totally lost touch. GF3 I broke up with, we stayed friends for a short while until I met GF4 (who was one of those who insisted I cut ex's out of my life), and who is the one I did 'stay friends (and F-buddies) with' for about a year. GF5 broke up with me but said 'let's definitely stay friends' to which I said 'that doesn't work but OK we can try', and soon thereafter she turned totally psycho (long story, probable schizophrenic), so I steer well clear of her now. GF6 is now my wife. So anyway yeah, that about sums up my experiences, I can't say 'staying friends' has ever worked nor do I think it can in 99% of cases.

When we were newly separated (i had just found myself a place to stay), my ex dumped all my good shoes into the trash, so that was it. I cut him off my Christmas card list.

Simon Rich has a hilarious essay called Love Coupons that begins:
"Brian, what are you doing here?"
"I came to redeem some coupons."
(reading) "Good for one back rub...Good for one home-cooked meal....Brian, I gave those to you while we were still dating."
"There's no expiration date on the coupons."
"Brian, it's been four years. I'm married now."
"One home-cooked meal, please..."

Most of my exes are not friends. One is still a close friend but we were more friends with benefits anyway. A couple of others keep in very loose contact, but these are the exception. I think it's mostly because it's inconvenient to maintain a regular friendship and juggle new dating or love relationships. So the ex fizzles out and if you bump into each other later you may be cordial, or not, depending on how the ending went. But if you are in each other's faces at the end of a relationship it can't be fun to watch as the ex finds love, happiness and hot sex with another.

LW, please put out that torch and move on. As it is, you're just setting yourself up to be played; you're lucky that your ex isn't the sort to take advantage of you.

it can't be fun to watch as the ex finds love, happiness and hot sex with another.

Oh I don't know DR - it can be fun to watch :)

it can't be fun to watch as the ex finds love, happiness and hot sex with another.

Posted by: DR

Oh I don't know DR - it can be fun to watch :)

Posted by: Ltw

Yeah, but if they catch you at their window they totally overreact

True, luj, that's why it's so important to stay out of the light. You can't be seen from there.

Very interesting info. Keep up the great work! Best Regards.