Can Being Friends With An Ex Lead Back Into A Relationship?

Being friends with your ex can lead back into a relationship as your ex can fall back into an old routine of talking to you and start acting like your boyfriend or girlfriend again.

But before you get your hopes up, know that this doesn’t happen very often. Exes tend to have a difficult time falling back in love with a friend because they lack the emotional capacity to make that transition.

Not only do they lack the ability to overcome limiting beliefs, but they also lack the motivation and the incentive to reflect and improve.

This is because their relationship mentality and emotional exhaustion hold them back from improving their thoughts, mistakes, and emotional issues.

Taking some time to relax with their friends and family sounds a lot more reasonable to them.

So if you’re wondering if being friends with an ex can lead back into a relationship, know that crawling out of the friend zone doesn’t depend on you and your ability to lead your ex back into a relationship with you.

Sure, your attitude and behavior matter a lot because your ex probably won’t get back with you if you’re angry, controlling, and abusive. Most people don’t. But what matters even more is your ex’s ability to process pent-up emotions and the willpower to resist a life that feels better than the life before.

The things that your ex lacked or failed at when he or she was with you is what your ex needs to improve or succeed at to go from being friends to being in a relationship.

And that’s what makes breakups so difficult. If 90% of the reconciliation was in your control, you’d be able to guide your ex back into a relationship with you at ease. You’d be able to hit your ex in his or her soft spot and reel him or her in.

But because exes have a mind of their own and can’t be persuaded gently or with manipulation techniques, you can only hope that your ex discerns your worth, gathers his/her willpower, and tries to make it work of his or her own accord.

Either that or your ex has to get out of a bad relationship and/or get hurt and see your worth that way.

In this post, we’ll answer the question, “Can being friends with an ex lead back into a relationship?” I’ll talk about the things you can do to maximize your chances of reconciliation and the things you must avoid to minimize your pain and false hope. I’ll also talk about my clients who went from friendship to relationship and a friend who’s been friends with his ex for two years with little to no luck.

Should I be friends with my ex if I want my ex back?

First and foremost, I strongly discourage anyone from staying friends with an ex right after the breakup because the time after the breakup isn’t ideal for reconciliation. It’s ideal for healing and fixing the problems that caused the breakup.

While dumpers need time to distract themselves from the issues that broke them up, dumpees need time to detach and process the breakup. They both need to spend some time apart from each other before they can get over each other and regain their identity.

This isn’t the only reason why exes need time away from each other. Another, much more important reason is that they both have different wants and needs. Dumpers lack space and independence and dumpees lack closeness and recognition.

Because of these fundamental differences, dumpees and dumpers can’t work together. At least not until they emotionally distance themselves from each other (and stay distanced) until their wants and needs align with each others’.

This could, of course, take a lot of time, self-reflection, willpower, and commitment, but, unfortunately, that’s the sacrifice it takes to be friends with an ex after the breakup.

It’s definitely hard, which is why only ex-couples who do the work on themselves or those who lose romantic feelings for each other can stay friends after the breakup.

Such couples are usually mature and have no ill feelings for each other.

So if you still have feelings for your ex and you’re in pain because your ex isn’t returning your feelings, friendship is the last thing you should be thinking about right now. You should be thinking about detaching, healing, rebuilding self-esteem, resolving personal matters, and fixing your shortcomings.

Your job as a dumpee isn’t to restore friendship or relationship. It’s to get yourself back. And when you get yourself back, that’s when you can think about befriending your ex and maybe even getting back with him or her.

If you jump the gun and push for any kind of relationship prematurely, your unreceptive ex is most likely not going to accept it.

He or she will reject it because you’ll be operating out of fear and anxiety and scare, smother, and repulse your ex.

Remember that friendship with an ex alone won’t make your ex fall back in love with you because the problem wasn’t that you haven’t spent enough time together and got to know each other. It was that the time you’d spent together hasn’t reached your ex’s expectations and made your ex happy.

So if you haven’t yet become your ex’s friend, don’t ask your ex to be friends.

You can accept your ex’s friendship invitation out of politeness if your ex asks you to be friends. But what’s even better is to say that you’ll think about it after the dust has settled and that you’ll reach out if you think friendship is feasible.

Can being friends with an ex lead back into a relationship?

Being friends with an ex can lead back into a relationship. I’ve seen it happen several times before and I’ll probably see it many times more in the future. Dumpers and dumpees of all ages and cultures get back together with their ex after settling for friendship.

But the number one reason why exes come back after agreeing to be your friend is that you become their backup plan. You turn into their safety net which makes you the person they fall back on when they encounter problems.

On the surface, that might seem like a bad idea because you don’t want to get stuck in a friend zone with an ex and listen to your ex’s problems. You want to move to the next stage right away and enjoy everything your ex has to offer.

This is what you want, but, unfortunately, how long you stay in the friendship stage isn’t up to you. You may think that it is because you feel connected to your ex, but that’s not a connection.

It’s a one-sided craving that was created by your ex’s shortage of interest in you.

For your ex to realize your worth and reciprocate your feelings, something bad (self-reflective) has to happen to your ex.

Something like a rejection because a rejection could hurt your ex, affect your ex’s self-esteem, and force your ex to contact people who can repair your ex’s damaged self-esteem.

If you avoid post-breakup mistakes, you could be one of your ex’s fixers as you used to be very close to your ex. You were intimate with your ex not too long ago—and that makes you qualified to be a fixer.

The questions that remain are, does your ex still have respect for you and see romantic, fixer value in you? Are you the person he or she goes to for help and has a difficult time not talking to?

If the answer is yes, your ex could contact you and bounce back to you when his or her relationship ends. And if the answer is no, you may not necessarily hear from your ex. Your ex could rely on someone else and/or move on to some else right away.

I know that most people hate being their ex’s backup plan, but some lucky dumpees actually manage to go from friendship to relationship.

They patiently wait for their ex to encounter difficulties, get contacted by their ex, and then get another shot at the relationship with their ex.

However, as promising as this sounds, there’s just one problem with this approach. I’ve already mentioned it but most people aren’t that fortunate. They don’t go from friendship to relationship because they’re always available to their ex and don’t make their ex realize their value.

They just give their ex what their ex wants (friendship and support) and continue to sacrifice their own happiness, hoping their ex would lower his or her defenses and reciprocate.

Such dumpees normally see their ex dating someone else, hurt themselves in the process, and make it hard for themselves to move on.

I’m telling you this so that you don’t think there’s a high chance of making the transition from friendship to relationship.

The truth is that the chances are very low and that it could take years before your ex encounters emotional difficulties, reflects, and chooses you as his or her savior.

So if you’re waiting for your ex to have an epiphany, you may as well “wait” while you’re not your ex’s friend. The chances of reconciliation will be higher that way because you’ll display confidence, give your ex room to breathe, and show your ex what life without you is like.

How to go from friendship to relationship?

If you don’t want to do the indefinite no contact rule because you fear it’s cowardly or too late (even though it’s not), you may want to focus on minimizing the damage you cause to yourself and to your ex.

You can do that by avoiding breakup mistakes. Especially those that would hurt, annoy, smother, guilt trip, or demand something from your ex. Having expectations of your ex is going to make it difficult for your ex to drop his or her guards, so forget about talking about the past and discussing the future.

Simply act like just a friend because that’s what you’ve agreed to be. You’ve agreed to leave the relationship behind and must now act that way.

When you agreed to be your ex’s friend, you let your ex relax.

And you must make sure your ex stays relaxed by giving him or her the liberty to do anything he or she wants. And I mean anything from going on vacation without you to dating new people.

Nothing is off-limits to your ex now that you’re just a friend. So act like a regular friend until your ex expresses the desire to take friendship to the next level.

Here’s an image depicting how to go from friendship to relationship with an ex.

Going from friendship to relationship will take lots of time. So don’t expect your ex to get back with you when you want him/her to. If it ever happens, it will probably happen when you’ve lowered your expectations of your ex and found your own happiness.

Examples of when friendship with an ex led back into a relationship

Some of my clients have been very fortunate and turned their friendship after the breakup into a success story. I’d like to tell you how they pulled it off.

The first client (we’ll call her Clara) was in her forties when she got broken up with by her husband. Like most people, she didn’t see the breakup coming, so she got hurt and blamed herself for the breakup. She was baffled as to why her ex would leave her when things seemed okay between them.

That’s why she did some digging and learned that her ex had left her for someone else.

This new person was much younger than Clara, almost half her age, in fact. She was fun, energetic, spontaneous, and clearly enjoyed maturer men’s company.

Clara was devastated at first and didn’t know what to do to convince her ex to come back. She just knew she wanted things to get back to the way they were.

When Clara contacted me, she said she would do anything to get the father of her children back. She said she was planning on writing him letters and asking his friends to tell him to think things through.

But after talking to Clara, we came to a conclusion that staying friends with her husband might not be a bad idea. Her husband still talked to Clara and helped her out with kids and errands and was being nice to her, so I advised her to talk to her ex, but only about things that she could use help with.

It was difficult for her to be friends at first because her ex was infatuated with his new girlfriend and kept telling Clara how fun his new girlfriend is. Clara said it was torture to hear him bragging about his new relationship.

But after a few months, her husband and his new girlfriend got used to each other and started facing age gap difficulties. They handled differences very poorly, so they had their first breakup.

At that point, it became evident to me that their relationship wasn’t going to last much longer. It couldn’t because a temporary breakup that occurs right after the infatuation phase means that the couple lacks the skill sets required for maintaining the relationship.

That’s why I gave Clara some very straightforward advice.

I advised her to be friendly and mature (the opposite of what her husband’s new girlfriend was) and to be selfless (to do things for him without expecting anything in return).

This made Clara a good backup option in her husband’s eyes. The guy was struggling a lot with his new relationship, so technically, all Clara had to do from that point onward was to be on her best behavior and wait for her ex’s new relationship to come to an end.

Of course, we didn’t know if her ex would come back afterward because we couldn’t predict the future. But because she didn’t annoy her ex and let him figure out what he wanted, he came running back the very same day his relationship ended for good.

He was the one who ended it.

The moral of this story is that sometimes being friends with an ex can lean back into a relationship. The journey is without a doubt more painful than the one where there is no contact, but it’s still possible to get your ex back if you avoid breakup mistakes, present yourself in a positive light, and give your ex the freedom to ponder about you.

Another client that got his ex back with the power of friendship was in a long-distance relationship with his ex. They broke up because their relationship had lost momentum and no longer felt like it had a purpose.

My client (let’s call him John) didn’t want to cut his ex-girlfriend off completely because he was afraid of “not doing anything to win her back.” That’s why he followed the rules of no contact only partially.

He didn’t annoy his ex or anything like that, but he still entertained his ex by responding to her text messages and voice calls. If my memory serves me right, his ex started reaching out two months after a breakup about once or twice a week.

At first, her messages were completely pointless as they were breadcrumbs about random things. But a few months later, her tone changed, so she started asking more personal questions such as, “Are you dating anyone? Do you want to meet up?”

John didn’t know how to respond at first because he hadn’t been dating anyone. He’d been focusing on self-development and his hobbies.

That’s why we came up with a response that was honest, yet respect-worthy. John sent his ex a text that said, “I’ve been very busy with work and training for the upcoming marathon, so I haven’t even thought about dating anyone. I’m free next week if you want to catch up.”

This let John take back control and for the lack of better words, forced his ex-girlfriend to submit to him. (I often mention that if your ex wants you back that she’ll clear her schedule for you. And that’s what happened to John. His ex agreed to meet up with him on his terms.

When they saw each other, she met him with puppy eyes and appeared very timid. She hugged him, said she was happy to see him, and complimented his looks. (It’s what exes who are afraid of rejection do).

After the discussion, she asked to get back together and admitted she’d been on a few dates with other guys but that she couldn’t connect with any. Apparently, she kept thinking about John and had trouble sleeping at home.

This story is somewhat similar to the first story. Both Clara and John initially had no control of the breakup. But because they remained friendly with their exes and gave their exes the freedom to do what they wanted, their exes slowly realized that grass wasn’t greener on the other side and that they should get back with their dumpees before it’s too late.

Examples of when friendship with an ex failed and made things worse

I could probably share hundreds of failed friendship stories of when dumpees wanted to be friends with their exes and failed at healing and attracting their ex. If you read the blog, you must already know how dangerous it is to remain in close contact with an ex.

Today, I’d like to tell you about a male friend of mine. He’d lost his ex-girlfriend over two years ago and hasn’t given up on winning her back just yet. His story is still ongoing and is nothing short of disastrous as he got close to his ex more than 50 times, yet every single time, he failed to stay close.

Every time he got close, his ex got angry and told him to respect her and to back off. He tried everything you can think of. He begged, talked about having kids with her, got upset with her, threatened with suicide, and is even planning to propose to her in the following months.

This person is over 30 and is a typical example of a dumpee who doesn’t believe in no contact. He thinks it’s possible to help the dumper process her negative associations and convince her to come back.

He’s one of those who thinks he must do something or he’ll have regrets for the rest of his life.

I’m also friends with his ex-girlfriend. And the things she tells me are beyond shocking. Apparently, he’s been asking her to sleep with him for so long that she once came to his place and told him “Just do it. If it makes you happy and if you’ll stop calling me all the time, just do it.”

This woman had been to therapy because her ex hasn’t let her process the breakup at her own speed. He’s completely exhausted her and is now trying to make amends by overinvesting in her.

Suddenly, he’s buying her presents, remembering anniversaries, and going above and beyond for her. His ex, on the other hand, is in complete and utter control of him and is telling me things like, “Look, he remembered our anniversary. Too bad he forgot the previous 8.

Like most resentful dumpers, she’s comparing the past to the present and is not letting him get emotionally close to her. They are often physically close (the way friends are), but she can’t stand being intimately close to him.

He repulses her because she emotionally checked out a long time ago and developed resentments.

I told you my friend’s story so that you don’t stay emotionally hooked on your ex for years. It’s much safer and better for everyone involved if you get the “I need to prove my worth to my ex” out of your head, go no contact, and leave your previous relationship up to fate.

What do you think? Can being friends with an ex lead back into a relationship? Have you gotten your ex back through friendship and persistence? Post your story below.

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Zan

My name is Zan and I’m the founder of Magnet of Success. I enjoy writing realistic relationship and breakup articles and helping readers heal and grow. With more than 5 years of experience in the self-improvement, relationship, and breakup sphere, my goal is to provide advice that fosters positivity and success and avoids preventable mistakes and pain. Buy me a coffee, learn more about me, or get in touch today.